ABC double standard on banning the use of “our”

On Friday March 7, 2003, in the lead-up to the Iraq War, Mark Colvin made this seemingly innocuous comment in a broadcast on ABC Radio’s PM program:”¨“Before Australia goes to war with Iraq, the decision on whether to commit our troops will lie with Cabinet.”
A furious National Editor John Cameron fired off a memo to all journalists banning the use of “our” troops, or indeed “our” anything. As he explained in a follow-up memo two weeks later “The rule remains. It is not our dollar, our Prime Minister, our opposition leader, our premier, our tourism industry, or our sportsman/woman or team. The ABC does not own any of them. We should remain unattached and dispassionate in the language we use.”
A reasonable enough position, if it were not for the fact that this rule was only applied to “our troops” in the Iraq War context. A number of breaches of the “our” rule in the weeks before the Iraq War were ignored.
Since March 2003 when the memo was issued the ABC has broadcast the following:

FOUR CORNERS:
June 19, 2003 “our artificial invention”;
July 7, 2003 “our beaches”;
July 14, 2003 “our majestic inland rivers”;
September 8, 2003 “our ever increasing consumer society”;
November 3, 2003 “our region”;
May 10, 2004 “our maritime neighbours”;
May 24, 2004 “our level of personal debt”;
June 21, 2004 “our closest companions”;
August 2, 2004 “our system of subsidised medicines”;
October 18, 2004 “our city suburbs”;
November 1, 2004 “our most secret intelligence service”;
February 8, 2005 “our neighbours”;
February 28, 2005 “our combined credit card bill”;
March 21, 2005 “our planet”;
April 11, 2005 “our regulator the TGA”;
June 27, 2005 “our current funding levels”;
June 27, 2005 “our 38 universities”;
June 27, 2005 “our prized academic institutions”.

7.30 REPORT:
April 4, 2005 “our often troubled relationship with Indonesia”;
December 21, 2004 “our cartoonists”;
November 30, 2004 “our shores”.

LATELINE:
March 31, 2005 “our planet’s environment”;
April 25, 2003 “our ANZAC diggers”.

THE WORLD TODAY:
July 4 2005 “our balance of trade”;
February 9, 2005 “our schools”;
April 23, 2004 “our cities”;
March 3, 2003 “our economy”.

AM:
March 4, 2003 “our dairy, beef and sugar”.

PM:
March 6, 2003 “our oceans”;
March 5, 2003 “our economy”;
March 10, 2003 “our countries”.

CORRESPONDENTS REPORT:
March 6, 2005 “our own Princess from Denmark”.

ABC TV NEWS (Canberra):
May 30, 2005 “our giant mammals”.

STATELINE QUEENSLAND: Four examples.
STATELINE SOUTH AUSTRALIA: Eight examples.
STATELINE TASMANIA: Two examples including “our diggers”.

It should be noted that Mr Cameron’s memo included the following warning:”¨“From now on, continued transgressions or mistakes will lead to counselling and formal documentation”.
Since March 2003 ABC news and current affairs journalists have breached the “our” rule more than 750 times, yet the only time Mr Cameron ever took any action was when Mark Colvin referred to “our troops in Iraq”.
Quentin Dempster from Stateline NSW has breached the rule more than 70 times, yet he is still on air.
Rebecca Carmody from Stateline WA has breached the rule more than 30 times. She continues to breach the rule on an almost weekly basis and yet is still on air. It seems evident that she has not even been spoken to about this, let alone disciplined.
Could it be that the only reason Mr Cameron issued his memo in the first place, and the reason it was never again followed up, is that the ABC opposed Australian involvement in the Iraq War?
What is the difference between “our troops” in Iraq in 2003 and “our Anzac diggers” in 1915, or “our most secret intelligence services”?
When Senator Santo Santoro put it to the ABC representatives present at a Senate Estimates hearing in November 2003, that the ABC was continuing to breach the rule, the ABC strongly denied there had been anything other than the “occasional lapse.” It was then revealed that the ABC had in fact breached the rule more than 150 times in that period – hardly “occasional”.
The ABC was asked at an Estimates Hearing in May 2005 if they would be concerned about 150 breaches and Mr Murray Green said they would. When the ABC was tendered with 500 examples over a two year period, they responded by simply saying “they don’t intend to address each of the examples.”
No attempt was made to explain how this had happened and what the ABC intended to do about it.
This amounts to a colossal mismanagement of the ABC’s own rule book and it continues to this day.