Richard Wilson

The public analysis of the ‘Lords of the Forest’ program, particularly its treatment of Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon, is suggestive of the “Cultures of Contempt’’ a theory put by the editor of The Financial Times in London, John Lloyd. As Lloyd explains, a trend has emerged in Western media to regard public figures in general and politicians in particular, as objects of contempt.
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While there is merit in a true public journalism that is objective, impartial and neutral, it does not serve the public’s interest when journalists are seen to protect the interests of public figures such as politicians for reasons of privacy when there would be great news interest in making the story public.

This was evident in two media controversies in 2004. The first involved allegations of media collusion in Tasmania’s news media not to report the terminal cancer of then Tasmanian Premier Jim Bacon in February in deference to his wife and family after special pleading by the Premier’s media minders. Ironically, this story was broken by the ‘mainland’ Australian newspaper (oldtt.pixelkey.biz).

AS THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship weekly television current affairs program, Four Corners has long been in the spotlight for its role in exposing corruption and graft, most famously for its role in leading to the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption in Queensland.

More recently however, along with its current affairs cousins on ABC Radio such as AM, PM and The World Today, for which a number of claims of serious bias were alleged by the former Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston, Four Corners has been attacked by senior public figures and media commentators who allege a left-wing staff capture at the national public broadcaster.

As one of the few investigative journalism units still operating in Australia, Four Corners could be expected to attract some criticism from powerful interests, but a program aired in 2004, ‘Lords of the Forests’ raised serious concerns that reflect a wider debate about the current practice of journalism in this country.

Following its screening, ‘Lords of the Forest’ created a great deal of controversy and a number of official complaints to Four Corners producers and the ABC. The complaints detailed numerous allegations of bias. While these complaints are in themselves of interest, they point to deeper trends such as the declining public trust in journalism, the concept of ‘cultures of contempt’ and increasing difficulties in accessing official information (particularly the abuse of Freedom of Information loopholes in state and federal jurisdictions).

Not surprisingly, ‘Lords of the Forest’ provoked the strongest reaction in Tasmania, the state where controversial forestry practices were the subject of the program. Four days after its screening, crikey.com.au quoted Tasmanian ABC morning host Tim Cox as saying the story had created the biggest response he had experienced from his listeners, that the majority of callers believed the program was “biased in favour of the Green agenda and that reporter Ticky Fullerton used unnecessarily provocative language when the facts alone tell a compelling and quite scandalous story’’ (crikey.com.au, 2004). In the same story, political commentator Greg Barns described the introduction by Fullerton as “as exercise in self-indulgent polemic and nothing more.’’

Then Crikey.com.au editor Stephen Mayne claimed not only that the program was biased, but that it demonstrated political ineptitude on the part of ABC’s senior current affairs producers and management because it only fed prevailing suspicions at the highest levels of the Australian and state governments that its reporters are “fed’’ by green groups.

Allegations are flying that the broadcaster is building an unhealthy reliance on getting “investigative stories’’ from shrubhuggers — or in other words, are being spoon-fed. It doesn’t just smack of laziness. The ABC must surely realise that with friends like that they don’t need enemies (Mayne, S. crikey.com.au ‘4 Corners v the tree slaughters’, 20 February 2004).

Mouthpiece for radical fringe groups

Indeed, so sensitive was the ABC to such allegations that, as an aftermath to the inquiry by the ABC’s Independent Complaints Commission into alleged bias in its coverage of the Iraq War, that it retained the services of media-monitoring agency Rehame to undertake qualitative and quantitative assessments of its news and current affairs reports from the May 2004 Budget until the October 9 election (crikey.com.au, May 2004).

In June of that year, crikey.com.au reporter Hillary Bray wrote “a growing number of People Who Matter are wondering aloud if Fullerton is nothing but a mouthpiece for radical fringe activists’’, noting a number of other controversial environmental stories she had broadcast in 2003.

The most comprehensive critical analysis was a written complaint about the program by the Executive Director of the National Association of Forest Industries Kate Carnell (National Association of Forest Industries, 2004, pp.1-43). The paper contained 123 complaints about the 45-minute program, which can be calculated to one complaint for every 22 seconds.

Some of the Carnell paper’s criticisms related to obvious sloppiness on the part of the reporter and producers such as the erroneous introduction where Fullerton states “Trees, some 90 metres tall, some well into old age by the time Van Diemen discovered Tasmania, and still standing.’’ Nearly all Tasmanians know that their State was actually discovered by Abel Tasman (Four Corners later apologised for this online at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2004/s1132297.htm).

Other complaints in the Carnell paper raised obvious omissions, such as the interview with Christine Milne that failed to identify her to viewers as the former Leader of the Tasmanian Greens, then adviser to Australian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown and endorsed Greens candidate for the Senate (now an elected Senator). Still more complaints related to misleading claims. For example, in the interview with the chief executive of timber company Gunns Pty Ltd, John Gay, the program conveyed the impression that the owners of timber plantations should pay for water, as if under the impression that they are irrigated, as evidenced by the reporter’s naïve question “why aren’t you paying for the water?’’. However, no Tasmanian timber plantation is irrigated and, in fact, no land user in Australia pays for the use of natural rainfall water.

A large number of the complaints in the Carnell paper related to the use of deliberately negative or positive language by the reporter to convey opinions that were not supported by evidence. Examples of such language include ‘shadowy figures’, ‘self-regulated’, ‘unaccountable’, ‘indiscriminate blades of the woodchipper’, ‘scorched earth policy’, ‘corruption and cronyism’ on the negative side and ‘forest policemen’ and ‘whistle-blower’ on the positive side.

Got something to answer for

The most telling evidence of bias was contained in the Industry Association’s conclusion, where it is noted that: in every case of an industry supporter being interviewed, there are comments from the program presenter to denigrate the credibility of the subject; and in no case of an anti-industry supporter being interviewed are there comments from the program presenter to denigrate the credibility of the subject. Similarly, in no case of an industry supporter being interviewed are the comments made by the subject either endorsed by the program presenter, or left unrebutted by opponents; and in every case of an anti-industry supporter being interviewed, the comments made by the subject are either endorsed by the program presenter, or left unrebutted, or both. When it is considered that portions of 18 different interviews were broadcast, this takes on a distinct pattern.

The public analysis of the ‘Lords of the Forest’ program, particularly its treatment of Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon, is suggestive of the “Cultures of Contempt’’ a theory put by the editor of The Financial Times in London, John Lloyd. As Lloyd explains, a trend has emerged in Western media to regard public figures in general and politicians in particular, as objects of contempt.

The assumption when you write is that the politician or the public figure has got something to answer for, not just that he should be held to account, which is what the media should do to public figures, but that he’s got something to answer for which he or she might be guilty, or he’s got to make some kind of obeisance to the media in order to get on (Lloyd, J. The Media Report, 2004, 15 July).

This attitude was suggested in the ‘Lords of the Forest’ interview with Premier Lennon, in which the animosity between interviewer and interviewee was palpable. The interview effectively broke down into farce, with exchanges such as: “I beg to differ’’, “No, we don’t beg to differ. It’s not right’’, “I beg to differ’’, “Hmm.’’ (Four Corners, 2004, ‘Lords of the Forest’ transcript, p.12. See also transcript of interview with Premier Lennon at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2004/s1134211.htm). Lloyd argues that at its worst, the free media’s culture of contempt, characterised by distortions, inaccuracies, contempt and lies, have an injurious effect on politics and democracy (Prospect Magazine, 2004).

Lloyd claims this combative approach by the media creates a downward spiral whereby “politicians and others in authority speak evasively or not at all to protect themselves from media abuse; this evasion then stimulates the journalistic urge to uncover and accuse (sometimes even in the public interest), which in turn leads to more obsessive evasions by the political class.’’ Suspicion of journalists by politicians has been evident for many year, as demonstrated 1993 when then New South Wales Premier Neville Wran said on SBS’s Face the Press “Australian print journalists find it very difficult to write an objective story, What they want all the time is scandal … scandal, scandal, scandal.’’ (Schultz, J. 1994, p.40)

Against releasing information

Further evidence that a culture of contempt has emerged in the Australian media, and may be in an advanced stage in the coverage of the Tasmanian forests issue, is the fact that the State Government owned Forestry Tasmania has been exempted from Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation in that State, a point raised by Fullerton and Senator Bill Heffernan on ‘Lords of the Forest’ (Four Corners, ‘Lords of the Forest’, 2004, p.4).

Concerns have also been raised recently about the increasing willingness of the Howard Government to use taxpayers’ money to defend itself against releasing information under federal FOI laws (McKinnon, M. The Australian, 6 October). McKinnon, The Australian newspaper’s FOI Editor, claims the Government is increasingly resorting to the issuing of “conclusive certificates’’ as a mechanism to evade disclosure through FOI law over public interest issues such as tax bracket creep, the First Home Buyers Scheme and the legality of the United States Government’s detainment of Australian citizen David Hicks.

McKinnon argues that FOI laws have been used well by journalists on some occasions including the revelation of a Cabinet document demonstrating the high levels of tax paid by some businesses and the decline in bulk billing (McKinnon, M. 2003 The Media Report, ‘Freeing Up Information’, 11 December, p.3). It is interesting to note however that FOI legislation is very under-utilised by Australian journalists (Pearson, 2001, p.205).

Another legal move on the part of the Australian Government that could be described as a response to the culture of contempt is the ASIO Legislation Amendment Bill, which was passed after many amendments in the Senate and had been objected to by the ABC, Fairfax, News Ltd and SBS, mainly for the Act’s lengthy prohibition on reporting of any matter pertaining to the issue of warrants in terrorism-related matters. The Bill provides for penalties of up to five years jail for journalists who fail to comply with the Act (The Media Report, 11 December 2003, p.4).

The culture of contempt may have also revealed itself in the October 2004 federal election campaign, according to The Australian columnist and former John Howard adviser Grahame Morris, who placed the blame at the feet of the media for their failure to be informed until the last minute about campaign plans on the part of the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader. Claiming the media had tipped off protest groups to Leaders’ appearances during previous campaigns in order to gain picture opportunities, Morris said the media now had no-one to blame but themselves for their exclusion from the campaign calendar information.

The fight-back against an overly cynical media in relation to public figures has gained momentum in the United Kingdom, particularly following the so-called Gilligan Affair, which led to the resignation of the BBC’s director-general and chairman after an inquiry found there was no foundation to BBC stories that the British Government had “sexed-up’’ a dossier on Iraqi weapons. Adrian Van Klaveren, one of three members of a BBC review committee established in response to the inquiry stressed the importance of journalists approaching issues with open minds (The Media Report, ‘The New BBC’, 16 September 2004).

What we have to avoid, always, is cynicism, the sense that we’ve already made up our own minds here, we don’t believe a word of this, and so on (Van Klaveren, A. The Media Report, 16 September 2004, p.2).

Media cynicism

It is perhaps the type of media cynicism described by Van Klaveren that has led to the progressive decline in public trust in journalists all over the Western world including Australia. The Director of Roy Morgan Research, Gary Morgan found in 2004 that 86 per cent of newspaper journalists were often biased, 73 per cent said TV reporters or journalists were often biased and 75 per cent believed talkback radio announcers were often biased (The Media Report, 16 September 2004). Interestingly, Morgan said the ABC “came out quite well’’. In the United States, like Britain, there is a movement to restore trust in journalism, which has been in decline for 18 years, according to Tom Rosenstiel, vice-director of the US Project for Excellence in Journalism and a former correspondent of Newsweek and The Los Angeles Times (The Media Report, 22 July 2004). Rosenstiel said the trend stemmed from a public distrust in journalists’. Rosenstiel is also vice chairman of a 4000-member Committee of Concerned Journalists, which conducts 40 training sessions a year for broadcast, print and online news organisations.

To some, the ‘Lords of the Forest’ controversy was only the latest chapter in the history of ABC bias towards left wing causes. Michael Duffy observed a similar attitude on the part of ABC journalists in their coverage of Aboriginal issues including the Hindmarsh Island controversy. He claimed the failure of journalists to provide an opportunity for ‘dissident’ Aboriginal women to express their point of view demonstrated the ABC could not be trusted to report on Aboriginal matters fairly or accurately (Duffy, 1998).

Media academics Angelo Romano and Cratis Hippocrates advocate for a public journalism that “prioritises background and context’’ and does not present solutions to problems in black and white terms, since no one policy or action is all good or all bad (Romano and Hippocrates, 2001), a course of action that Four Corners may have been wise to adopt. In short, this type of journalism allows the viewers and readers to make up their own minds.

While there is merit in a true public journalism that is objective, impartial and neutral, it does not serve the public’s interest when journalists are seen to protect the interests of public figures such as politicians for reasons of privacy when there would be great news interest in making the story public.

This was evident in two media controversies in 2004. The first involved allegations of media collusion in Tasmania’s news media not to report the terminal cancer of then Tasmanian Premier Jim Bacon in February in deference to his wife and family after special pleading by the Premier’s media minders. Ironically, this story was broken by the ‘mainland’ Australian newspaper (oldtt.pixelkey.biz).

The other example was the deliberate decision by a number of journalists not to report the often open philandering of Liberal MP for Parramatta Ross Cameron, again apparently in the interests of Cameron’s wife and family. One News Ltd journalist even witnessed the affair from the Canberra apartment she shared with Cameron’s lover (Penberthy, D., 2004, The Daily Telegraph, p. 26). Far from a culture of contempt, these examples demonstrate a culture of compliance, swinging the pendulum of trust too far in the positive direction and ignoring the public’s right to know.

Almost 90 per cent of Australian journalists do have a strong commitment to the concept of the media as an independent watchdog of power in the Fourth Estate tradition (Schultz, J., 1994, p.44). The Four Corners example and others addressed here, however, demonstrate the hazards of confusing this objectivity with a default distrust of public figures, particularly politicians.

This stance has not only been demonstrated to lead to a downward spiral of distrust leading to a loss of media (and therefore public) access to governmental and other power structures, but ultimately may lead to a serious devaluation of our democracy.

List of References
ABC TV Four Corners, 2004, ‘Lords of the Forest’, 16 February, transcript at http://ww.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2004/s1134211.htm

www.abc.net.au/corp/edpols.htm

www.abc.net.au/corp/codeprac.htm#news

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2004/s1134211.htm

www.crikey.com.au/media/2004/02/20-0002.print.html

www.crikey.com.au 2004 ‘Media Watch, ABC Bias and Rehame’, sealed section, 18 May

Duffy, M., 1998, ‘Kroger bias charge a sad reflection on the ABC’, The Weekend Australian, 14-15 February, p.25

Hirst, J. 2001, ‘Journalism in Australia: Hard Yakka’’ in Tapsall, S. & Varley, C., Journalism Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, p.68

McKinnon, M. 2003 The Media Report, ‘Freeing Up Information’, 11 December, p.3

McKinnon, M. 2004 ‘You don’t need to know that’, The Australian, 6 October.

Meadows, M. 2001, ‘A return to practice: reclaiming journalism as public conversation’ in Tapsall, S. & Varley, C., Journalism Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, p.52.

Morris, G. 2004 ‘Beyond Spin’ column, The Australian, Media Section, 23 September.

National Association of Forest Industries, Complaint to the ABC regarding the Four Corners program ‘Lords of the Forests’ aired on 16 February 2004, 29 March, pp.1-43 at www.nafi.com.au

Lloyd, J. 2004, Prospect Magazine, ‘Cultures of Contempt’, August, online at http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/ArticleView.asp?P_Article=12736

Penberthy, D., 2004, ‘Grubby affair hits below the bible belt’ in The Daily Telegraph, 18 August, p.26.

Schultz, J., 1994 ‘The paradox of professionalism’ in Not Just Another Business, Pluto Press, Leichardt, pp. 35-51.

Romano, A., & Hippocrates, C., 2001, ‘Putting the public back into journalism’, in Tapsall, S. & Varley, C., Journalism Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, p. 173.

Tuffin, L. 2004 ‘Controlling the Pack’, Tasmaniantimes.com, 27 February.

The Media Report, 2004, ABC Radio National, ‘Fudging the Facts’, 15 July, pp.1-7, online at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/stories/s1153084.htm

The Media Report, 2004, ABC Radio National, ‘The New BBC’, 16 September, pp. 1-10. online at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/stories/s1199409.htm

The Media Report, 2004, ABC Radio National, ‘Role Reversal: Journalists Investigating Journalism’, 22 July, pp.1-10, online at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/stories/s1157918.htm

Richard Wilson is a Tasmanian based communications professional.