Contesting the Middle Ground : The Regulation of Objectivity in ABC

In March 2005, the Australian Broadcasting Authority finally delivered its report responding to Richard Alston's 68 complaints about coverage of the 2003 Iraq war on the ABC radio program AM. While the report found that AM's coverage was 'of a high standard overall', it upheld six further complaints for on the grounds that they breached the ABC Code of Practice's requirement of 'impartiality', thus providing further support to governmental claims regarding ABC 'bias'. This paper focuses on this episode to theoretically and empirically engage with the question of how journalistic norms of 'objectivity' and 'impartiality' are defined in ABC journalism. To this end, the paper focuses on the ABA's handling of a complaint regarding the reporting of a US military press briefing, and arguments made in response to this finding by ABC management and journalists. Rather than simply provide a descriptive account of formal policy frameworks and processes, this research draws on this case study to argue that norms informing journalistic practice can be seen to emerge through the interplay of political, regulatory, institutional and professional definitions of objectivity and impartiality. With this in mind, it focuses on the implications of the ABA finding, and the extent to which it may impact on the regime of objectivity governing ABC journalism. Introduction In 1958 I wrote the following: ‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’ I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false? Harold Pinter, Nobel Lecture, December 7 2005. On 1 March 2005, after an investigation that lasted 14 months, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) delivered its final report on the 68 complaints regarding the ABC radio program AM’s coverage of the Iraq conflict made by the Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston, in May 2003. The ABA rejected Alston’s overall charge that AM’s coverage was ‘biased and antiAmerican’, finding it was of a high standard overall’ (ABA 2005: 13). Nonetheless, it upheld six of Alston’s complaints, finding that the AM had breached the ABC Code of Practice (the Code) on four occasions. Each of these complaints related to matters of ‘impartiality’, and was thus found to have breached clause 4.2 of the Code: Every reasonable effort must be made to ensure that programs are balanced and impartial. The commitment to balance and impartiality