Supporting the Glass House
There has been a lot of talk about why The Glass House was axed – most of it supportive of the cast and crew and critical of the ABC board, and rightly (no pun intended) so.
A great piece from Robert Manne in The Monthly summed it up very succinctly:
“THERE can be little doubt that John Howard has been determined to bring the ABC to heel as part of his more general ambition to destroy as much as possible of whatever remains of the cultural influence he labels the “soft Left”. Howard has borrowed from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci the idea that a counter-revolution, as much as a revolution, requires a long march through the institutions of society.
Unlike Gramsci’s preference, however, the long march Howard has tried to orchestrate inside the ABC is from the supposed Left to the truly Right: hence the astonishing presence on the ABC board of Australia’s most strident cultural warriors: Keith Windschuttle, Janet Albrechtsen and Ron Brunton.
Until recently, the conservative chairman of the ABC, Donald McDonald, has more or less held the line. No longer. In quick succession, the Government has abolished the position of staff-elected member of the board; the new board, on spurious legal grounds, has decided not to publish the commissioned biography of Alan Jones written by one of the most respected ABC reporters, Chris Masters; while the new managing director, Mark Scott, has introduced the position of director of editorial policies, whose role will be to make sure that all programs, including satire and those for children, are “impartial”.
This last reform has been welcomed with considerable enthusiasm by all the major right-wing critics of the ABC: Windschuttle, Albrechtsen, David Flint, Gerard Henderson and the editorial team at The Australian. They are, of course, right to see it as a major victory in the culture war.
Matters are now moving more rapidly than even pessimists predicted. As a result of financial retrenchment, the policy of permeation from the top and outright persistent political attack, the Government has succeeded in its long-term aim. There is not much more work to be done.”
There has been a lot of talk in peoples own personal sites about the web about the decision, with a large percentage being outraged and calling “right wing bias” – a search of Technorati comes up with quite a few.
John Howard has even been quizzed on his role in it – denying any involvement of course (just like the Tampa, just like the GST, ethanol and the reasons for the Iraq invasion) – but it is interesting to look at his use of language:
“I have not axed the program,”
“If it has been axed, then it has been axed by a decision of the ABC. I haven’t asked that it be axed.”
“I don’t watch it – occasionally will flick it on but not very often,”
“I do not tell the ABC what programs it should run. I respect the independence of the ABC.”“From time to time, if the ABC treats a news item in an unbalanced fashion I will say so, and I will say that in relation to other programs as well.”
It is no longer “our ABC” – it is now well and truly “John’s ABC”.
Happily I found myself in a position to pass on some support to one of the members of the Glass House today. Sitting in the traffic on Crown St, I spotted Wil Anderson at the lights. Whilst Anderson’s manner and comedy have at times left me cold (he has an enormous propensity to laugh at his own jokes) – there is no doubt that he has a wonderful comedic mind and is a man of values and intelligence. He is certainly someone that we need to remain outspoken and active in some small way to counterbalance the march of “The Right”.
In true traditional Aussie yob fashion (seems to happen to us when we see someone even moderately famous), I yelled out a few comments of support, snarled something nasty about the ABC board and then gave him a bit of a light hearted stir. He had a chuckle, gave the thumbs up and forged on… Nice bloke it seems.
RIP – Editorial independence and balanced views at “our” ABC.
Technorati Tags: Glass House, Wil Anderson, John Howard, Tampa, GST, Glass House axed, Axed, ABC, bias, Robert Manne, The Monthly, RIP ABC