Professor Jack Clancy

Senator Alston (Remember him? The Minister for Attacking the ABC?) believes that ABC News and Current Affairs demonstrate a bias against the government. He didnāt seem to think that when he signed the Senate Select Committee report "Our ABC" in March 1995. Nor did the man he chose to review the ABC, Bob Mansfield, find evidence of bias in his report in 1997. (Remember that report? Whatever happened to it?) Nor did the research undertaken by Dr Philip Bell reported in The Age, 28 July, find any evidence of bias.

But still the good senator insists on new procedures and argues (if that is not too strong a word) that the very fact that the ABC is accused of bias The Age, June 22, is evidence that there is a problem.

Media commentators like Errol Simper and Gerard Henderson, aware of the heavy pall of deja vu that hangs over the issue have made a quick comment and passed on to more relevant matters. But Senator Alston has his supporters, chief among them The Australianās columnist Frank Devine (Remember him? He is the one who has written in enthusiastic terms of John Howard as a great Prime Minister, and of Macdonaldās as a pillar of society. He is most notable recently for two rather quaint pieces asserting that there are no racists in Australia, or if there are he hasnāt been able to find any.)

Devine has written at least two pieces on ABC bias. In the first, under the headline "Misguided, yes, but donāt shoot the children of the revolution (a headline which conveys something of Devineās condescending paternalism) he refers to the "dreadfulness" of the ABC, its "collective self-righteousness" and to the fact that it is "screwed up". He then says that Alston, in his attack on the ABC and Brian Johns, in his defence, were both wrong and that the ABC needs to be saved from itself. This can be done by "stacking the ABC Board with the best and the brightest". Does this, one wonders, mean more appointments like that of Michael Kroger? It is an odd and puzzling piece in which the oddest element is Devineās haughty outrage at the fact that Kerry OāBrien laughed in mid-interview at one of Peter Costelloās answers. To describe this "disastrous gaffe" as "disrespectful of viewers, gormless and rude" is to ignore the healthy disrespect which Australians like to show, where appropriate, to the great and powerful among them.

But Devineās second piece The Australian, June, goes further. Recognising that what is too often lacking in any discussion of bias is hard evidence, he sets out to provide some by producing his conclusions from a weekās ABC News and 7.30 Report. Although the word bias is not mentioned, Devine lists fourteen instances, all anti-government, which chart the misdeeds of ABC News and Current Affairs staff. They range from the horrendous crime of referring to "the Howard government" rather than the federal government, to the sneaky ploy of writing that the police at a Jabiluka protest "claim" something, while the demonstrators "say" something in reply. One is left breathless at the devilish cunning of these ABC types.

To say that the Prime Minister still refuses to give an apology for the stolen generation is again, according to Devine, to be less than objective but to allow Kim Beazley to say that he has "given up on trying to get an apology from the Prime Minister" is to give Beazley a "political free kick".

Many of Devineās objections are at a crude party political level. Thus Barrie Cassidyās complaint that the tax package release will not allow time for consideration before an election is called, is countered by the claim (sorry, statement) that this is justified since it is the tactic which won Howard the last election and lost Hewson the one before that.

He objects to the account of Peter Costello, as distinguished visitor, ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange before a 100 point plunge, although some might have discerned an intention of good humoured irony in the way the story was presented.

I could find no complaint of any substance in Devineās fourteen points and I came to two conclusions. The first is that if we have to go to these trivial lengths to find evidence of bias, thereās not a great deal to worry about.

The second is that Devine has ignored one fundamental aspect of the issue, that is that most media reports except for the most sycophantic, will be critical of the government. If ABC News and Current Affairs staff are critical of the coalition, it is not because it is the coalition but because it is the government. They were critical of the government when Labor was in power. (Iām sure I can remember references to "the Keating government".)

This is part of the ABCās function; it is an important part of its value. For an experienced commentator, himself adopting a pose of independence and objectivity, to use these sparse scraps to brand ABC News and Current Affairs as a "disgrace" tells us more about the commentator than the target.