After Grant debacle, the ABC should look at itself
Short of compound interest, is there a more powerful force on earth than projection? You know, the phenomenon whereby someone who howls in outrage about someone else’s behaviour turns out to be most guilty of it himself?
A near perfect example of this has played out in the Australian media with Stan Grant’s very public departure as host of the ABC’S long running (to the point of being decrepit) Q&A.
Grant, for his part, said he was stepping back because of all the racist abuse he said he had copped online as a result of media criticism and particularly his employers’ perceived failure to stick up for him.
Surely you don’t mean us, the ABC howled in response, claiming that in fact it was meanies in the News Corp press who were at fault, harping endlessly on the coronation coverage and encouraging all the online trolls from their lair.
Only, there are a couple of things wrong with this analysis. The most obvious problem is that the claim made by the ABC (and others) that “more than 150 articles” were published by News Corp mentioning Stan Grant and coronation coverage turns out to be entirely untrue.
Though, to be fair, even if the figure was accurate the fact is that whether or not the ABC is living up to its charter and providing fair and balanced coverage of important events like the coronation remains a completely legitimate topic.
But there is a deeper problem here. The ABC loves to imply that critics of Grant, whose genuine strengths as a writer and journalist were overshadowed by his clumsy efforts at activism, are motivated out of some issue having to do with race.
And this is where the projection comes in. As much as it might like to suggest others are operating under a cloud of racism, the ABC has for years been subject to much the same charge.
In 2020, the broadcaster copped hell when it announced its line-up for the coming year that was whiter than a branch meeting of the Balmain Greens.
No less an authority on all the terrible ways in which Australia is racist than ex-race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane weighed in to say that the ABC had “a long way to go” in terms of diversity.
EX-ABC journalist Osman Faruqi said this week, as the Stan Grant drama played out, that while he was at Ultimo, “for those of us without white skin, working at the ABC sometimes felt like entering the belly of the beast”. He added that nonwhite journos had tried to warn him against working there, saying “they cited story after story of overt racism from colleagues, managers and the audience”.
ANU researcher Liz Allen laid it out on Twitter, saying that the “ABC doesn’t just have a problem with a lack of ethnic, diversity … (the ABC is) a who’s who of private school elite, political networks and dynastic connections”.
She continued: “Sadly, we won’t see change because ABC consumers are typically classist and don’t like the difference.” And lost in the whole imbroglio over Grant’s coronation coverage is the fact that he said he felt “betrayed” by the ABC’S respectful (God forbid) treatment of the death of
Queen Elizabeth II. As they say in the old horror movies, the calls are coming from inside the house.
Yet like a homophobic preacher caught in a seedy motel room tryst with the pool boy, the ABC has no trouble tut-tutting others when they commit the very sins of which they appear to be guilty. The broadcaster is no stranger to stories about the “lack of diversity” in other areas of public life, frequently lamenting such phenomena as the “bamboo ceiling”.
A recent ABC report on the rise of AI didn’t fret so much about the possibility it might put everyone out of work or start a nuclear war but that it “has the potential to be incredibly sexist and racist”. Its Radio National arm regularly platforms the likes of Noel Pearson to make the link
between genuine concern about changing Australia’s constitution and cross-burning bigotry.
Innocent conversational gambits like “where are you from?” are reinterpreted as racist. And so on.
Which really gets to the heart of the problem.the ABC is supposed to inform Australians, not lecture them.
But in trying to flatter itself and its audience by claiming the high ground of right-on progressivism about race (and a whole host of other issues) it has convinced itself it is always right and that anyone who criticises it or takes an alternate stance are not just wrong but immoral.
One would think that with a billion or so taxpayer dollars to spend every year, the ABC might invest in a mirror it could look into.