Over the last few weeks attacks on the ABC from segments of the conservative media have focused primarily on the comments made by Laura Tingle at the Sydney Writer’s Festival.

I have been engaged in a number of email threads with ABC Friends since Sophie Elsworth ‘called out’ the informal comments Laura Tingle made as a panel member in a session at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. Elsworth labelled Tingle’s comments “extraordinary” publishing a highly critical article in The Australian thereby generating a media storm. A number of derogatory comments were published in subsequent online articles accusing Tingle, among other things, of being a ‘repeat offender’ who had ‘shown her partisan ways'.

I looked carefully at Elsworth’s comments and find them biased, decontextualized and, themselves, extraordinary! A diverse range of views have since been shared with me by a number of NSW&ACT Friends and supporters. This is to be expected as we are a ‘broad church’, and both tolerate and encourage the expression of different perspectives. However, we are able to disagree intelligently and respectfully - something many News Corp journalists seem to be unable or unwilling to do.

Some ABC Friends expressed disappointment that Tingle did not frame her statement “We’re a racist country, let’s face it … We always have been and it’s very depressing and a terrible prospect for the next election” in a more nuanced way. Tingle herself conceded that her comments “created the opportunity for yet another anti-ABC pile-on which was not helpful to me or to the ABC. Or to the national debate”. However, I would argue the media ‘pile-on’ that followed, characterized by personal attacks on the quality and integrity of Tingle’s reporting together with claims Tingle breached the ABC’s editorial standards (noting the remarks were not made on an ABC platform) were entirely out of proportion. I am concerned that Tingle was, in fact, targeted for sharing an uncomfortable truth.

The Australian is not the arbiter of the ABC’s editorial standards and does itself seem to more than occasionally demonstrate breaches of editorial standards. For example, publishing the private contents of Brittany Higgins’ diary and texts/photos from her personal mobile phone have been described as a significant breach of editorial standards, constituting the basis of a complaint to the Australian Press Council. When the CEO of NewsCorp gave his recent talk to the Press Club he was asked if News Corp bullies women given the treatment of Jassmin Abdel-Magied, Brittany Higgins and others. He was also asked if News Corp is obsessed with the ABC. Both claims were denied, however the responses, in my view, were less than convincing. 

Alan Sunderland on behalf of ABC Alumni suggests that the “outrage” could be described as a “storm in a teacup” however it is also instructive. Certainly, this is not a black and white issue however five experts recently consulted by  Western Sydney University all agreed to a greater or lesser extent that Australia is a racist country. If you are not sure, think critically about our brutal colonization history and the intent inherent in the Immigration Restriction Act (White Australia Policy) as one of the first Acts of Parliament passed after Federation in 1901. It is a fact that the commentary in News Corp and mis-and-disinformation amplified on social media during the Referendum for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in 2023 had a distinct racist tone. The Race Discrimination Commissioner Giri Sivaraman suggested the comments made by Professor Marcia Langton last year and the statement made by Laura Tingle at the Sydney Writer’s Festival attracted far more scrutiny that racism itself. 

Tingle’s comments concerning Peter Dutton were hardly surprising given her extensive critique of Dutton’s budget reply entitled ‘’With his federal budget reply Peter Dutton is now playing deadly simple but deadly politics”. Dutton’s budget reply was delivered from Parliament House, televised across Australia. We all heard him link the housing crisis, childcare queues and even the congestion on our roads to current immigration policies promising to slash immigration numbers if he is elected Prime Minister in 2025. In my view, Dutton’s budget reply should be critiqued by our journalists and political commentators. Dutton is Leader of the Opposition, alternate Prime Minister, and responsible to us - the citizens of Australia. Many of us also share Tingle’s concerns, particularly as similar sentiments are increasingly being expressed by conservative politicians in the US, Europe and the United Kingdom ‘pushing Europe to the right as attitudes harden’.

Our ABC Excellence award recipient answered her critics magnificently in her June 2024 essay published in The Monthly lamenting “the erosion of civility in the public sphere, and what it means not just for politics and the news media but for the kind of society we are becoming”. Tingle’s essay is highly intellectual, critical, informative, partisan, coherent and comprehensive - a league above the sensational clickbait regularly posted by anti-ABC commentators. My response to recent accusations of ABC left-wing bias and lack of partisan journalism expressed by some anti-ABC commentators (e.g. Henderson, The Sydney Institute, 15 June) is … “I will not be lectured to about bias and lack of partisan commentary from individuals who are so obviously biased and partisan … I will not!”

We all know that The Australian has a vendetta against the ABC and will not halt its persecution until the ABC is either privatised or no longer exists.  If we allow this to continue, we will not be able to engage in a productive, informed, rigorous national dialogue to address the significant challenges that confront Australia in 2024: impact of climate change on our environment, the consequences of racism on ABSTI and migrant communities or find ways to deal with the tragedy of violent misogyny (evidenced by DV stats) other ‘facts’ several high-profile anti-ABC journalists also find ‘controversial’. The Tingle media incident clearly demonstrates a News Corp obsession with the ABC that the Friends of the ABC must continue to counter.

I support the recent comments made by Kim Williams, ABC Chair, that while the ABC has ‘areas for improvement’ it can be force for ‘togetherness’. As Friends of the ABC we need to ensure the ABC remains a “strong component of Australia’s democratic cultural landscape.”

ABC Management

Clearly, there are management issues at the ABC that need to be addressed. Comments by Justin Stevens that Laura Tingle has been ‘counselled’ over her informal remarks at The Sydney Writer’s Festival further undermined her standing as one of our highly credentialed journalists with a broad range of experience at several media organisations.

As Margaret Simons suggests this gave the “bullies a victory” and essentially “hangs her [Tingle] out to dry”. Quentin Dempster stated in The Saturday Paper “In trying to hose down the negative publicity around Tingle’s perfectly defensible writer’s festival remark [my emphasis] … Stevens has done what many ABC managers before him have done. By trying to appease the Murdoch attack dogs, they make them even more aggressive”. It is also disingenuous of Stevens to claim Tingle should be counselled for suggesting we have a problem with racism in Australia as he previously stated in the Sydney Morning Herald, he will not tolerate racism in the workplace. “It’s everywhere in Australia … it’s not confined to the newsroom, it’s in every workplace”. Another ABC insider claimed that “if you cave in to bullies, its just a sign of weakness and you are heading down a path in which there is no way out”.

I join the call from our branches to demand ABC management defend ABC journalists in the face of increasingly vexatious, ad hominem, biased and partisan attacks from ABC critics.

Friends of the ABC (NSW&ACT) Excellence Awards Saturday 4 May 2024

Please visit the website to see posts on the Friends of the ABC (NSW&ACT) Excellence Awards. Two awards were presented: Laura Tingle with the 2024 individual award for Excellence together with The Newsreader for ABC Excellence for a program/series. We were very fortunate that The Hon Tony Burke, MP agreed to be our guest speaker. There are lots of photos on the website and a short video [3.54] that provides a brief overview of the event.

NSW&ACT Connections

Rory Sutton, ABC Alumni and strong supporter of ABC Friends, has agreed to assume the vacant editorial position for our new newsletter. Initial discussions have been very positive, more detailed planning is scheduled for later this month.

Future 2024 events:

• Please keep Wednesday 9 October free for an event in Canberra in partnership with Parliamentary Friends, ABC Friends National and members of ABCF ACT branch.
• A webinar on ‘Truth in Political Advertising’ featuring Zali Steggall, OAM, independent member for Warringah, Professor Ullrich Ecker, UWA Public Policy Institute and Catherine Williams, Centre for Public Integrity, moderated by Anne Maria Nicholson will be held on Wednesday 15 October at 6 pm AEDT. Invitations to follow.

Please take care and keep warm during the winter months - best wishes, Tess.

Dr Tess Howes
President
ABC Friends NSW & ACT