En Passant

Tony Abbott has the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in his sights. In a recent interview with Ray Hadley, a 2GB right-wing shonk jock, Abbott said:  “A lot of people feel at the moment that the ABC instinctively takes everyone’s side but Australia’s.”

My suspicion is that ‘Australia’s side’ is what Abbott and the rest of his conservative coven thinks it is. L’etat, c’est moi.

So apparently the ABC instinctively chooses the ‘other’ side. Let’s test this.

Australia, for its own ruling class interests, sent troops to Afghanistan to support the US, just as it had done before in Iraq, Vietnam, Korea etc etc.  I have searched the ABC website but I cannot find any support for the Taliban there. Surely support for the Taliban would be an indicator of ‘instinctive support for everyone’s side but Australia’s.’

OK, what Abbott might mean is that the ABC has raised doubts about Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan. Again I searched their websites and I found reporting about Afghanistan, not analysis.  Surely Abbott can’t mean that reporting something like the war in Afghanistan (an invasion by Western Imperialism really) is going against this mythical ‘Australia’s side’?

Well, maybe he does. The Coalition government was apoplectic about the ABC releasing, together with the Guardian, details of Australian spies having tapped the phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and other close associates.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the supposed liberal among the rabids, called it an error of judgement.

Somehow a news agency releasing news is an error of judgement? For the conservatives it is when it puts further strain on a relationship the Government through its racist stop the boats policies is destroying quite nicely thank you.

It was the same reaction (in both senses of the word) when the ABC aired footage of refugees with burnt hands and claims that the Australian Navy had forced them to hold onto pipes that burnt their hands while being towed back.

Again this is factual reporting but according to Abbott and Morrison we have to accept the word of the defence force that nothing happened. Yeah, the sort of defence force members who write on the websites of an Australian fascist organisation that they are off to sort those refugees out.

There is more evidence for a Royal Commission into the defence force’s treatment of refugees than there is for one into union ‘corruption’.

What Abbott and Morrison want is not an end to so called biased reporting. They don’t want reporting that of itself undermines their policies or ‘logic’.

To put it crudely, when the ABC reports news that supports the Government’s agenda (e.g. in the main unsubstantiated claims about union corruption), the Government praises it for doing its job.

When it reports a story that reflects badly on this government it is somehow taking everybody’s side but Australia’s. This is a dictatorial world view, driven by populism and nationalism, the two main enemies of class analysis.

Many conservatives have long viewed the ABC as ‘the enemy’.  For some this is because of their free market ideology. Others view the ABC as biased against them, although a study of the 2010 election indicated that on the basis of length of reports about Liberal and National Party  versus Labor Party members and views it is about fifty fifty and if anything doesn’t give enough time to the Greens given their roughly ten percent support.

The Coalition wants the ABC to be as rabid in its support of the Abbott government as the Murdoch Press.   That won’t happen, but there will be death by a thousand cuts to ensure it more closely toes the government line. The just announced efficiency review of the ABC and the Special Broadcasting Service is one example.

If efficiency is the guide for publication then Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, which has not made a profit in any of its 49 years of existence and is currently hæmorrhaging $50 million of small change from Rupert’s purse should fold immediately.

Of course the efficiency review is about doing more with less and it is no accident a former CFO of a TV station has been appointed to undertake the ‘efficiency’ review. The end result will be less money for the ABC and further cuts to its already stretched services.

Indeed a 2006 KPMG report found the ABC to be efficient and underfunded.

ABC management will get the hint from the Abbott Government. Toe the line and the money will be OK. Don’t and we’ll screw you.

Long term the aim is to commodify the ABC and SBS. But like health and education this will, given popular support, have to be a very slow process.

With Labor adopting neoliberalism and implementing it in Australia from 1983 onwards, the nature of the media has moved more and more to the right in its reporting and commentary. The ABC has not been immune from this march to the right.  Whereas News Limited is the voice of the fruitcake faction of capital, the ABC is the centre-right ‘sensible’ and ‘balanced’ voice of capital.

The ABC was set up in 1932, in the middle of the Depression. It was a symbol of a unified Australia able to provide services across the country (although that took some time.) Because the tyranny of distance made commercial media less profitable in rural and regional ares, the ABC was and still is a vehicle for news and information in the bush, which is why many country Australians support it.

The ABC performed an important function for capital of keeping citizens informed. That role is under challenge for two reasons.

Neoliberalism doesn’t want or, it imagines, need informed citizens. In addition the new media and electronic delivery options are undermining the ABC and indeed all of the mainstream media.

The individualism at the heart of neoliberalism seems also to have created a cohort of people not interested in politics, economics or anything other than their cats and what they had for lunch (if Facebook is any guide).

The debate of no debate

I will defend the ABC against conservative attacks but in the full knowledge that the ABC is just another mouthpiece for the neoliberals who run society and with an occasional alternative (!) Keynesian view.

The ABC reflects the narrow focus of debates within capitalism.  It is a hotbed of difference in the context of accepting capitalism as the normal way to do things.

So is there an alternative? Allow me a flight of fancy. In the past media workers have during major strikes and social upheavals produced their own papers, radio and TV. They have shifted the focus from capital to labour. I look forward to ABC workers taking over the corporation, getting rid of all the overpaid sooks and reporting working class news and views.