The mellifluously monickered Senator Santos Santoro is no more. Alexander Downer told us we shouldn’t kick a man when he is down, but he will surely console himself with his pension and the profits from the commercial transactions he failed to declare while he was a Minister of the Crown. Being a simple soul, I can’t work out why making a false declaration like this is not illegal.

As an inveterate plunderer of the Senate Estimate transcripts, Screen Hub could not fail to marke the occasion of Santoro’s demise. This is what I posted:

Senator Santos Santoro has resigned from Parliament. Whatever the larger issues, he will be remembered inside the ABC and SBS as a shield bearer in the sustained attack mounted by conservative elements in the government.

It is possible this marks the end of an era. The ABC’s new editorial guidelines may reduce the political temperature, and Paul Chadwick will take some of the heat as the new guardian of editorial integrity. SBS may not be so lucky – in the frenzy of an election year, Labor’s Senator Conroy has a mean tongue on SBS’s commercial strategy.

As a kind of memorial, we recall some titbits from Santoro’s career as a media analyst. On Monday 31st October 2005, he arrived at the Senate Estimates Hearing to find that Russell Balding was not present, and without explanation.

This may have been a calculated insult, or Balding may have rolled over in bed for a cuddle and slept through the alarm. However, heads of agencies are supposed to report as required to Parliament, and the ALP has objected strenuously to similar gestures by other minor bodies like Telstra. But the exchange quickly revealed why Balding could see the proceedings as an abuse of the institution.

“Senator SANTORO—Again, Mr Green, I do not want to be contrary but I have 973 questions to put to Mr Balding. I want to question him on another 60 or 70 questions that I put in correspondence to him a few weeks ago. … I put you and the ABC on notice: I am not going to desist from the way that I go about questioning the ABC. All you are doing is aggravating me and other senators. We will just keep on coming. If I have to go to the government and ask for a special inquiry into bias at the ABC, I will do that. … I am telling you that I am not at all impressed by the absence of Mr Balding. I have 21⁄2 thousand pages of transcripts, because every time I ask a question he says that he has to check the record, and when he does check the record I get nonsense for an answer in the vast majority of cases.

Some of us actually take our jobs very seriously. There are about 28 people in Australia monitoring what the ABC does. I receive between 15 and 20 tapes a week, and out of that we get transcripts. We are absolutely, deadly serious, some senators—I would suggest most senators—in that we want to go about making the ABC accountable.”

Santoro was much exercised about the use of the word “our” in news broadcasts, in which he saw sinister political intent.

” Senator SANTORO—Mr Green, I want to ask you about the written answers of Mr Balding in respect of questions concerning the ban on ABC journalists using the term ‘our troops in Iraq’. To recap for Mr John Cameron, who sits on your left today, your news boss banned this practice just before the start of the Iraq war, ostensibly because, as the ABC did not own them, they were not ‘ours’. In question 189 of the Senate estimates of 3 and 4 November 2003, I asked the following of Mr Balding:
Do you accept that ABC News and Current Affairs has referred and continues to refer to “our cities”, “our scientists” and “our athletes”?
Mr Balding’s answer was:
No, the ABC does not accept this proposition. If there are occasional examples of this usage in … reporting, they are against … [our] style guidelines … Mr Green, between March 2003, when Mr James Cameron’s memos were issued, and November, when the ABC answered my questions, I have counted a minimum of 152 breaches of the ‘our’ rule. I say ‘minimum’ because, as I indicated to you before, I do not monitor every ABC radio and TV bulletin in the nation. I monitored quite a number, but not all of them. The actual figure could in fact be substantially higher. What is your comment on that very specific number of breaches of the ‘our’ rule.

Mr Green—I would like to ask John Cameron, who is Director of News and Current Affairs, to respond to that question.

Mr John Cameron—We conducted our own search, in light of what you came up with, but it was limited by time and technicality. We came up, in the last couple of months, with only one example of ‘our’ in news and current affairs programming. There were quite a lot of others, I think, in general programming on radio and television. I do not say it does not happen—of course it happens—but it is on the low end of the scale of offences against the style guide, so I suggest that, when it does happen, it is not a hanging offence. That is my point, I suppose. But I would far prefer that it did not happen at all, which is why it is in the style guide that we all follow.”

Senator SANTORO—I actually have a file here that refers to all of those breaches. I would be happy to make that available to you to show that there have been, as I put to you, 152 lapses in a little over six months. I would be more than happy to make that available to you after estimates. I will write to Mr Balding and draw it you your attention. Would you commit to providing me with a specific response to each one of those breaches as to why you think it happened or maybe suggest if I am not quoting it or if I am out of context? Mr Green has this morning suggest that we might go about this business.

Mr John Cameron—I am more than happy to do that.

Senator SANTORO—In relation to each one of those breaches?

Mr John Cameron—Yes, if we can mount the wherewithal to do so, we certainly will.

Senator SANTORO—Beg yours?

Mr John Cameron—If we can mount the wherewithal to look at every single one and ind every single example—

Senator SANTORO—That is the problem that you are creating for yourself: we will now come back to you with many examples.”

Santoro went on to say these uses of “our” all occurred in “AM, PM, Lateline, The World Today and The 7.30 Report” and were all used by presenters, not talent. This spectacular display of nitpicking descended even further:

” Senator SANTORO—During the break, one of the whistleblowers within the ABC who regularly keeps in touch with me and who has been monitoring the proceedings this morning informed me that Quentin Dempster breached the ‘our’ rule on the Stateline program of 21 October. Mr Cameron, was that before or after you spoke to Mr Dempster about that rule?

Mr John Cameron—I cannot even recall an instance when action was taken on the example you are providing.”

Lest we think that Santoro was fixated only on the ABC, here is a piece from the same Estimates hearing in which he lays into SBS and Shaun Brown:

” Can I ask about a report on World News Australia on October 20 by one Aarti Betigeri, who as I understand it, is quite a junior reporter. She put forward the controversial theory called ‘peak oil’, which is all about the beginning of the end of the world as we know it— starting in five years, I believe. Your report says she talked to, and I quote, ‘oil experts’. It turned out to be an anti-government academic from Sydney—who is actually an expert in management, not oil—and a proponent of the theory himself, who was introduced on your program as an ‘oil geologist’, when in fact he is retired. Why didn’t this report tell us that the ‘peak oil’ doomsayers’ theory is regarded by many as a myth and has been dismissed by the actual experts: the oil industry.

Mr Brown—I need to take that one on notice as I am not familiar with the report.

Senator SANTORO—Why didn’t your reporter tell us that doomsayers’ theories about the end of oil had been around since 1875 and that the most notorious of these, the Hubbert curve, predicted that ‘peak oil’ would happen in 1970?

Mr Brown—Again, Senator, I will take that on notice.

Senator SANTORO—Or is SBS TV there to be one-sided, unbalanced and alarmist? You are going to deny that, aren’t you? You are not going to say that. You are going to deny that.

Mr Brown—Absolutely.

Senator SANTORO—Yes, okay. Staying with SBS TV, and you have a report reviewing the meeting between President Bush and Palestinian leader, Abbas. And you had presented two direct quotes from the White House spokesman, Mr McLennan. I mean, they are there in inverted commas on your web site. I checked the White House web site too, and the quotes you presented are not the same quotes as are on the White House web site. And I have both transcripts here. Now, I am not suggesting you have changed them or anything, but are you in the habit of presenting as direct quotes items which in fact are not direct quotes? Would you like to take that on notice?

Mr Brown—I’ll take that on notice, but I am prepared to say that the—

Senator SANTORO—It is not a habit that you would—

Mr Brown—It is not a habit, and it is not a practice that would be endorsed.
Senator SANTORO—Has this ever been done before, to your knowledge?

Mr Brown—Not to my knowledge. I am not sure that it has been done this time, either, obviously.”

On Wednesday 9th November 2005, Santoro made a speech to the Senate about these encounters. He said

“I say on the record in this place, as I consistently say at every opportunity, that the ABC is a highly valuable institution in the Australian community and overwhelmingly does a great job.

But, in respect of bias and lack of balance on some political issues, it is not doing a good job. This is the aspect of ABC affairs that I have concentrated on and the aspect on which I shall continue to press for the necessary remedies. I have been accused of nitpicking over the ABC. These accusations in some instances have come from some of the greatest nitpickers of all time—people in the media. I am not sure that there is anything actually wrong with being defined as a nitpicker. To my mind, it means someone who has a clear objective in view and is determined to reach it. I repeat—and I underline this so that the management floor at ABC headquarters in Ultimo can be in no doubt—this is a prosecution that I intend to take to its final conclusion.”

He went on to discuss his contrasting attitude to commercial broadcasters:

“One of the things that critics of my approach to the ABC problem like to ask me is why I do not subject the commercial broadcast sector to the sort of scrutiny brought to bear on the ABC.

There is a simple answer to that question, and it is a three-part answer. It is this: commercial broadcasting does not depend on funds voted by this parliament; commercial broadcasters are not required to attend the Senate estimates committees for examination; and broadcasters who disseminate their own views over the commercial airwaves—and one thinks particularly of Stan Zemanek, on whose radio programme I appeared last week—freely admit, and I stress ‘freely admit’, and indeed proudly admit their bias. Their listeners know where they are coming from. In this context, the ‘what about the commercial broadcasters’ argument is just simply another smokescreen.”

These exchanges were the last time that Santoro questioned the public broadcasters directly. As Minister for Ageing he had more important things to do than make broadcast executives old before their time. Indeed, it turns out that his passion for detail was deployed on his personal affairs, which will now enable him to supplement his handsome parliamentary pension into a prosperous old age.

His role as irritant has fallen to Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, whose role in Senate Estimates is equally entertaining.

You can find broader accounts of the assault on the ABC from Robert Manne, and Ben Oquist at Crikey; the 2003 attack is carried on SMH. True students of the horror will find hundreds of pages of transcript on the Hansard site.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 1:50 am and is filed under Austrapolitics, entertainments. 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.