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Michelle Guthrie's bruising first year atop the ABC: 'The way it was done was brutal'

Matthew Knott
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Just four days into the job, it was clear Michelle Guthrie was in for a bumpy start as managing director of the ABC.

Guthrie was appearing at the May Senate estimates hearings and had told the committee she wanted to make her 7pm flight to Sydney. This left less than an hour for questions. The senators were not impressed. "Our response: you finish when we stop asking questions," one angry senator texted journalists. "My goal is to make her miss her flight."

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Guthrie: ABC a 'critical organisation'

Google executive, Michelle Guthrie, who has been appointed the new Managing Director of the ABC speaks on her plans for the ABC. Vision courtesy ABC.

In her past life as a senior executive at Google and News Corp, one suspects meetings ended when Guthrie wanted them to end. Not any more. The senators strung out the questioning until 6.45pm - long enough to ensure Guthrie would miss the last flight out of Canberra.

Since then it's only become more difficult.

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Under her watch, the ABC has announced a series of controversial changes starting with the abolition of the ABC Fact Check Unit. Then the closure of The Drum opinion and analysis website. In November the ABC announced it would make cuts to TV science program Catalyst that included redundancies for up to 9 staff, a decision that infuriated the scientific community. It then revealed significant programming changes to Radio National, including the removal of almost all music programs from the station.

Along the way Guthrie has also had to weather attacks from Noel Pearson (who accused the ABC of being racist), Paul Keating (who said ABC TV news had become trivial) and the Turnbull government (furious at the ABC for not complying with its public service bargaining policy).

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The Murdoch press, unsurprisingly, has leapt on each new piece of criticism with glee.

As ABC staff prepare for their Christmas holidays, the mood is far from festive. Rather, it's "feral" according to one well-known presenter. 

Phillip Adams, who has presented Late Night Live on Radio National since 1991, says: "On the Richter scale of dread this is the most intense I've ever seen – and I lived through the Jonathan Shier years."

(Shier resigned as ABC managing director in 2001 after what was widely seen as the most traumatic period in the ABC's history.)

Of Guthrie, Adams says: "She seems to talk to fellow bureaucrats, not program makers.

"What happened to Radio National is a case in point.

On the Richter scale of dread this is the most intense I've ever seen – and I lived through the Jonathan Shier years.

Phillip Adams

"The way it was done was brutal.

"Her view is we have to rush and embrace the new technologies. But you have to make sure you don't undermine the building block of the organisation, which is good solid programming."

Last month RN staff in Sydney passed a no confidence motion in management, saying the "continuing erosion of specialist programming in music, features and religion" at the station constituted "a serious breach of the ABC charter and a disservice to the Australian audiences that the ABC is funded to serve". 

Many staff believe Guthrie, who is new to public broadcasting, has ceded too much control to the heads of television, radio and news beneath her.

"It's like a Shakespearean play in which you have a weak king being buffeted by barons, earls and dukes all fighting for their own positions," a respected ABC veteran said. 

"Everything seems to happen despite Michelle rather than because of her."

In this tense climate, relatively minor programming changes are seen as portents of dark changes to come – such as RN and ABC Classic FM losing their radio bands and becoming digital-only in future years.

"If she has a vision she has failed to communicate it internally let alone externally," a veteran journalist says.

"There's a feeling she's too focussed on process, on management issues."

Softly spoken, Guthrie says she prefers to listen rather than dominate the conversation. That might be effective in a boardroom, but the managing director is also the ABC's public figurehead. 

While she has given several speeches, Guthrie has made herself available for only two long-form media interviews.

At an event in Melbourne in October, she declined to give a straight answer when asked if Lateline would return next year – setting off unfounded fears it was about to be axed.

Guthrie's predecessor Mark Scott made his own controversial decisions, such as ending the state-based editions of 7.30. But even those who disagreed with him acknowledge he was a forceful communicator with a clear vision.

Ranald Macdonald, spokesman for lobby group ABC Friends, praises Guthrie for pushing to make the ABC more diverse and reflective of modern Australia.

But he says: "It's been a disappointing start. We want the vision, the ideas, the concept."

Senior ABC executives say Guthrie has been subjected to a deliberate campaign of leaking and destabilisation. Radio National's music programs, they note, have minuscule audiences. Past changes – such as the axing of RN's religion and books programs – provoked a similar outcry.

"I did not and would not sign a no-confidence motion," Radio National Drive presenter Patricia Karevlas told Fairfax Media this week. "It does not reflect how I feel, or how many of my colleagues feel."

Citing Guthrie's decision to create a new Indigenous reporting unit and hire star broadcaster Stan Grant, Karvelas said: "I feel only half the story is being told."

And there's no doubt the ABC cannot stand still in the face of technological disruption. The average age of viewers watching the ABC's main TV channel is 66, far older than commercial television stations. Guthrie is aware that, despite its scarce resources, the ABC must continue pushing deeper into the new digital platforms or it will become isolated and irrelevant.

The question is whether she can bring the staff and public along with her along the way. 

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