In another week of global horror and mayhem, something relatively small has stuck with me: the apparent fall from grace of one of the ABC’s best reporters, defence correspondent Andrew Greene.
Greene has always looked to be rock solid, reliable, honest — all those good things. But alas, apparently not. He has taken a tumble courtesy of a detailed evisceration by the ABC’s Media Watch on Monday night. It was over his apparent failure to make an on-air declaration that German weapons company TKMS had paid for him to visit its Kiel headquarters, equivalent to some $16,000 in airfares alone, by Media Watch’s calculation.
The radio segment Greene produced has since been removed and the ABC has said it will investigate Media Watch’s “serious allegations”. So we should hold off on any final judgment.
A done deal
In the meantime, we’re left with what feels like a betrayal of trust, not a small thing given that trust is at the core of what the ABC does. This should be the case for all journalism, but of course it isn’t for those at the entertainment end of the spectrum. Hence it is all the more important that the ABC be the unimpeachable torchbearer.
The national broadcaster has rules to ensure its journalists don’t do secret side deals with influence peddlers (heaven forbid that one should be the arms industry). A journalist needs their boss’s approval for outside payments of any kind, including free flights. If approved, it needs to be declared on air so the audience understands the full picture and can draw its own conclusions. Call that transparency 101.
It’s not too difficult to see where this kerfuffle could lead. If we didn’t know about the payment from the weapons manufacturer, what else don’t we know? It took The Politics all of 30 seconds to discover that Greene did an “outside” gig hosting a panel discussion involving the chiefs of navy for Australia and its allies last year. The defence and security event was held in Perth. A transcript was helpfully issued by the Defence Department, a sure sign it was happy with Chief of Navy Mark Hammond’s performance.
Greene stamps
There is a matey tone to Greene’s interactions with Hammond, hardly a surprise given Greene’s role as a discussion facilitator, rather than a dispassionate interrogator. As journalists will attest, the Defence Department is a black hole of information, silent as a tomb when it comes to media accountability. And yet the ABC’s man is somehow on the inside.
Was Greene paid for his professional services? If so, how much? Did the ABC approve the arrangement, paid or not? We asked the ABC these questions. Its response was that it would not respond, beyond the statement it had issued to Media Watch.
If the ABC’s defence reporter has indeed been paid by the Defence Department or another government agency, the public deserves to know. Surely that also falls within transparency 101, as much as any payment from the arms industry.
There’s a wider issue here. Greene is not the only ABC name to do outside gigs, paid or unpaid. At a certain point, being an ABC celebrity opens up all sorts of opportunities to turn a handy dollar on the side. This could be as a guest speaker at a mining conference, as has happened. Or being the star attraction for an “interview” of a political leader, as has happened. Or facilitating panel discussions involving captains of business. Or being the emcee at an in-house consulting firm event.
There’s an endless supply of this stuff where being “from the ABC” comes with a certain cachet, where being a star adds lustre to the humdrum goings-on of the annual accounts conference.
Bubble and squeak
The ABC’s policy is that it must know of and approve outside gigs.There’s an argument that journalists — and hence you, the news consumer — benefit from the contacts they make outside the journalist bubble.
That might be true. By all means let your journalists be headliners at outside gigs. Let them leverage the ABC’s gravitas. But if they do that, can we please know? For many years we have demanded that our politicians declare their outside sources of income on a public register of interests. It’s all about that little thing called perception.
It’s time the ABC — if not all media institutions — made a key reform and established a public register of journalists’ engagements with interest groups, with a declaration of any fees or in-kind payments. Otherwise, how do viewers, readers and listeners know who they can trust in a world where “truth” ain’t what it used to be?
Let’s hope that Media Watch has a look at the ASPI now
I suspect that you already know the ASPI is a front organisation for war toys manufacturing and USA Government and anyone caring and inquisitive can type-ASPI funding- into a search engine and find out.
It would be interesting to see if the ABC would do an expose’
The new 7:30 star Jacob Greber is quoting in ABC Hews from trusted “ think tank” ASPI. It seems the military industrial complex may have found another recriut.
The biased reporting on the middle east conflict is my main concern, if innocent israelis get taken they are hostages , if innocent palestinians get taken they are prisoners..
Israel has the right to defend itself, but the palestinians dont despite they being the people whose country has been invaded and stolen ?
Palestinian resistance fighting back against occupation is terrorism , but using car bombs and exploding pagers mobile phones and assinnations is not ?
Hamas is a terrorist organisation..but the UN does not hold that view..
Its like the israeli jewish lobby controls what our ABC can report and how they word it…dont we have a federal law that prevents foriegn political influence in our nation ?
Bren.. you’ve voiced my long held opinion of ABC reporting around language used: soft shoe on LNP and Israel and Aent Orange and often over-try-hard-to-be-neutral but comes out pathetically biased against the ALP and Palestine… and Iran…etc..all the ‘baddies’
Along with Jane Norman.
Agree re Greber and yes noticed him quoting ASPI. Don’t trust him at all..
Should we just roll over and give up now?
They’ve bought the LNP and successfully conjured a China war myth – and now, after AUKUS, Gaza and Israel’s wars on anything that moves, the military industrial complex will be rich enough to buy the whole world.
No, we shouldn’t just roll over and give up. There are lots of groups that might be rich enough to buy some or even all of the media but there’s no deal unless there is a willing seller. And that surely is what David’s article is about..
The military industrial complex, its fellow travellers, enablers,and hangers on and powerful funding base present an existential threat to the Australian society. The profitability of war outranks any other consideration for this cabal. The rhetoric of “security” is used to distract from the real objective -money. The narrative is always about-someone is a threat that you need to be protected from. This fear tactic then grants licence to extract the public money to be distributed to the “defence”players. The reality is of course that the business requirements to always have a conflict that requires “defence” spending if far more damaging to society and individuals than the manufactured threat that is used to propel the “defence”agenda that feeds the voracious military industrial complex. Rinse and repeat.
Whenever Australian politicians, such as that right wing cold war warrior relic, the MHR for Corio, along with their no/low tax paying millionaire and billionaire friends, including the reprehensible reptile, ably assisted by his pathetic minions of 10th rate semi-literate amateurish scribblers and hydrogen sulphide filled flatulent radio and television shock jocks and airheads find that the People are not listening to them they resort to Sinophobia, which is almost a carbon copy of the hollow anti-communist campaign initiated by Pig Iron Bob in the 1950s, ie they always resort to scare campaigns, as both the little grey dormouse, and his media puppet masters, such as the reprehensible reptile and the porky packer, are now doing, and moving on from the equally false claims of ‘Muslim terrorism, they are now resorting to a patently untrue racist Sinophobia campaign, blaming China for all the ‘evils’ under the sun and ratching up an equally false new ‘red/yellow peril’ fear. ONE FINAL POINT !! IT IS NOT CHINA THAT IS SURROUNDING GILEAD WITH HIGH TECH. NUCLEAR BASES, IT IS RATHER THE OTHER WAY AROUND, WITH GILEAD IN AN OBSCENELY AGGRESSIVE POSTURE, RINGING CHINA WITH HIGH TECH. NUCLEAR MILITARY BASES!!!!!
The ABC is becoming like Qantas, losing its integrity with diminished quality and standards. I watched the NSW 7pm news the other night, the first time for a while, and was shocked at how poor the journalism and the production was.
A similar observation could be made of Q&A, where the host, in order to appease the panel fails to ask probing questions of the panel’s responder. It could be a case of not being offensive to the panel member, in case subsequent requests to appear on the panel are refused. Recall Daniel Andrews refusing to appear on talkback radio with Neil Mitchell.
Is this straight out cash for comment? There appear to be other ABC reporters and compères parroting the American or Israeli line on particular issues without serious questions about where their information is sourced.
After nearly 15 years of writing and researching around Australia’s obsession with past (and future) wars (except the most important one, the Australian (Frontier) Wars), I’ve concluded that not only is there a Military-Industrial complex (President Eisenhower c. 1960), it is also heavily into Commemoration, subsidising Education (especially in STEM), and buying susceptible Media folks. So the MICEM complex. And because the journalists also run gently on the other components (from not criticising the Anzac legend to not closely scrutinising AUKUS beyond the submarines) maybe put an * against that second M. Thus MICEM*
This is a much bigger problem than just with Greene. Governments have neutered ABC and mainstream media are funded by big corporations and so literally lie (remember Iraq 2, children overboard, Covid vaccination info… the list goes on). People are slowly realising how captured mainstream media are. So when it says social media can’t be trusted because of so much misinformation, it is a simple case of hypocrisy for different reasons. While there is a lot of misinformation on social media on one hand, on the other it is the only place to find the truth on controversial topics where big corporations have big interests, eg War in Gaza, War in Ukraine, impact of the Covid vaccination, etc. Dr Stephens is right (and surprisingly Trump is right on this specific point – and I am no fan of Trump) – the military-industrial complex is controlling the narrative far too much (and spreading misinformation) for its own ends. And I was an Army Officer for 11 years so I am hardly the typical left wing critic.
This is another low in the quality of staff at the ABC. So many of them are poorly educated, very low levels of knowledge and seem to lack any ambition to do research about any topic they are speaking about. They just mouth the media release and seem to not care or understand what they are taking about.
This situation is however, extremely dangerous. He is trying to influence people to support actions determined by the International Court as illegal.
I have for a few years now accorded little credibility to Andrew Greene’s reporting. It has been altogether too matey-matey with the Russell Hill mob, as though he was hot-desking up there. Maybe that’s his brief – stay away from the strategic stuff and focus on Defence PR. A Defence correspondent needs a good helping of Tingle in his/her output, to do a bit of sacred cow slaying, starting with Dick Marles.
Absolutely agree David. I’d also like to see the Murdoch stable of journalists’ declare any pecuniary interests, approved by their employer. I remember the Cash for Comment scandals of Alan Jones & John Laws. ABA estimated $18M backhanders, & they got off scott free, 2UE fined $360K in 1999. Peanuts.
What’s happened since then with the ABA?? Crickets 🦗
We need to start funding the ABC properly so they can pay their journalists and researchers competitively. As one of the few remaining reliable media outlets, the ABC are essential to the integrity of journalism in this country. Having watched the systemic undermining and under-funding of the ABC for the past few decades, I hope and pray that the current government will finally turn the tide. If the incentives to sacrifice integrity for financial gain are no so attractive, then perhaps we will be able to count on Aunty in the future to keep telling us the truth.
Great principle there David. The community needs to know of any cash for comment.
And, Media Watch deserves a special appropriation.
Silly me, here I was hoping that Kim Williams, a hatcher man from the reprehensible reptile media empire, might have returned ABC to its fearless independence and say damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead to principled and courageous editorial freedom. Instead, there has now been added a porky packer stooge, in the form of Hugh Marks (wasn’t Ita the liphping kid bad enough?), with both recycled warmed-over reprehensible reptile, and porky packer propaganda rammed down our throats. As a result, there is very little to cheer about, feeling dread that we have merely replaced the lithping kid, a porky packer stooge with a reprehensible reptile stooge and another porky packer. I am sure that there were plenty of competent people from the community media outlets, who would have done a remarkable job at running the ABC, and who understand the needs and strengths of a strong public broadcasting sector, rather than more pathetically rusted-on capitalists, and comprador stooges, from two of the most venal, unscrupulous, dictatorial and bigoted media tycoons that have ever existed, and, who both make William Randall Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer look like gentle social democrats by comparison.
It’s elementary dear David! Greene has betrayed trust thereby ABC stalwarts, like me, are disgusted. It matters for brand value for both him and the organisation. But, I think he made a mistake and he should be kept on after he apologises and says his penance.
Surprise the war making machine is buying influence. Drums of war beat loud. But remember truth is the first to go during war. Propaganda prevails. Forever vigilant.
Haven’t trusted much from ABC since Barry Cassidy was pushed out of Insight!
The ABC has lost its objectivity. It now refers to the two ship that passed Australia far over the horizon to the south as a “flotilla”. Rally? And without any sense of shame are prepared to call the government of any country that the US doesn’t like a “regime”. This is the wordsmithing on 1984, but it is happening with the much-loved ABC which is meant to be impartial and objective. No longer it seems. We are lost.