The ABC speaks a mistruth to power, and Buttrose takes control

The ABC had held out for 3173 days against hostile Coalition governments, starting with Tony Abbott in 2013. Then, with only four days to go before last month’s election, ABC chair Ita Buttrose delivered a new layer of accountability that exceeded the dreams of even its harshest critics.

Why did she do it? Why in the week before a change of government did she announce a process to handle complaints via an ABC ombudsman? Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, who had been leading the Coalition push for ever-greater ABC accountability, was delighted. An independent ombudsman is precisely what he had been demanding to ensure that the ABC “remain unbiased”.

Bragg’s campaign had been amplified by News Corporation, which wrapped the ideal of balanced reporting neatly into its endless war on the taxpayer-funded broadcaster. 

Ultimately Bragg and other critics got more than they’d argued for. Buttrose delivered not just an independent ombudsman but one that would report directly to the ABC board, bypassing the ABC’s managing director, David Anderson. The decision to cut out the MD went beyond the recommendations of an independent review. It was pointed in its symbolism that the board was in charge and not the staff — an apparent deathbed admission that the ABC’s critics were right: the lunatics had been running the asylum.  

“We accept the recommendations [of the review],” Buttrose told Radio National’s Patricia Karvelas on the morning it was released, “but we have amended one already. The review recommended the ombudsman should report to the board and the managing director, but the directors thought that this would simply be continuing the system we already have and we wanted a different, more independent approach, so the ombudsman will report direct to the board and the process will be separate from editorial management.” 

‘Routine housekeeping’

Buttrose styled the review into the ABC’s complaints process as a piece of routine housekeeping. It was anything but. On the face of it, the outcome represents a vote of no confidence from the ABC board in the ABC’s managing director and its editorial team.

ABC corporate comms portrays it differently: “The managing director was closely involved in commissioning the complaints handling review, just as he will be closely involved in recruiting the ABC ombudsman and will work closely with them. And the managing director is a member of the ABC board.”

Buttrose has said the decision reflects the legal position that under the ABC’s legislation the board is responsible for editorial standards and for ensuring that its news and information are accurate and impartial.

Jonathan Holmes, a former host of Media Watch and chair of ABC Alumni (a group of former ABC employees concerned about the destruction of the independent broadcaster), points out that the ABC board has operated under the same legal framework since 1983 and that it has “done its job through the managing director, whom it appoints, and whom it can fire”.

“Instead,” wrote Holmes, “a collection of part-time directors, some with journalistic or media experience, some with none; some appointed by a transparent, merits-based appointment system, some the personal picks of the minister or the prime minister; will preside directly over how ABC complaints are dealt with, and by whom.”

On a practical level, an independent ombudsman adds to an already rigorous — if not onerous — set of demands on ABC journalists who are attempting to hold power to account. There is already an established complaints process. If a complainant is unhappy with that, they have a right to appeal to the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Apart from that, there are the defamation courts. There is the ABC’s Media Watch. And on top of all that there is the relentless hounding from News Corp seeking to amplify any perceived slight or error.

And yet the ABC board considered more was needed — a sign either that it has truly gone off the rails or has overreacted, perhaps swept along by a climate of crisis that escalated over the term of the Morrison government.

A defining moment

Buttrose’s move on the eve of the election may become the defining act of her tenure as ABC chair. It is confounding because until that very moment, she had strenuously opposed attempts by Bragg to launch a Senate committee inquiry into the ABC’s complaints-handling process. 

It is confounding too because ultimately Buttrose’s decision was not in response to the avalanche of Coalition grievances against the ABC. Instead it came in response to calls from a group aligned with Labor icon and former NSW premier Neville Wran. Wran has been dead for eight years. Its complaint related to how Wran had been depicted in a three-part investigation into an event four decades in the past: the deadly fire at Sydney’s Luna Park. 

It was not the first time a major ABC investigation had provoked a backlash. And it wasn’t the first time the ABC had been accused of making a mistake in relation to a powerful figure. 

The machinations around the Wran case brought together the political and media power players of another era, including the likes of former ABC head David Hill. Buttrose is one of those.

Wran ruled NSW from 1976 to 1986. Buttrose was at her media zenith at the same time. Having worked with the Packers, she was hired by Rupert Murdoch to be editor-in-chief of the mass-circulation The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph from 1981 to 1984. 

Former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Milton Cockburn, who had been on Wran’s staff and has written a biography of Wran, led the criticism of the Ghost Train fire documentary and the central, uncorroborated claim against Wran that he was pals with Abe Saffron, Sydney’s then vice kingpin who allegedly benefited from the Luna Park fire.

Cockburn began a process that ultimately laid bare the ABC’s hubris when it comes under question. He made a complaint through the ABC’s routine complaint channels, and eventually received a reply telling him that the ABC had no case to answer on the allegation against Wran. 

Cockburn then wrote directly to Buttrose, a course many others have surely pursued. In his case though he received a quick reply. Buttrose told him she had met with the ABC’s managing director and that there would be an external review.

Shortly after, and with no fanfare, former ABC investigative doyen Chris Masters and Sydney University academic Rod Tiffen were appointed. Their report was glowing about the production and journalism of the Ghost Train fire documentary, but it also concluded it did not have the evidence on Wran’s apparently corrupt relationship with Saffron.

Next came a fateful step: the ABC’s then head of news, Gaven Morris, publicly rejected the independent finding. Morris’ rejection of the umpire’s decision reinforced the critics’ case that the ABC really was a law unto itself. Presumably Buttrose, who ran major newspapers in the Wran era, was able to make up her own mind on the program’s allegation of a corrupt relationship involving the premier.

Within weeks the ABC board commissioned an external review into its complaint-handling processes.  The board appointed Professor John McMillan, a one-time Commonwealth ombudsman. The second reviewer was the former television news executive Jim Carroll who had experienced life under an ombudsman at SBS.

Some changes

Is it any surprise that the review recommended an ABC ombudsman? Maybe not. But what is surprising is what happened next: the board upped the ante by “amending”, as Buttrose put it, the ombudsman recommendation such as to exclude the ABC’s editorial chiefs.

At the same time, there have been a series of changes among the editorial executive, leaving no one standing from the senior team that commissioned and aired the Ghost Train fire documentary. 

For good measure, a new executive producer for Four Corners has been appointed from outside the program. (Executive producer Sally Neighbour had long signalled her intention to retire from the ABC by the middle of this year.) A new executive producer for the flagship 7.30 program has been appointed from outside the ABC.

Buttrose has heavily linked the new role of independent ombudsman with the need for the ABC to retain the trust of the audience. Cockburn gives her credit for her actions. 

Coming down the line too is a complaint from former attorney-general Christian Porter that Four Corners omitted key information he says the program possessed that would have significantly undermined the credibility of allegations against him. He has demanded that the ABC implement an independent review into his complaint, along the lines of the Ghost Train fire review. (Porter did not respond to Crikey’s attempts to speak to him.)  

No one is linking the Porter case with Buttrose’s decision to introduce an independent ombudsman. Her move though adds up to a decisive intervention in the culture wars that exist inside the ABC over the liberties some reporters have taken to push agendas, editorially and on social media.

When Buttrose was appointed as a “captain’s pick” by Scott Morrison in 2019, many wondered what impact, in any, she might have. The answer, it would appear, is now in.