ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs

ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs

GPO Box 994

Sydney 2001

16 August 2009

Dear Madam or Sir,

ABC’s coverage of defence and disarmament issues

We are a political group working for peace and disarmament. We are concerned about the quality of coverage given by the ABC to defence and peace issues. In making this complaint, we appeal to the ABC Code of Practice (2007); clauses 4.3 and 5.2 seem particularly relevant.

We, like most Australians, value the ABC and the essential role it plays as a source of important information and diverse viewpoints for local and national audiences. We do not make our complaint lightly.

We strongly feel that the ABC is failing to provide, particularly since the Alston Report and the US-led occupation of Iraq in 2003, balanced reporting of and investigation into Australia’s defence policy, military spending and the US-Australia military alliance. The approach increasingly adopted by both ABC radio and TV to defence and peace matters is to restrict coverage to government spokespeople, and the opinions of academics and other commentators who favour maintaining or increasing Australian military power. Often, the only non-government voice sought is that of the Australian Defence Association, a dedicated proponent of increased Australian military power and a group that receives support from major armaments manufacturers. People with expertise in disarmament and non-military means to defence are largely excluded. Would it be possible to receive from you an assessment of interview time granted by the ABC in the past twelve months (or some representative period) to people proposing less reliance on military defence compared to those with pro-military opinions? If this is not possible, we would be grateful to receive a list of interviewees speaking about defence matters.

Our most recent experience of the ABC’s approach occurred early last month when we sought media opportunities for an overseas peace activist whose visit we sponsored. Our visitor, Judith Le Blanc, is an indigenous American who is the national organising coordinator for America’s biggest peace coalition, United for Peace and Justice. She is also an executive member of the Communist Party of America. She is known overseas for her informed and well-considered opinions. She had come to Australia principally to participate in the Australian peace movement’s campaign against last month’s massive US-Australian military exercises, Talisman Sabre 2009.

On 3 July, 2009, we emailed press releases, seeking interviews for Judith and/or for our own spokespeople, to many ABC shows, local and national: Mornings with Deb Cameron; the Richard Glover Show; Weekends with Simon Marnie; Drive with Nick Rheinberger (Illawarra ABC Radio); Current Affairs Radio; News Radio; Radio News; The 7.30 Report (TV); Stateline (TV); ABC News (TV). We gave producers four to five days’ notice of Judith’s availability. We followed-up press releases with phone calls to producers or presenters of these shows. Not one show was interested in interviewing Judith or speaking to us about the Talisman Sabre military exercises.

Perhaps our approach is in some way ‘media naive’—we’d welcome any pointers, although no one we have spoken to at the ABC has ever indicated that this is the problem. In response to our phone requests for Judith to be interviewed, producers usually pleaded ‘a packed program’ to excuse their refusal. Yet, the programs all-too-often included relatively trivial matters or subjects that could wait another day.

We would be grateful to know exactly why our press releases were ignored. We appreciate that ABC producers and presenters are under pressure from proponents of nearly every conceivable cause, and it must be no easy matter to decide what is of sufficient interest to a diverse public, and how to encompass many viewpoints. However, the ABC has a wide range of programs, and when our requests for interviews or coverage of alternative viewpoints are continually ignored, our frustration, and suspicions of bias, are surely justified.

A nation’s defence policies and activities, especially its preparation for and involvement in wars, is among the most important matters for broad public debate, yet here in Australia they receive at best perfunctory attention from the mainstream media. Virtually no good investigative accounts of these matters reach ABC audiences, let alone audiences of commercial media. (Despite the dearth of public information, seventy per cent of Australians, according to a recent poll, do not want bigger defence budgets, indicating that the public is not inherently complacent about defence issues.) We feel the ABC is not meeting its responsibility to report matters of importance and “ … serve the public interest by investigating issues affecting society and individuals” (clause 3.6 ABC Code of Practice). Australian democracy deserves, indeed requires, better.

Yours sincerely,

Denis Doherty

AABCC National Coordinator

1