ABC’s Q&A under fire for bias

Opposition deputy leader in the Senate Eric Abetz used the May Senate Estimates to extract some data from the ABC on the audience composition of its Q&A television program.

The answer given to the Senate Committee indicated an audience bias in favour of the Left.

The information provided by the ABC shows that on some editions of the show, of those who confirmed their intention to attend, as few as 10 per cent of the audience were Coalition voters. The high point for the Coalition occurred when its supporters made up 31 per cent of the audience on one edition of the program. On the same show, Labor Party and Greens voters comprised 52 per cent.

The ABC also revealed that, overall, Coalition voters represented 18 per cent of those who registered for the program, compared with 40 per cent ALP and 26 per cent Greens.

According to a press report on the weekend, Senator Abetz responded to the figures, claiming the show was stacked with left wingers.

“There is a perception in the community that the ABC is biased to the left and these hard numbers, unfortunately, only confirm it,” Senator Abetz was reported to have said.

Defenders of the ABC were quick to suggest that the data reflects the degree of political engagement of supporters on each side of politics. Cute, but irrelevant.

Such an imbalance might be more plausibly attributed to a reluctance on the part of Coalition supporters to volunteer for a trip into hostile territory. A little like the preference of conservatives to holiday in London, Paris or New York rather than, say, Pyongyang, Hanoi or Havana.

But the obligation here, of course, is for the ABC to provide a balanced audience. It is not necessary to constitute the audience in proportion to the kind of supporters who applied. The ABC is obliged to select numbers that reflect the relative support of the parties in the community.

In the first edition of Q&A, presenter Tony Jones declared that the show was a new adventure in democracy. Wrong on all counts.

The idea behind Q&A is not new. It has had many predecessors. The show is decidedly unadventurous. And it is democratic only in the mould of those other famous “democracies”, of which the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the best current example.

At the democratic ABC, the presenter and staff vet the questions that are put to the program’s guests. As Jones told morning presenter Ali Moore on Melbourne radio recently, “We also impose a kind of editorial structure by looking at what we think the best questions are and trying to put together a kind of theme that goes through the program.”

Beware of the ABC adjudging the best questions and putting together themes that run through political programs.

Similarly, when I hear an ABC person mention “independent” in the context of journalism and punditry, I have a tendency to reach for my remote control.

So it was when Jones told Ali Moore and her Melbourne radio audience about the great mix of panel guests he had going to air that week. He described Linda Jaivin as “a wonderful social commentator”, “not in politics” and possessing a “a kind of independent strain of thought;” and, he declared, “You can’t predict where she will be on any particular political issue.” I beg to differ. I think it is possible to predict where Linda Jaivin will be on most political issues.

Joining Linda Jaivin on the panel that night were Tim Wilson of the Institute of Public Affairs, Labor Government minister Tanya Plibersek, Mungo MacCallum (no doubt, Jones would describe MacCallum as “independent” too) and the Opposition leader in the Senate Nick Minchin.

Tony Jones described Tim Wilson of the IPA as a conservative. However, within seconds of doing so, Jones also said of Wilson, “On social issues he’s not a conservative.”

Jones probably believes that if your work for the IPA you are a conservative. In much the same way that if you are a journalist at the ABC you are “independent”.

The IPA seems, these days, in most areas to be broadly a liberal/libertarian think tank.

I think it is safe to suggest that the only traditional conservative on the panel that night was Senator Nick Minchin.

On the upcoming final 2008 edition of Q&A, the panel will be Peter Costello, David Marr, Tom Switzer, Cheryl Kernot and Nicola Roxon.

Once again, two from the right, three from the left. And then, of course, there’s Jones.

If, instead, the panel comprised Peter Costello, Tom Switzer, Miranda Devine, Nicola Roxon and David Marr, and Q&A had maintained that kind of balance week after week, do you think the Left would complain?

Despite its frequent denials of bias, the ABC, from time to time, does try to address the issue. Indeed the blatant imbalance of views on the network is so plainly evident that some in the ABC have abandoned denial altogether and instead have attempted to make excuses. For example, in response to the accusation of bias on ABC radio, Melbourne morning presenter Jon Faine once asserted, quite subjectively but apparently seriously, that the ABC had tried a lot of right wing people but none of them were very good. To which one could respond, please provide a list of examples of those who were given a decent chance and failed.

Tony Jones is also sensitive to the suggestion that Q&A lacks balance. In a radio interview he said that they try to put a balance of political views on the panel and also, he said, they are aware of the gender balance.

“It proves to be that there aren’t that many prominent well-known female conservatives in the country [laughs] outside of politics.

“I can’t really explain that, but we, you know, we’re going for it, we’re looking, we’re having a national search and you know, if you’re out there, if you’re conservative, if you’re a public intellectual and you want to get on the program get in touch with us, because, and you’re a woman obviously.

“That’s the key thing. We’re, we’re after a sort of affirmative action policy. Now, you know, if we, if we had a sort of governor of Alaska here, a Sarah Palin, she’d probably be a regular [laughs]“.

So there you have it. Political correctness comes before political balance on Q&A.

It is hard to imagine that the women of the Left need to apply. You can be sure, ABC producers would seek them out and invite them on.

Returning to Senator Abetz’s point about the composition of Q&A audiences, consider this explanation from the ABC’s answer to the Senate Committee’s question:

“The producers of Q&A work to attract a diverse range of people to participate in the program audience.”

Tony Jones told ABC Melbourne radio how hard they work at it.

“We try to get a balance in the audience. It’s quite difficult to. You reach out to community groups, to councils, schools. We have buses that go to different suburbs and pick people up and we actually know on any given day the breakdown of about 80% of our audience in terms of what their political views are. Yes, it is probably slightly over-balanced to centre and centre-left right now, and I’m afraid that’s, that’s not our doing, that is the people who passionately want to come to the program.

“We reach out to conservative groups, conservative bodies, to university conservative societies, all sorts of areas, and we send out, you know, come into our program. Get involved.”

Memo ABC: please let’s have a list of all the conservative organisations and groups you have tried.

Based on years of monitoring the ABC’s vox pop segments on news and current affairs shows, (the Your Shout segment on Insiders is a good example), there is no question that the ABC program makers know exactly how to populate an audience with the kind of people they want.

If those who put the program together cannot eliminate the left wing skew that Senator Abetz has shown to exist, they should be replaced by people who can. But, of course, they never will be.

Once again, Senate Estimates has produced evidence of left wing bias at the national broadcaster. And once again you can be sure that nothing will be done about it.