Know your ABC: Australian media's big wake-up call

If it bleeds, it leads, and the Australian media has been a bloody mess recently.

Peter Costello denies shoving the journalist and told reporters the man had backed into an advertising placard (the whole altercation was candidly caught on camera phone by the journalist, who was heard saying "you've just assaulted me" after he fell to the ground).

At the time Costello was being questioned as chair of Nine about the allegations of sexual harassment made against its former news chief Darren Wick. Meta has dumped the News Media Bargaining Code. The ABC capitulated to a targeted harassment campaign aimed at sacking its chief political reporter.

While the Murdoch press in Australia - which itself specialises in targeting individuals like Brittany Higgins until they flee the country - was calling on the government to regulate social media companies because they provide a platform for bullying and harassment.

Physician, heal thyself.

Getting a lecture about bullying and harassment from the Murdoch media has about as much credibility as a lecture on ethics from Donald Trump.

Executive chairman of News Corp Australasia, Michael Miller, spoke at the National Press Club this week calling for the enforcement of the News Media Bargaining Code and the regulation of social media companies because the likes of Facebook, X and TikTok are damaging the social fabric of Australia.

But AAP journalist Kat Wong challenged Miller directly on News Corp's own history causing women and transgender people to be bullied and harassed, which Miller denied was the intention of its reporting.

The more than half a million Australians who signed a petition calling for a Murdoch royal commission suggests people question News Corp's intentions.

Laura Tingle, Brittany Higgins, Lisa Wilkinson, Stan Grant, Gillian Triggs, Larissa Behrendt and Yassmin Abdel-Magied (who was also forced to flee the country like Higgins) faced ceaseless blitzkriegs across the Murdoch stable for their opinions and comments.

Costello, caught on camera and accused by a journalist of physical assault, should face far more serious consequences for his actions. However, there's no doubt social media platforms have been vectors of misinformation, disinformation, bullying and harassment.

Big Tech represents a huge threat to the news media business model and that is News Corp's real concern.

Now the platforms are strangling news content even further. X has stopped showing news headlines at all and penalises links to news sites. Instagram now hides political content unless users opt in. And Meta recently announced it was not going to renew deals made with Australian news publishers under the News Media Bargaining Code.

The deals gave news organisations revenue for their content. Australia Institute research showed job advertisement numbers for journalists increased 46 per cent compared to the pre-pandemic average after the mandatory bargaining code was introduced. All those additional jobs are at risk as those Meta revenue deals expire.

Addressing the monopoly power that Google and Meta have on digital advertising revenue is the whole purpose of the News Media Bargaining Code, which is now under threat.

The fact that Meta is opting out of the code is a huge blow to public interest journalism. Australia is already the most concentrated media market on the planet. It makes having strong public broadcasters like the ABC, SBS and NITV even more important.

The trouble is, the ABC's public journalism is under threat too. While News Corp's CEO has the chutzpah to lecture social media about bullying, ABC management appears to have lost its backbone altogether.

It has repeatedly capitulated to external pressure instead of backing its journalists from politically motivated attacks. Such attacks are designed to cow the ABC and undermine its role as Australia's most trusted news source. It appears to be working.

Antoinette Lattouf was sacked for posting a link to a Human Rights Watch report about Israel using starvation as a tool of war in Palestine. As human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson pointed out: "The ABC did not have the backbone to support her and support the free speech of their journalists. That is a problem in our democracy."

ABC management again showed it had the backbone of a jellyfish when it counselled chief political correspondent Laura Tingle for her comments about Australia being a racist country.

The ABC is News Corp's favourite target and Laura Tingle its latest victim. The Australian, Sky News and other Murdoch press, along with the Coalition, have been hounding the ABC about her wholly accurate comments. The ABC concerns itself with facts and any objective look at the facts shows Australia is a racist country.

Australia is the country of terra nullius, the White Australia Policy, the Stolen Generation and 556 Indigenous deaths in custody with no perpetrators.

Too often the ABC allows its critics to define balance as impartiality. To borrow a famous adage, if Dutton says it's raining and Albanese says it's dry, it's not a journalist's job to quote them both. The job is to look out of the window and find out which is true.

The ABC is always under siege. It's always underfunded - if Australia's public funding for its public broadcaster per capita were equivalent to that of Finland, the ABC's budget would more than double.

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News Corp and other commercial media want the public broadcaster to fail because they see it as a competitor. The Coalition would prefer to privatise it.

But Australians love their ABC. It's our emergency broadcaster and our most trusted news service. It's accountable and transparent. And as more newsrooms close the public interest journalist it provides is essential to maintaining a healthy democracy.

The ABC is the backbone of public interest journalism in Australia, but its current management is spineless.

ABC journalists deserve better and so does Australia.