Padraic P. McGuinness, “Watching for media bias,”
The Australian Financial Review, July 6, 1988, pp. 64-63.
Media bias is an issue often raised but difficult to pin down. Too often, accusations of bias in the media originate from those who have their own axes to grind, and who resent the fact that the world appears differently to others.
But there is a real problem, and there always has been a real problem, of media bias — it is a matter of how the agenda for public discussion is reached and the respect for truth and fairness of those who write in and edit the media. It is true that there is an ultimate sanction on most media bias — namely, the customers can refuse to buy. But there is one major media organisation to which this sanction does not apply directly, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and a minor organisation, the Special Broadcasting Service.
This absence of commercial sanction creates problems for these organisations: every taxpayer feels that he or she has a right to complain about their performance. Moreover, some at least of the employees of these organisations feel that they have a right, or a duty, to capture the media in order to deliver what taxpayers, or the community generally, ought to watch or hear, whether they want to or not.
There is often enough a degree of arrogance associated with this belief of some media employees that they are above the market. And there has been growing dissatisfaction in some sections of the community, at least with their performance.
A valuable expression of this dissatisfaction is the new publication Media Watch, written by Gerard Henderson of the Institute of Public Affairs (NSW), which can be obtained from the institute (tel: (02) 231 4755). It is not the only such expression, of course: Sam Lipski is now doing a regular spot on Channel 9’s Sunday programme, and a number of other expressions of the same dissatisfaction are appearing. One of the reasons is that the so-called “feedback” programmes, like Channel 2’s Sunday night Back Chat, are often just an exercise in treating complainants with contempt.
The new kinds of media criticism are, too, a reaction against the nonsensical kind of media criticism that became fashionable in university sociology departments in the seventies, and which still infests universities, colleges, and even schools (quite a few of which offer subjects dealing with the media). These courses are for the most part taught by people who have little real experience in or knowledge of the media in practical terms, or who are discontented rejects. There are, of course, some exceptions.
The IPA’s Media Watch, in its second issue just published, contains a major article criticising the ABC programme Four Corners, both for its apparent lack of respect for any concept of fairness or respect for evidence and, more importantly, for the refusal of its producer to respond to serious criticism. It is not necessary to agree with Mr Henderson to feel that he has made a powerful case which Four Corners needs to answer.
He cites examples of apparent bias in programmes on Fiji, Mozambique, Palau and Israel, all of which need proper responses. Instead, the Four Corners producer has responded contemptuously to complaints. It needs to be remembered that these are programmes paid for out of tax revenue, not offered for sale to those who buy or do not buy them as they choose.
The old media “critics” would reply that this is a change from a media dominated by the agenda set by commercial advertisers. Fair enough: this makes a case for subscription television or radio; it is not a case for the use of taxpayers’ funds for propaganda purposes.
Henderson deals with other matters in this issue of Media Watch — for example, the uncritical treatment given to the absurd statements of anti-nuclear propagandist Dr Helen Caldicott on the alleged involvement of US Vice-President Bush in drug-running. Clearly, it is only too common for the ABC (but it is not alone in this) to present extreme views as if they were reasonable and incontrovertible.
Henderson has also been extremely critical of the treatment of the Government, and particularly of the Treasurer, by members of the Canberra Press Gallery — which he calls the “rat pack”.
It is not necessary, either, to agree with his complaints of bias (it is an uncomfortable thing for critics of the Government to have to admit the intellectual superiority of the Labor front bench to that of the Coalition) to take the point that there is often a tendency for the gallery to indulge in pack journalism, with a few opinion leaders drawing the second-raters after them. Unfortunately for Henderson’s case, some of those he criticises are among the more genuinely independent.
But there is certainly in all newspapers, television and radio broadcasters a certain amount of what appears often enough as bias. Sometimes it is purely a matter of the “liberal consensus”, the fact that the middle to senior levels are now populated by the products of the “great days” of sixties and seventies student revolt, the drug culture and the progressives.
This is a phenomenon that will be corrected in the normal processes of attrition and ageing (it is entertaining to hear middle-aged broadcasters reproaching young people for conservatism and apathy) as the next generation begins to assert itself. The middle-aged propagandists in NSW at present just cannot believe their good luck with Terry Metherell’s blundering — but it will be a short-lived alliance with the young.
It cannot, however, be denied that at the moment there is a dominant orthodoxy in the media which is the legacy of the movements of the recent past. This is in itself no bad thing. It is inevitable that most people who find themselves actively involved in the media will have a large dose of the busybody and the do-gooder in their make-up – otherwise they would be in easier and more secure jobs.
It only becomes a problem when it gets mixed up with a disrespect for evidence and plain facts, and a contempt for the ordinary processes of democracy; when journalists cease to be just reporters or commentators, and begin to try to become kingmakers and persuaders. Unfortunately, few of them are intellectually equipped for this.
(A peculiarity of The Australian Financial Review, as I have often pointed out to some of my colleagues, is that ours is the only newspaper where the average IQ and knowledgeability of the readership are higher than those of the writers.)
The danger in journalism is not conscious bias, but unconscious ideological predisposition and ignorance. There are a few, but only very few, journalists who could validly be described as deliberately mischievous. These are too smart to be easily pinned down.
The real trouble with bias in the media comes from those who do not realise how questionable and ill-based their prejudices are, and how little justification they have for feeling superior, intellectually or morally, to those who disagree with them.
In the meantime, we need publications like Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch — the more of them the better.
