Has ABC managing director Hugh Marks found his own Antoinette Lattouf moment?
Only months after declaring at the National Press Club “the importance of owning mistakes quickly … and correcting and acknowledging them and then moving on” in November last year, he’s stuck staying silent on a pretty obvious mistake – the broadcast on July 12 of a Race Around the World segment that included a graphic fantasy of torturing Gina Rinehart.
“When the revolution comes, will you hide under your bed or will you know exactly how to shove a stick right up Gina Rinehart’s butthole, stirring it round, mixing her guts up nice and smooth, making her into one big sausage roll, to make something outta nothing,” the offensive script read.
So many of the ABC’s missteps on this matter under Marks are following the same pattern of his predecessor David Anderson’s botching of the Lattouf affair.
The ABC and/or its external production house, Endemol Shine, reacted to pressure and apparently encouraged the contestant concerned, Kate McGuinness, to lodge an apology.
But the ABC, which ultimately approved the segment being broadcast in the first place, has not yet issued a “sorry, Gina”.
Indeed its reflex was to support broadcasting the item using the “satire” defence.
The item has now been referred to the ABC’s independent ombudsman, Fiona Cameron. Presumably she is examining whether the short film transgressed any internal ABC editorial rules or guidelines.
As if this is some form of judicial process, Marks’s spokesman says the ABC can make no further comment until the ombudsman’s adjudication is complete.
But Cameron is not a judge. Her examination is not a court case involving some concept of sub judice.
And the guidelines against which she is undertaking her task are like the laws of cricket: verbose, interweaving, complex and quasi-legal. I know because I helped write the first version along with Bruce Donald, the ABC’s head of legal at the time under then chairman David Hill.
There isn’t a paragraph in those guidelines that says what should be obvious to any editor-in-chief: that a crappy gratuitous element, which probably breaks no laws but nevertheless is likely to offend or repel probably 80 per cent of the audience and be welcomed as a clever artistic input by virtually none, should have been aborted at birth.
Does Marks really need Cameron, who to my knowledge has not been a journalist or a filmmaker, to tell him McGuiness’s item should not have gone to air while including the Rinehart element? It’s like asking learned counsel to see if the segment broke any laws before deciding whether to apologise, notwithstanding the creator of the segment, McGuinness, already has.
The ABC’s actions so far are the antithesis of “owning mistakes quickly … correcting and acknowledging them … and then moving on”.
Perhaps this is worse than the Lattouf disaster.
Ian McGarrity was formerly deputy to the head of ABC-TV and the ABC’s head of development, and was the first head of TV at SBS
Has ABC managing director Hugh Marks found his own Antoinette Lattouf moment?
Only months after declaring at the National Press Club “the importance of owning mistakes quickly … and correcting and acknowledging them and then moving on” in November last year, he’s stuck staying silent on a pretty obvious mistake – the broadcast on July 12 of a Race Around the World segment that included a graphic fantasy of torturing Gina Rinehart.
“When the revolution comes, will you hide under your bed or will you know exactly how to shove a stick right up Gina Rinehart’s butthole, stirring it round, mixing her guts up nice and smooth, making her into one big sausage roll, to make something outta nothing,” the offensive script read.
So many of the ABC’s missteps on this matter under Marks are following the same pattern of his predecessor David Anderson’s botching of the Lattouf affair.
The ABC and/or its external production house, Endemol Shine, reacted to pressure and apparently encouraged the contestant concerned, Kate McGuinness, to lodge an apology.
But the ABC, which ultimately approved the segment being broadcast in the first place, has not yet issued a “sorry, Gina”.
Indeed its reflex was to support broadcasting the item using the “satire” defence.
The item has now been referred to the ABC’s independent ombudsman, Fiona Cameron. Presumably she is examining whether the short film transgressed any internal ABC editorial rules or guidelines.
As if this is some form of judicial process, Marks’s spokesman says the ABC can make no further comment until the ombudsman’s adjudication is complete.
But Cameron is not a judge. Her examination is not a court case involving some concept of sub judice.
And the guidelines against which she is undertaking her task are like the laws of cricket: verbose, interweaving, complex and quasi-legal. I know because I helped write the first version along with Bruce Donald, the ABC’s head of legal at the time under then chairman David Hill.
There isn’t a paragraph in those guidelines that says what should be obvious to any editor-in-chief: that a crappy gratuitous element, which probably breaks no laws but nevertheless is likely to offend or repel probably 80 per cent of the audience and be welcomed as a clever artistic input by virtually none, should have been aborted at birth.
Does Marks really need Cameron, who to my knowledge has not been a journalist or a filmmaker, to tell him McGuiness’s item should not have gone to air while including the Rinehart element? It’s like asking learned counsel to see if the segment broke any laws before deciding whether to apologise, notwithstanding the creator of the segment, McGuinness, already has.
The ABC’s actions so far are the antithesis of “owning mistakes quickly … correcting and acknowledging them … and then moving on”.
Perhaps this is worse than the Lattouf disaster.
Ian McGarrity was formerly deputy to the head of ABC-TV and the ABC’s head of development, and was the first head of TV at SBS