Top Australian Leader Wants Media Crackdown For Iraq War Criticism

by Sonny Inbaraj

Communications Minister Richard Alston is now threatening to censor ABC if it does not satisfactorily answer his charges about its anti-U.S. reportage.

Senator Alston threatened ABC with budget cuts earlier, but retracted his comments in a statement May 30.

After requesting an extraordinary investigation into 60 charges of bias against the ABC Radio's 'AM' program, Alston told 'The Age' daily this was the ABC's last chance to prove that it could deal with complaints in a balanced manner.

"I think there were some examples of Saddam Hussein being treated very gently," Alston said.

"AM's Iraq war coverage could be characterised by the following themes: constant questioning of the motives of the coalition and U.S. military; repeated claims the war was not going as planned; assertions the coalition's military action was despised by the Iraqi people; and implying there was a looming humanitarian disaster," he said.

Added Alston: "We're leaving our options open. I think our approach in the future will be very much determined by the response that we get from the ABC on this matter, but I'm certainly not ruling anything out."

One of the options the Howard government is considering is an independent authority to oversee the broadcaster's compliance with its ABC Charter obligations, including balanced reporting.

During the war on Iraq, Australia deployed 2,000 personnel to the Gulf, joining over 200,000 U.S. and British soldiers, 1,000 combat aircraft and five aircraft carrier battle groups.

On May 28, Alston went ballistic again and threatened to make cuts in the ABC budget. "The ABC is accountable to government in the same way any other organisation is, but if they choose to ignore it then it is a matter for the Parliament," he told 'The Australian' newspaper. "If Parliament thinks they have lost the plot, they could be defunded."

In retracting his comments two days later, however, Alston said that funding commitments to ABC "are 100 percent rock-solid."

The furor between the ABC and the communications minister broke out on May 27 when the broadcaster's managing director, Russell Balding, told a Senate budget estimates committee that the ABC's two digital channels would be axed because of the government of Prime Minister John Howard's refusal to assist in their funding.

"We made it abundantly clear to the government and to the public that we could not sustain these multi-channels without ongoing sources of funding," Balding told the Senate committee.

At the Senate committee, Balding said that ABC needed to save up to $16.25 million but the closing of the two digital services would save the broadcaster only $4.55 million so more cuts were needed.

Alston, in turn, told the Senate committee that he only heard at the 11th hour that the channels would be axed. "They have a budget of $494 million, they've got virtually total discretion on how they spend that, they are able to decide their priorities," he said.

"So to turn around and say, well we no longer have funds, is saying we have chosen to put other things as higher priorities than digital television, which is not the position they took when they went down this path in the first instance," added a visibly angry Alston, a known advocate of digital media.

Then the attacks against ABC started the next day.

In a sign of the Howard government's increasing hostility, Alston's office on Tuesday distributed a dossier to Canberra journalists containing transcripts from ABC Radio's 'AM' of what the Howard government claimed was anti-U.S. reporting.

The dossier also contained background information about remarks made by ABC's news and current affairs director Max Uechtritz at a News of the World conference in Singapore last year.

"We now know for certain that only three things in life are certain: death, taxes and the fact the military are lying bastards," Uechtritz was reported to have told the conference on war reporting in Afghanistan.

Uechtritz said his reported comment had been a "throwaway line," but Alston said the remarks were a cause of concern as they could have influenced ABC's coverage of the war on Iraq.

"The head of news and current affairs Max Uechtritz, in relation to his attitude about the military, in describing the U.S. military as 'lying bastards' and if he's the person in charge of programmes like 'AM', then there's a reasonable prospect that his view will influence the presenters," said Alston.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union representing journalists in the country, has come to the defence of ABC by saying that the minister's attack on the national broadcaster was an abuse of power.

"This latest attack on ABC by Senator Alston flies in the face of the minister's role in promoting an independent, robust national broadcaster," MEAA federal secretary Chris Warren said. "Senator Alston has abused his position by intervening in the ABC's news coverage," he added.

But opposition Labor communications spokesman Lindsay Tanner painted a grimmer picture.

"The Howard government is out to cripple ABC. It's put on a hard line, ideological zealots onto the ABC board, people with no serious background in public broadcasting, deliberately to interfere with and intimidate the ABC," he said. "Now you've got the minister, the person ultimately responsible for ABC, launching these kind of unsubstantiated attacks on its footage."

Warned Tanner: "This is a dark day for Australian democracy and what worries me most is that at the end of Senator Alston's press release is a statement that he is contemplating further action. That could involve any number of direct attacks on ABC."