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By Peter Clarke<\/a> EXCLUSIVE<\/span><\/p>\n Last night, I was watching 730 on ABC Television. As we can now, I also had my iPad fired up to follow the #abc730 hashtag as the program went to air.<\/p>\n With the cryptic words of the recent Jon Faine negative finding from the ABC\u2019s Audience and Consumer Affairs unit still buzzing on my frontal lobes, I was rather amazed to see an interviewer, Leigh Sales, whom I generally admire for the brevity and forensic character of her interview questions, appear to become somebody else.<\/p>\n Bob Brown was the interviewee on a link. Clashes between Japanese whaling and re-fuelling vessels and Sea Shepherd boats in the Southern Ocean was the central topic.<\/p>\n As I remember, Sales in an interview last year with now Greens leader, Christine Milne, exhibited a similar \u201cMr Hyde\u201d transformation: not listening, hectoring, seeming to have a single line she wished to pursue at all odds. Not forensic, revealing nor at all clever. Except if she was \u201cunder instructions\u201d to \u201cdo\u201d Brown.<\/p>\n It was not a pretty sight from a frontline journalistic interviewer.<\/a><\/p>\n Of course Brown\u2019s claims and assertions needed plenty of testing. He, as a contrarian, in the scheme of things, usually has to bat off quite egregious questions to bring the audience back to some logic and his line of argument.<\/p>\n That is what he did last night. He was able to sidestep Sales\u2019 technique with ease.<\/p>\n The key words from the Faine finding flew through my mind:<\/p>\n \u201cargumentative\u201d? – check<\/p>\n \u201cover-simplification\u201d? – check<\/p>\n Sales\u2019 cringe-worthy use of a simplistic analogy to equate breaking windows on illegally parked cars in her neighborhood with the Sea Shepherd\u2019s activities in the whale sanctuary and serious questions of international law were clearly \u201cover-simplification\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cstrongly-stated personal opinion\u201d? – check<\/p>\n \u201cdue impartiality\u201d? – well this is the clincher, catch-all phrase replete with ambiguity and deeply dependent on subjective responses on the part of citizen consumers and potential complainants.<\/p>\n I tweeted a brief critique of the interview. Others on the #abc730 hashtag were more pungent and clearly did not perceive \u201cdue impartiality\u201d in Sales from their perspective.<\/p>\n Let me be clear. I don\u2019t believe the Sales-Brown interview last night warrants a complaint for \u201cbias\u201d or lack of \u201cimpartiality\u201d on Sales\u2019 part. A critique of her approach and professional technique? Yes. By any measure, the outcome of that interview for us citizens was a very thin gruel.<\/p>\n That after all is the only real reason for major broadcast, \u201cset piece\u201d, accountability interviews. To reveal \u201cfactual\u201d information, test claims and create coherence as optimally as possible in the (always) brief time allocated.<\/p>\n Showing off, digging in journalistic spurs for the sake of it are superfluous to the task. And almost inevitably counter-productive as last night again demonstrated.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The key and central point here is about the consistent application of the ABC\u2019s Editorial Guidelines<\/a>. And the validity and consistency (or lack of it) of the Faine negative finding in that wider context.<\/p>\n More broadly, we are questioning the actual application of the Editorial Guidelines across the news journalistic output of the ABC in the light of the Faine finding<\/a>, his strenuous objections to the finding and the subsequent stonewalling by the ABC in relation to the ACTUAL reasoning IN CONTEXT behind that specific finding against Faine.<\/p>\n Is the process, as we have seen it unfold in the Faine case, appropriate, effective, helpful?<\/p>\n Or is it fundamentally flawed, overly secretive, and disconnected from the daily challenge of frontline accountability interviewing?<\/p>\n This is important not only for the journalistic practitioners who operate under the ABC Editorial Guidelines but for us as citizen consumers of the ABC\u2019s journalistic news services.<\/p>\n Leigh Sales received a Walkley for her now famous interview with Federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott last year. It was one of Abbott\u2019s very rare appearances in front of a more forensic and well prepared journalistic interviewer. His minders must have been in some agony as they watched their boss struggle on national television.<\/p>\n Sales took it right up to him. That is surely her job. Not to act as a supine conduit for partisan propaganda. We are already immersed in that on a daily basis. Our lead journalists have a professional duty to cut through that avalanche of spin and media minding and training for our sakes. Sales was \u201cargumentative\u201d if that is the description the ABC\u2019s Audience and Consumer Affairs unit complaints committee wants to use. Others may say \u201cassertive\u201d, \u201cmeeting the challenge\u201d of an accountability, \u201ccontest\u201d style interview.<\/p>\n Jon Faine himself on live radio during his Morning program on 774 ABC Melbourne used very assertive interview techniques while interviewing Tony Abbott. It is cited by Barrie Cassidy in an op-ed piece in the ABC\u2019s The Drum about how easy he believes the news media had been on the Opposition Leader.<\/p>\n Here is the relevant extract from The Drum article:<\/p>\n \u201cAbbott, discussing the asylum seekers issue, asserted:<\/p>\n Frankly, we’ve had 22,000 illegal arrivals, almost 400 illegal boats …<\/em><\/p>\n Faine responded:<\/p>\n They’re not illegal. Tony Abbott, do I need to remind you that the use of words in this is critical? They are not illegal arrivals. There is nothing illegal about seeking asylum when you are a refugee.<\/em><\/p>\n Abbott:<\/p>\n Well, I’m making my point Jon …<\/em><\/p>\n Faine:<\/p>\n Well, so am I making mine! And I think it’s been made to you before.<\/em><\/p>\n Tony Abbott did not further dispute the point. Like an errant school kid, he seemed to accept the admonishment. Yet within 24 hours, he was again referring to asylum seekers as illegals. Nobody in the media pulled him up. He knew they wouldn’t. They rarely do<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n I leave imagining the vocal tone of both Faine and Abbott to you. A transcript is a mere indication of the whole effect.<\/p>\n After 730 last night I became aware that publisher, Margo Kingston, had asked a direct question, via Twitter, of Head of News Policy at the ABC, Alan Sunderland<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of the evolving joys of social media for journalists (\u201ccitizen\u201d or otherwise), is the possibility to directly ask, in public, key questions of accountable figures.<\/p>\n Mark Scott, the ABC Managing Director, uses his Twitter account to largely \u201cbroadcast\u201d and engage in anodyne Twitter exchanges.<\/p>\n I have asked questions of Scott about the Faine finding via Twitter and email. He has not responded. Not even with a polite brush-off. Or a bon mot.<\/p>\n Alan Sunderland<\/p><\/div>\n Alan Sunderland was more forthcoming (slightly) on Twitter last night.<\/p>\n @asunderland<\/a> @zackster<\/a> @spudbenbean<\/a> Hi Alan. Why no ABC news cover of #Faine<\/a> apology\/his request for review? \u2026aliansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com\/?s=Abc+double+\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n — margo kingston (@margokingston1) February 26, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nFebruary 27th, 2013<\/p>\n![\"Alan](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/images2.jpg?resize=208%2C208\")
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