The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, February 21st, 2001. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Shier's war on the ABC The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has increasingly come to resemble an organisation under open attack. Eleven members of the national broadcaster's staff were last week questioned by police over the leak of information to the commercial media about further recruitment to the ABC's already bloated layer of top executives. by Peter Mac Hard on the heels of these events, two more lower-ranking members of staff were sacked, and the ugly information has now surfaced that ABC Director Jonathan Shier intends to hire broadcasting staff with overtly right-wing views. The police investigation was prompted by commercial media sources receiving details of Shier's plan to hire additional top-level executives from the private sector, at an additional cost to the taxpayer of $7,421,000, while the ABC is still reeling from the latest savage cuts in program funding. The police questioning failed to pinpoint the source of the leak, but the subsequent sacking of at least one ABC staff member is thought to be connected with the leakage. Shier has denied responsibility for initiating the police investigation, but is known to have been enraged when told of the leak, and to have discussed the matter with Finance Manager Russell Balding, who instructed audit staff to "act proactively" in investigating the matter. When later questioned by Labor Senators, Shier refused to accept responsibility for the police interrogation, stating that the matter had been discussed with police, who then "asked that the matter be referred to them". Shier has since declined to admit that there was anything improper in the investigation. On the other hand, ABC Chairman Don McDonald was apparently horrified when told of the police investigation, and sought to have it terminated. However, the police subsequently issued a statement that there was no firm date for finalisation of the enquiry, thereby raising the possibility that the case might remain open indefinitely, providing a pretext for further police intervention in ABC operations. Shier was a favoured appointee of former Liberal politician and now ABC Board member Michael Kroger, and of Liberal Party Communications Minister Richard Alston. However, the suitability of Shier to run the ABC is coming increasingly under critical attention, even from the right-wing media itself. One commentator recently noted dryly that "He doesn't make much of the fact that his role has been as an advertising executive, a skill not strongly in demand at the ABC". Shier and his newly introduced cronies at the top of the ABC do not appear particularly disturbed by such comments, but have, on the other hand, been greatly alarmed by the fightback of broadcasting staff, some of whom organised a press conference to discuss cuts to the ABC budget, and the deterioration of the organisation. The ABC's executive salary bill has grown by 28 percent since Shier was appointed, and most of the 12 directors receive salaries well in excess of $200,000 per annum. If the new appointments go ahead, the ABC's upper management will balloon out to 304 executives. In the meantime the ABC's "in-house" production (including its current affairs programs) is shrinking, and has largely lost its ability to act as a training ground for the nation's most gifted TV writers, directors and performers. (Current affairs presenter Quentin Dempster has even written a book about the current situation, entitled "Death Struggle.") One national newspaper recently described the ABC with grudging admiration in the following terms: "It is highly unionised, but more focused on guarding editorial independence than fighting for bigger salaries, staff are extremely loyal to the broadcaster but not to its bosses, quality is vigorously pursued but too often frustrated by ultra-restrictive budgets." Most taxpayers would probably agree that this is an admirable state of affairs for such an organisation, apart from the funding issue. But not Mr Shier, who has actually announced his intention to employ right-wing broadcasters to this organisation, in order to stamp out what he describes as the ABC's current left-wing bias. In a recent statement he declared stridently that every month his mission to force change on the ABC "will become clearer, and people will say this is unrelenting". Adding to the weird impression of a manager making megalomaniac war on his own organisation, he added that "When bombs go off your well-trained and professional colleagues deal with them so that you, as the boss, keep moving forward and say: 'I saw a bomb but it doesn't alter what we're doing here'." So just how widespread is Shier's stated perception of bias in the ABC? A recent survey showed that the vast majority of the Australian people believe the ABC is not biased, and that among those surveyed, 80 percent of Coalition supporters were either undecided or believed the ABC had no such bias. Former ABC Director Brian Johns recently commented that the stated intention of newly hired executives to attack what they described as the biased and pedantic culture of the ABC were euphemisms for "getting into its independence, ... its news and current affairs." It appears that if Shier has his way the national broadcaster, whose role includes the investigation of corruption and mismanagement by government and private industry, is not to be allowed to investigate these phenomena when they appear within the organisation itself. The irony of this situation has not been lost on many media commentators, some of whom have suggested that the matter would make a great subject for the ABC's incisive "Four Corners" program. ****************************************************************** -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
