Another document from the ABC has hit the Crikey open plan, with yet more evidence of activity behind the scenes in the sensitive area of Editorial Policies. It seems the ABC is trying to devise rigorous methods of measuring editorial quality, yet avoid the “culture wars” craziness of days gone by.

The document, which you can read in full here, details a Quality Assurance pilot project in which ABC news stories will be checked for accuracy. The pilot is being conducted by political scientist and journalist Denis Muller (who also writes for Crikey), under the direction of Paul Chadwick, who is Director of Editorial Policies.

Chadwick is also the man behind the discussion paper on handling off the record arrangements with sources, reported in Crikey yesterday.

The Muller project may frighten the ABC horses, skittish as they are after years of criticism and allegations of bias, but every attempt has been made to calm them. The focus of the study, Muller’s document emphasizes, is not fairness or impartiality but only accuracy, including “contextual accuracy” and the appropriateness of the “labeling” of groups and individuals. But fairness and accuracy will be the subject of future quality assurance projects – presumably once the methodology has been tried and tested.

In the pilot project, stories broadcast on the ABC Radio news and current affairs programs AM, The World Today and PM over a four week period will be randomly sampled and checked against documentary sources. Only stories that can be assessed by reference to documentary sources will be included.

The work of assessing the stories will be carried out by journalists from outside the ABC – two working independently on each story. The advertisements to recruit these journalists are in the papers today.

The document declares that the study will not make judgments about the overall impression created by the item, nor judgments about interpretation, comment, tone or semiotics.

The study has laid out some guiding principals that might go some way to quieting fears. Chief amongst these is editorial independence – the right of journalists to make news judgments. Natural justice is also assured, and so too “reasonableness”. The document says:

Data will be assessed in light of what was reasonable to achieve in the circumstances, particularly by reference to the time or other practical pressures under which the material was gathered, produced and broadcast or published online.

Muller is apparently trying to avoid the pitfalls of the interminable and indeterminate attempts to assess bias or the lack of it in exercises like the long winded examination of the complaints brought against the ABC by former Minister for Communications Richard Alston. That process also denied natural justice to some of the journalists who were the subject of the complaints. Muller plans to avoid these pitfalls.

The aim of this limited pilot is to develop “rigorous methodologies” for assessing editorial quality.

What does it all mean? Yet more accountability hurdles for the ABC, already the media organisation with the most rigorous auditing and complaints mechanisms. ABC journalists might well sigh.

Yet, if it works, Muller’s analysis might also be their defence – a methodology that will withstand any tilting at windmills from the Board and the ABC critics.

Declaration: Denis Muller writes for Crikey. He is also involved with the author of this article in the META Centre, which provides training for journalists.