Abbott, Turnbull clash over ABC

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has strongly defended the ABC's editorial independence in the face of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's attack on the national broadcaster, which he says ''instinctively takes everyone's side but Australia's''.

Mr Turnbull defended the Prime Minister's right to critique the ABC but, in comments that could be interpreted as resistance to Mr Abbott, he said the ABC was rightly accountable to its board of directors, not politicians.

''What's the alternative … the editor-in-chief [of the ABC] becomes the prime minister?'' he said. ''Politicians, whether prime ministers or communications ministers, will often be unhappy with the ABC … but you can't tell them what to write.''

The furore was sparked by the emergence of a note on Wednesday from an ABC reporter who said of the broadcaster's allegations asylum seekers were burnt by navy staff: ''My boss believes the allegations are likely to be untrue …''

Mr Abbott told radio 2GB that Australians wanted ''some basic affection for the home team'', but Mr Turnbull said the broadcaster was more constrained by rules around editorial fairness than its competitors in commercial media.

''The ABC has to play it straight down the middle. The ABC has a bargain with the Australian people. They have to be rigorously balanced in their coverage.

''Remember, if it wasn't for the ABC and Fairfax we might not know of the latest round of union corruption.''

Labor's communications spokesman Jason Clare, claimed Mr Abbott was laying the groundwork to cut back the ABC's $1 billion annual funding.

ABC managing director Mark Scott declined to comment. Mr Scott has spoken to Mr Turnbull about the coverage of the claims asylum seekers suffered burns to their hands due to mistreatment by Australians.

The minister said, in his view, criticism of the story was justified and unfounded allegations had been given too much weight. ''I thought the allegations were beyond implausible, I thought they bordered on inconceivable,'' he said.

Former ABC managing director David Hill savaged Mr Abbott's comments against the ABC's perceived lack of patriotism. ''It's an absurd proposition, laughable if it wasn't so dangerous,'' he said.

''This is the first serious suggestion I know of, certainly in the last half a century, where a prime minister of the country is suggesting the Australian public be denied access to the truth, and the first time that a prime minister has seriously intimated that the ABC should censor and withhold information from the Australian public.''

Mr Hill, who led the ABC from 1986 to 1995, dismissed Mr Abbott's view that the ABC should have had more ''basic affection for the home team'' when it joined with the Guardian newspaper to release leaked intelligence on Australian spying on Indonesia, supplied by the American Edward Snowden.

''Is it really being suggested that the ABC, in possession of information, should keep the public in the dark? Is it really being suggested that, however unsavoury the information, the Australian public should not be told the truth … that the ABC should only broadcast news and information that portrays Australia in a favourable light … that the ABC should not have published the information that our intelligence agencies were tapping the phone of the Indonesian president's wife?''

ABC communications director Michael Millett said the email from the ABC reporter ''could have been better worded'' but it did not indicate that the ABC had second thoughts about its original report. Rather, it was further ''interrogating'' the claims, not taking a position one way or the other.

Mr Abbott told 2GB listeners: ''Look, you know, if there's credible evidence, the ABC, like all other news organisations, is entitled to report it, but you can't leap to be critical - you should not leap to be critical of your own country. And you ought to be prepared to give the Australian navy and its hard-working personnel the benefit of the doubt.''

Mr Abbott said that he wanted the ABC to focus on being a ''straight news gathering and news reporting organisation''.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-turnbull-clash-over-abc-20140129-31n5z.html#ixzz2roldMpbl