As that fearless seeker after truth Alan Jones endorses a product, he may accidentally have found a situation which actually can’t be helped by “The Employers Protection Plan”TM.

Mediawatch has effectively accused the board and ABC Enterprises of lying – surely some of the most serious charges it could make, in the words:

“We don’t believe that media release is accurate.

Media Watch understands the decision to can the Jones book was made not by the publishers and editors of ABC Enterprises, but by the ABC board.”

The Australian backs this up:

“It is understood that on the strength of the letter, the board asked the acting managing-director, Murray Green, to request from head of ABC Enterprises Robyn Watts an information paper for consideration at the June board meeting.

Sources believe Mr Watts and Mr Neal remained of the view that publication should proceed, but the broadcaster’s chief operating officer and former finance director, David Pendleton, had for some time been more cautious.

Then the board, including publisher Keith Windschuttle, attending his first board meeting, decided to back away from publication last week, with Windschuttle understood to have argued through the financials of future sales against what had already been spent.

Much of the deliberation on Thursday is understood to have revolved around the financial implications of a drawn-out legal battle with Jones. “

I don’t think we can get past the fact that a) the ABC board has protected a friend by suppressing a work of its own journalism, b) wasted $100,000 of the money it is charged to administer on this political manoever of private, partisan benefit and c) forced its own senior executive to lie in public so she will carry the can.

That is pretty sleezy. It is a far cry from an independent public broadcaster. On the basis of that decision, the ALP would have the right to sack the board if it takes power in a future election.

It seems that the new Managing Director, Mark Scott, started work today. It will be interesting to see how he deals with a senior staff enraged enough to petition the board, whose members seem to have stepped in poo and are walking it all over the carpet.

But I am left with a smaller question, which has been raised in various places, including larvyprod. The ABC has defined enterprises as a commercial vehicle. Should Auntie be in the marketplace to make money?

In some ways, of course it should. The ABC should be vigorously selling its product overseas. It should be retailing DVD’s of shows it has invested in, and broadcast. As far as I am concerned, its fiducary responsibities require it.

The situation gets interesting when we think about the cultural connection. Sales and publications are also about branding the ABC as a cultural force, and using the muscle of the organisation to develop and promote material at the highest possible level. After all, it spent $100,000 developing the Masters book (not a huge living for Chris, by the way, unless he is doing many other things at the same time). We would make the same argument for university presses.

But there is another side. Free enterprise businesses loathe being in competition with large government agencies. When your reader has a limited amount of money, do you want to put your carefully nurtured biography of Caroline Chisholm up against the Masters book, if it has the full resources of ABC TV, radio and new media behind it?

Part of the answer to this question should be that Auntie’s cross promotional power should be available for all sorts of culturally valuable material. Chisholm is just as interesting on AM as Jones, can be reviewed as prominently on the website.

But I am uncomfortable with this. The world ain’t perfect and we can’t fix it. In film and TV, for instance, we are worried about the role of Film Australia, which competes with independents for marketplace funding. FA would see this as increasing the size of the pie; the independents see the gorilla getting bigger and dominating the jungle. And the point of the independent voice here is precisely that it is NOT institutionalised.

Ultimately, the ABC is competing in the marketplace. Every second of every day it exists to take viewers away from commercial broadcasters, or from other activities. To induce us to listen to put down the Chisholm biography and turn on Philip Adams. No such thing as fairness, I am afraid.

———

One other note: this blew up the very first meeting that the board held without a staff representative, who was the last person who actually has experience in film and television.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.