The release of a new book by the former Australian Broadcasting Authority Chairman has resulted in a fiery exchange between David Flint and ex-Media Watch presenter, David Marr.
On ABC television’s ‘Lateline’ program, Flint and Marr have gone head to head in what might be just the start of a new debate on the role of the ABA in the Cash for Comment scandal.
Flint’s Malice in Media Land provides an insider’s account of Cash for Comment and led Lateline presenter, Tony Jones, to invite the professor to debate Marr – his ABC nemesis. This ended up in a heated ‘discussion’ between the two, as revealed by the following transcript:
Jones: “David Flint, can I start with the first Cash for Comment Inquiry, which you initiated but finally stood down from. You write: “The report of the inquiry was unfair to 2UE, to Alan Jones and Laws. The inquiry itself was a disappointment. It was too legalistic, too expensive, its findings too harsh.” Can you start by telling us how your own ABA board got it so wrong?”
Flint: “The whole theory is that the Broadcasting Services Act adopts a graduated response. What you’re supposed to do is if you find something wrong, you try to bring a correct practice into the industry. What was wrong, I think, with the first inquiry was that there had been no indication by the ABA, over a number of years, that these interpretations of the Code were going to apply. In fact this was argued on the very first day of the inquiry, it was said that the ABA, or at least the industry in part, was aware of the practice of presenters having their own sponsors and the ABA had never indicated any concern about this.
The report gave certain interpretations which were unusual and unprecedented in relation to the Code, and didn’t seem to take into account the fact that as soon as the inquiry was initiated 2UE started announcing what we wanted; that is, that there were sponsorships.”
Jones: “But this critique you’ve given of the report of the inquiry indicates, doesn’t it, that the board of the ABA must have gotten it terribly wrong, in your opinion?”
Flint: “I think they – yes, I’m expressing an opinion, and I think that – and this came out in the recent inquiry concerning John Laws – what we required was something which was far too difficult to apply. What 2UE is doing now is much more reasonable, that is they read a list of sponsors of the program during the program.”
Jones: “All right. David Marr, you’ve read David Flint’s critique, you’ve now heard him encapsulate his position about the ABA’s report. Your response?”
Marr: “Well, let me say that this is a marvellously candid book. I mean I think it’s full of all kinds of mistakes and all kinds of – you know, misleading in various ways. But on the whole it’s a marvellously confessional book because here we have the President of the ABA at the time, or the Chair of the ABA at the time, actually admitting they knew cash for comment was going on; they’d done nothing about it.
Once again it took Media Watch to force them into action. They knew it was going on and they’d done nothing about it. And David Flint’s distaste for disciplining the excesses of cash for comment is all through this book, and nowhere clearer than in the first mega-inquiry, which he says, by the way, you shouldn’t call Cash for Comment because that’s prejudicial. Yes, of course 2UE started cleaning up its act, it started cleaning up its act because there was a huge public inquiry going on, and of course these people need to be disciplined. It is simply naive to imagine that the immense amounts of money being secretly funnelled to the presenters of talkback radio were going to be given up without a huge fight, and that fight is still going on.”
Jones: “Okay. Let’s let David Flint reply to that short speech.”
Flint: “As soon as we announced the inquiry, 2UE adopted the practice that we had been silent on. We’d never said we wanted this to be done over a number of years, myself and my predecessors.”
Jones: “But can I ask you why, to pick up David Marr’s point, can I ask you why it wasn’t a public scandal, from your point of view, that this was happening? That sponsors were paying, secretly it appears, for opinions from radio broadcasters?”
Flint: “It was never shown that they were paying for opinions. What was shown was that they were paying in contracts to a presenter to do certain things, but certainly it was never established that they were being paid to give opinions.”
Marr: “What? What? They were being paid millions for their opinions. That’s what Media Watch revealed. They produced the contract which said: “John Laws is now going to spruik for the private banks.” It was opinions. There were clauses in that contract forbidding him to be critical of the private banks, for money. These were opinions. Even a couple of years ago the Telstra deal with 2GB, the clear marketing purpose of all of that, revealed on Media Watch because somebody leaked us the documents, was to grab the standing of John Laws, particularly in the bush, to push for the full privatisation of Telstra.
These people were selling their opinions. And the tragedy is that the ABA, until Media Watch revealed the first great scandal in 1999, the ABA just sailed along, knowing it was happening and not caring. In a way your book is a kind of love song to Media Watch, because there we were, and will continue no doubt, showing the public scandals, and they propelled the ABA to do something about it.”
Flint: “No, there is a little difference between sponsorship and advertising. Sponsorship goes straight to the presenter; advertising goes to the station, and this is the lifeblood of commercial radio. Commercial radio can’t exist without being paid, you have to have advertising, and in the case of 2GB we had a case where 2GB was receiving advertising funds from Telstra and it was suggested that therefore when Alan Jones broadcast about Telstra, he was spruiking about Telstra. Now, there are cases, which I demonstrate in the book, where Alan Jones goes into criticism of Telstra. It doesn’t necessarily follow.”
Marr: “You found a couple.”
Flint: “There are plenty of examples of that. The same with the Walsh Bay case.”
Marr: “There aren’t plenty of examples of Jones spruiking against the interests of Telstra. Once, in the middle of 2002, Telstra started pouring its money into 2GB he changed his tune, and we demonstrated that on Media Watch. That demonstration impelled other members of the ABA, though not you because you admit candidly in your book that you did all you could to stop it happening, they impelled an inquiry.”
Jones: “Can I intercede here with a question for David Flint?
Flint: “Could I just answer that? I didn’t stop the investigation, what I said was that this should be – this can be handled in the normal course of events. That is, it goes to the station first, or we can start our own investigation. I didn’t not – there is no evidence that I stopped the investigation.”
Jones: “That goes to the heart, in a way, of the question that I was about to ask you. Let me put this to you, since you were critical of your own board for the way they handled the first inquiry and for the report they wrote on it, very critical; if you had remained directly in control of the process would the outcome have been very different?”
Flint: “I thought that the solution was to make sure that these deals were transparent. I was fully in agreement with that right from the very beginning. It’s the way in which you make it transparent. Do you do it in a way which accommodates the needs of broadcasting, or do you do it in a way which makes it very difficult for the broadcaster?”
Jones: “So are you suggesting, in a sense, that these issues should be resolved between gentlemen, behind closed doors?”
Flint: “No, not at all, not at all. But the point was made by Graham Morris, he said that, in relation to Media Watch, you disclosed your interest in The Sydney Morning Herald only at the end of the program and not during the program, and perhaps you should have disclosed it during the program at each instant, wherever you came up with a potential conflict.”
Marr: “If I was spruiking for the Sydney Morning Herald on Media Watch, which I never did, yes, I should reveal the fact that I hoped to go back to work there one day. But 120-something times it was said at the end of the show, you know: “He’s on leave from,” now that’s just nonsense. That’s nonsense.”
Flint: “I think that’s perfectly proper, but nobody expected you, for example when you were dealing with The Australian or you were dealing with a commercial broadcasting station, that you had to explain that you had your contract with Fairfax.”
Jones: “Alright, I want to move on. David Marr, do you accept that Media Watch devoted an extraordinary amount of airtime to examining the behaviour on air of John Laws and Alan Jones, and I’m wondering was that just part of an honourable tradition within the program when you joined? Or were you, somehow, philosophically opposed to that kind of broadcasting?”
Marr: “Honourable tradition? I don’t know. Look, a long tradition because I come from a very clear cut position. When somebody is talking on air I want to know who – you know, when their mouth is open I want to know who is talking, and if behind that is huge sums of money to spruik for people, to spruik for political parties to spruik for big commercial interests, or even small commercial interests I think we all have a right to know. I come from a position not of despising talkback radio at all, I think it’s extraordinarily vital and crazy and I enjoy it. But I do come from a position of saying that you must not allow influential presenters on talkback radio to sell their opinions and spruik in ways to shape public opinion. That could not be done. It’s called corruption. It is corrupt to do that and transparency is required. Other countries, of course, make it a crime. We’ve decided to allow it to continue so long as there is transparency. David Flint thinks there is too much transparency; I think there is still not nearly enough.”
Flint: “No, what I – we disagree about the way in which transparency is to be achieved. What I am saying is that the sort of transparency which should be achieved is that which now prevails in the press. Remember when we first initiated this investigation, after Media Watch I must agree, the reaction in all of the media was, “We have to clean up our act.” It was the same in various parts of the media. In Fairfax, for example, there was a consideration of this, how do you best do this? It was something which regularly came before the Press Council. The solution is not to stop financial transactions, the solution is to disclose them, and all the dispute that we seem to be having is about the way in which you disclose them.”
Jones: “Alright. Now, there are other disputes, though contained within the book, there are many in fact. David Flint, you seem to be making an overall argument that publicly funded broadcasters should not have presenters which give strong opinions?”
Flint: “I make the point that the important thing in relation to the media is that news be presented objectively, that opinion be clearly, clearly distinguishable from news, which it quite often isn’t, but that the public broadcasters are in a special position. Because in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sydney Morning Herald is absolutely entitled, if it wishes, to take a left of centre position or a right of centre position. It’s entitled to do that. A public broadcaster is not because of the way in which it is funded and established. A public broadcaster has to be balanced.”
Marr: “It is unbelievable that this man, in this day and age, after all this time, should have such a kindergarten notion of balance.”
Flint: “I wasn’t …
Marr: “That there is a left and that there is a right and you sit in the middle. That is just simply illusionary. I think all broadcasting must be fair, but the illusion that there is some kind of set spot where you can sit and that’s impartial is simply nonsensical. David, it’s nonsensical.”
Flint: “No, it’s done on the ABC in the Insiders program, where you have a panel which contains people from the left and the right …
Marr: “You can’t do Media Watch by that kind of – Media Watch is an analysis of the media, of the faults of the media.”
Jones: “Okay. Let’s look, if we can, because, David Flint, these issues have arisen today with the ABA’s final report into Senator Alston’s complaints against the AM program, the ABC radio’s AM program coverage of the Iraq War. Now Lynn Maddock, the ABA’s Chair, is saying today that the language and presentation styles used in some programs: “Could have caused a reasonable thinking person to believe the programs were predisposed to particular views.” Now, do you think that there is a problem within the ABC along those lines?”
Flint: “I do understand what she’s saying and I think …”
Jones: “In connection with the AM program or in connection with the ABC generally?
Flint: “I heard that program because I listened to all the tapes. I did not hear the submissions of the ABC so I’m not in the same position of advantage that the current ABA is. But what she is doing is she is aggregating, as I read it, the opinions of the ICRP, which is the ABC’s own excellent internal review, and those of the ABA and coming to a conclusion. Now, the ICRP I think is, I would say, above reproach, and I might have disagreed with the Minister for Communications about this at the time, I disagreed with him publicly about it. But I think the ICRP is an excellent body, but they came down, I believe, with a number of findings. What the ABA is saying, ‘With our findings, you put them together, there is a problem’.”
Jones: “Looking at it subjectively for a minute, I mean were you in an imaginary world to be placed inside the ABC’s board, even as Chairman? For example, would you want to see big changes to the way editorial processes happened?”
Flint: “My predecessor became general manager, so you should be careful. No, if I were on the ABC board I would merely expect that the charter were observed. But I don’t think a board can go into the detailed management of a broadcaster, that’s a matter for people to report to the board about. But the board has to be very careful of not being too defensive, and I think that was shown in Lord Hutton’s inquiry in the UK, where the board made the mistake of immediately rushing to the defence of Andrew Gilligan, instead of looking into the matter. The ABC would avoid that because it has the ICRP to handle those things, which is a far superior system than that which prevailed in the BBC at the time of the Hutton Report.”
Jones: “David Marr, one of the other quotes from Lynn Maddock today: ‘When a program uses tendencious language in connection with a particular matter, listeners understand that that program favours a particular view’.”
Marr: “I’ve been reading the word “tendencious” all day because it’s one of David Flint’s favourite words in his book. If an argument is being advanced that he doesn’t like, it’s tendencious. It’s all the time tendencious. But I was also reading today, I thought if only, if only David Flint had been sitting on those Alston complaints, because he is so miraculously forgiving of the difficulties of commercial radio presenters. It’s: ‘Keeping all those balls in the air,’ he says, ‘You know, it’s so hard, there are news reports coming in and the weather is there and there are ads to do and there are live reads to do, and under those circumstances you can occasionally forget the proper way to do things’. I was thinking to myself how forgiving he would be of an ABC reporter, reporting a war on the run. He would surely understand how difficult it is.”
Jones: “David Flint, a huge rhetorical question thrown in your direction. I mean, do you understand the difficulties and are these complaints overstated?”
Flint: “Wartime is probably the most difficult of all things to report because there is the natural loyalty which you may have, one would expect you have, and which the viewers expect you to have for your country, and the attempt to maintain a certain distance, and the fact that you can’t report everything because sometimes this is something from which you are deprived. I agree that obviously reporting a war is very difficult, that’s why, when we have a very serious war, the governments move in and themselves supervise the reporting. It’s a very difficult thing to undertake.”
Jones: “David Flint and David Marr, that is where we’ll have to leave it. We thank you both for coming to join us tonight on Lateline.”