A review of the ABC’s referendum coverage has found that the ABC fulfilled its role as a national public broadcaster.
The Referendum Coverage Review Committee found that the ABC’s "comprehensive and informative” coverage fulfilled its role as the national public broadcaster by presenting different perspectives; providing explanation and context and reporting key stories accurately and fairly.
Using internal and external data, the review committee found that, despite fulfilling its role as a public broadcaster by presenting a diversity of perspectives, 51% of the ABC’s content was labelled as “YES”, compared to 23 per cent labelled “NO”. Only 2% of coverage cited spokespeople who were undecided, while 24% were neutral.
The report stated that coverage was never meant to be 50/50. “The goal was to ensure that audiences on all platforms were presented with the main arguments for and against the propositions in the referendum on every platform within a reasonable time,” the report said.
As it does for each election campaign, the ABC formed a coverage review committee to monitor the allocation of free TV and radio broadcast time to all sides of the debate.
Through externally commissioned Isentia analysis and an internally managed tracker, the ABC measured the amount of time given to different perspectives in broadcast. And despite using different methodologies to measure digital and social content, the two data sets provided similar results.
But committee chair, ABC Editorial Policies Manager Mark Maley echoed previous warnings that “share of voice” data is not a measure of impartiality.
“There are many factors it does not take into account, including when different positions are described or paraphrased or analysed,” he said.
“It also doesn’t take tone into account. For instance, a challenging interview does not necessarily favour the person being interviewed”.
Not necessary to have equal voices every time
Maley said that ABC reporting teams were told explicitly that they were not required to have a 50/50 balance of advocates, with the goal being to “ensure that audiences on all platforms were presented with the main arguments for and against the propositions in the referendum on every platform within a reasonable time”.
This goal was achieved, according to the Committee, with five of the ten most prominent voices on the ABC being No supporters - Warren Mundine, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Peter Dutton, Kerryanne Liddle and Lidia Thorpe.
Four were Yes supporters - Anthony Albanese, Noel Pearson, Linda Burney and constitutional law academic Anne Twomey, with Evan Ekin-Smith from the Australian Electoral Commission the third most prominent voice in the coverage.
The Committee said there were several main reasons behind the higher representation of Yes perspectives across the majority of ABC programs during the campaign, with availability of interview subjects having the most impact.
“All teams reported that it was significantly more difficult getting No voices to speak on the record. This was true of both high-profile representatives of the campaign, such Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and ordinary citizens for talkback and vox pops.”
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price declined some 52 ABC interview requests and did not agree to appear on any major broadcast programs.
Ombudsman complaints: bias and lack of balance
The report also showed that most of the 383 complaints to the ABC Ombudsman relating to the referendum were claims of bias or lack of balance (315 or 82%). Of these, 79% were that coverage favoured the Yes position, 15% were that coverage favoured the No position and 6% claimed other bias or were not clearly stated.
Of the 121 complaints which reached investigation stage, four were found to be in breach of editorial standards and five were resolved through remedial action. All breach findings related to an inaccurate reference in a 7pm TV News story to the 1967 referendum having granted Indigenous Australians the right to vote.
Sophie Arnold
E-news Editor