Talkback caller puts Age editor on the spot

A “politically conservative” talkback caller today asked Age editor-in-chief Paul Ramadge what his paper had to offer people like him.

Ramadge was Jon Faine’s guest on his ABC 774 Melbourne weekly media segment

Caller “Ben” referred to the the way the previous editor Andrew Jaspan had dropped Gerard Henderson’s column, installed Catherine Deveny and conducted its Earth Day campaign which had upset some staff.

Ben asked Paul Ramadge if he had any plans to introduce a new conservative columnist at the paper and address the issue of news coverage in a way that might appeal to conservatives.

Mr Ramadge said Jaspan had dropped Gerard Henderson because he was Sydney-based and the editor had wanted to focus more on Melbourne-based opinion makers. If that were so, it was a very lame and parochial excuse. Henderson’s wide-ranging columns could never be described as Sydney-centric.

Ramadge denied that the Age was positioned politically.

“The Age is a paper for all readers,” Mr Ramadge said.

“We try to position it in the centre but we report for the public good and, as a consequence, many of the issues we choose to highlight and to question and to question power and governments and other things, we do this because these are the issues we say are important to uncover, to reveal the truth, to challenge.”

It was interesting that Paul Ramadge qualified his description of the Age’s position on the political spectrum with a “but”. He said the paper is in the centre, “but we report for the public good.” The clear inference of his remark is that reporting for the public good does not take place in the middle of the political spectrum. Anyone familiar with the Age knows exactly from which perspective the paper’s fighting for the “public good” occurs.

It also makes you wonder where Ramadge believes the centre of the spectrum is situated.*

Ramadge said he did not accept the “soft left” label that the newspaper’s critics placed on it.

“I think a reasonable review of the opinion page over the past six months, where there have been some changes, would see that there are more conservative voices there. There are different voices.”

Ben asked for an example.

The only example the editor provided was the inclusion of Peter Costello on the opinion page.

The emergence of Peter Costello, Mr Ramadge said, was “the sign of a broader view on the page”.

As Crikey reported at the time of Ramadge’s appointment last year, editorial staff at the Newcastle Herald, where he was once editor-in-chief, “clearly remember Ramadge bringing politically correct, left-of-centre views and values to news assignments and story-to-page allocation. Perhaps he was destined to end up on the Age after all.”

Listen to the conversation:

* Paul Ramadge’s reference to the political spectrum was reminiscent of a comment the ABC’s Sandy McCutcheon once made about where the network’s personalities were located.

“You’ve got Phillip Adams there on the Left and me way over here on the Right,” McCutcheon said.

“But what about Kerry O’Brien?” McCutcheon was asked.

“Oh, he’s in the middle,” McCutcheon said.

Yeah, sure, Sandy.

Read:
Tilting the balance at the ABC