ABC complaint

Chronology

On 6th February 2023 I received a reply from 'The ABC News Team' refuting my claim and directing me to a page on their 'iview' site headed 'International Mens' Day'. (Link) They argue that the 'ABC NEWS does not endorse any kind of discrimination' because they have a code of conduct which prohibits it. It is significant that the iview page does not show up when you search for 'International Mens' Day'. To find it you have to type in the exact address: iview.abc.net.au/collection/2572 .

Reply from the ABC

Not satisfied with the ABC's reply, on 17th February 2023 I submitted my complaint to the Australian Communication Media Authority (ACMA).

Complaint to the ACMA

On 20th February I received an email from Fiona Ross, a 'Compliance and Investigations Officer' at the Australian Communications and Media Authority. She took my complaint to be that the ABC 'did not effectively cover International Men’s Day.' The fact of 'no coverage at all' is not addressed. Further, she says it is a 'programming matter' and not in the ACMCA's remit. She seems not to have read the clause in the Code of Practice which states: 'no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.'

Reply from the ACMA

On 24th February I sent an enquiry to Nerida O'Loughlin, chair of the ACMA.

Enquiry to chair of the ACMA

On 11th April I received a reply from Nerida O'Loughlin, chair of the ACMA. She acknowledged that the ABC is obliged to 'not knowingly excluded or disproportionately represent ... any significant strand of thought or belief within the community' but it is not obliged to cover all possible matters and issues.

Only once the editorial decision has been made to cover an issue, does the ABC have to present 'a diversity of perspectives'. Editorial decisions themselves, (such as choosing to ignore International Men's Day), are beyond the remit of the ACMA.

Reply from Nerida O'Loughlin.

I will maintain a comments section as each phase of this 'complaints experience' unfolds.

TO BE CONTINUED

The ABC is Australia's national broadcaster. It is funded by taxpayer money and is meant to follow a Code of Practice that requires it to be impartial and represent a diversity of perspectives. (Link).

In particular it must not 'knowingly exclude' any 'significant strand of thought or belief within the community'.

I complained on 30th December 2023 (link), that they hadn't made any mention of International Men's Day on ABC TV for 2 years, which I took to be a sign of misandry and received a reply from the 'ABC News Team' on 6th February 2023.

Their reply utterly rejected my claims. (link)

The answer given to the question of 'Why International Men's Day was not mentioned on ABC TV on the 19th November', was 'the lack of coverage of this event is not an indication of sexism' [because] 'ABC NEWS does not endorse any kind of discrimination'. And they then refer me to the 'ABC Code of Practice'.

The ABC's argument is a simple one:

Premise 1: the ABC has a code of conduct that forbids sexism.
Conclusion: the ABC is not sexist.

There is a premise here that is not stated — it is hidden:

Premise 2: the ABC always follows its code of conduct.

So the ABC News Team answers my accusation of sexism by pointing out that its Code of Conduct forbids sexism, with the unstated premise taken as axiomatic.

This argument is supported by directing me to an iview 'page' with the heading 'International Men's Day'. (Link).

The page contains links to 17 ABC segments that have some connection to men e.g. an old 'Australian Story' featuring Paul Hogan. However, if you go to the iview homepage and search for 'International Men's Day' the page doesn't show up in the search results — it doesn't appear to be connected to any of the site's menus either. It seems to be a hurredly-thrown-together collection of old segments relating to men. Perhaps that's why it took 37 days to reply to my complaint.

I have taken screen shots of the two pages for historical purposes:

The ABC 'International Men's Day' page.
(Link)
Search results for 'International Men's Day' on iview.
(Link)

The other examples I cited were quickly dismissed by the six weeks rule: the ABC does not have to respond to complaints about articles or segments that are more than 6 weeks old. But note that I wasn't complaining about these segments, I was just using them as examples to substantiate the complaint about an event that had happened within the 6 week limit: the failure to advertise International Men's Day.

Not satisfied with the ABC's reply, I submitted my complaint to the Australian Communication Media Authority (ACMA) on 17th February 2023.

Complaint to the ACMA

I received a prompt reply from a 'compliance officer' at the ACMA on 20th February. She said she was replying to my 'complaint about the ABC’s coverage of International Men’s Day', saying that I thought the ABC 'did not effectively cover International Men’s Day', which she says is purely a 'programming matter' and beyond the remit of the ACMA.

What I complained about was that the ABC gave no coverage at all to International Men’s Day. Using the phrase 'not effectively cover' is like saying a mother 'didn't effectively cover' a baby in its crib, when what she did was to leave the baby outside in a snow drift during a blizzard! (See euphemism.)

She also points out that to make a complaint I 'must identify a specific program including the program name / date / time and also explain why [I] believe the specific program has breached the ABC Code.' This means to me that you can't complain about a lack of coverage of an issue.

Standard 4.2 in the ABC Code of Conduct reads:

4.2 Present a diversity of perspectives so that, over time, no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.

The only possible defence against my complaint would be for the ABC News team to say they didn't know about International Men’s Day. But the fact that ABC iview has a page of clips with a heading of 'International Men’s Day', (which doesn't show up when you search the site), shows that they did know about it, and they chose to knowingly exclude it from their programming.

Ms Ross's claim that complaints can only be made about programs, (not the lack of a program), is a fair indication that she hasn't actually read the ABC Code of Practice, let alone understood the words.

After reviewing the reply from Ms Ross, I decided to find out if the head of the ACMA, Nerida O'Loughlin, agreed with Ms Ross's assessment of my complaint. I sent her an email on 24th February and received a prompt acknowledgement of my email on the 27th. Her reply arived on 11th April 2023.

Ms O'Loughlin acknowledged that the ABC code of conduct obliges the ABC to 'not knowingly excluded or disproportionately represent ... any significant strand of thought or belief within the community,' but noted that it is not obliged to cover all possible matters and issues, and failing to mention an issue (such as International Men's Day) is an editorial matter, beyond the AMCA remit, and [presumably] not bound by the code of practice. She doesn't address the phrase 'knowingly exclude', and perhaps the neglect to report on a day that honours 50% of the population may have inadvertently slipped the ABC's notice — or a slap-dash page of articles on iview headed 'International Men's Day', would cover their obligations under the Code.

So it seems that the ABC Code of Conduct only 'kicks in' once a decision has been made (editorial) on what current issues to report on. Then those issues have to be presented in a balanced way.

Ms O'Loughlin makes a distinction between 'editorial decisions' and 'actual content', a distinction I can't find in the ABC Code of Conduct. Perhaps she is in possession of an 'executive' or 'official' version of the code not available to the lay person. The mind boggles!

All is not lost though. Ms O'Loughlin notes that I can 'complain to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.'

At times I question whether this sequence of events has actually happened or that, by some sort of psychotic process, I have stumbled into the 'Ministry of Truth' in George Orwell's '1984'. I certainly need to use Orwell's doublethink technique' to follow Ms O'Loughlin's logic.

Subject: The ABC's failure to adequately represent the interests of men in a balanced and fair way.

When International Women's Day came along on 8th March 2022 the ABC featured women's issues all day, and women's issues have continued to be highlighted incessantly throughout the year. However, when International Men's Day arrived on 19th November 2022, there was not one mention of it on ABC24 or ABC20.

I recorded the broadcasts on both channels from 7am to 9pm, and there was not one mention of International Men's Day.

This omission represents a failure to implement Part IV, Section 4 of the ABC Code of Practice, relating to impartiality and diversity of perspectives which states: 'no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.'

This could be put down to an 'oversight' if it were not for the incessant promotion of women's issues that we see every day on the ABC and the frequent massaging of facts and terminology so as to throw a favourable light on women and a shadow on men's welfare and issues.

1. Misrepresenting of statistical data
On International Women's Day a report by CoreLogic, entitled 'Women & Property: One Year On', was featured in segments repeated many times throughout the day. (online) (local copy) The message being presented was that in Australia, men own more real estate than women, and because of the 'gender pay gap' 'men can save for a 20% home deposit a year earlier (on average) than women.

The term used was 'dwelling ownership', and the figures from the report were correctly given, from the perspective of having names on the deeds of property: Property ownership: men: 29.9%; women: 26.6%.

It is only when you actually read the Corelogic report (download link: https://www.corelogic.com.au/news-research/reports/women-and-property-22) that the limitations of these figures are revealed.

Only names on title deeds were considered and this information was not compared to the electoral rolls. So who was actually living in the properties (dwelling) and exercising the 'effective benefit of ownership' is an open question.

If you consider the facts that couples often buy a property together in the early years of the relationship whilst the female partner is not working whilst having children, then it is natural that the working partner may be the sole name of the deed to the property, (mortgage issues etc.), and the fact that after divorce, it is usual for the female partner to retain residency of the house and custody of the children. Note: there are over 56,000 divorces in Australia each year. Further, on the break-up of a relationship, division of property is the rule, regardless of whose name is on the deed to the marital home.

So given these facts, it is not reasonable to say that men 'own' more property in Australia than women, and certainly not to repeat the segment over and over as the ABC did on International Women's Day.

2. Selective use of gender specific terms
On the 12th September 2019, ABC News reported on a class action by 160 financial planners against the AMP. The reporter referred to the fact that the chairman of AMP was forced to resign as a result of the findings of the Banking Royal Commission.

I was surprised, because the ABC is usually quick to de-genderise terms like 'chairman' to 'chairperson'.

The facts of this situation were that it was a 'chairwoman' who was forced to resign along with 3 female and 2 male board members.

Why did the ABC use the word 'chairman' instead of 'chairperson' or 'chairwoman'?

Conclusion
The above are just two examples of the selectivity and bias of ABC reporting when it comes to gender issues. But the same orientation (bias) is observable every day.

This is not just oversight or neglect, it amounts to definitive proof of a deliberate policy of misandry.

Thank you for your email regarding ABC NEWS. We are pleased to read you watch ABC TV and ABC NEWS.

Your concerns there was no mention of International Men's Day 19.11.22 on ABC NEWS Channel has been noted. It appears stories leading the bulletin 19.11.22 were the flooding emergency in NSW in Condobolin, APEC Summit in Thailand, MH17 Verdict, Cassius Turvey's funeral and legacy, Victorian Electoral commission's investigation, and Twitter's workforce. We would like to assure you the lack of coverage of this event is not an indication of sexism. ABC NEWS does not endorse any kind of discrimination.

The two examples that you provided are more than 90 days ago so we cannot investigate your concerns.

Should you remain dissatisfied, you may be able to pursue your complaint with the Australian Communications and Media Authority, http://www.acma.gov.au.

Note: The input box on the ACMA website has a maximum input of 4,000 characters. The complaint attachments were uploaded in a pdf file.

I recently submitted a complaint to the ABC (see attachment 1 in attached pdf) which suggested that their programming was not adhering to Part IV, Section 4 of the ABC Code of Practice (relating to impartiality and diversity of perspectives which states: 'no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented').

In particular I complained that whilst the ABC gives extensive coverage to International Women's Day, for the past 2 years, when International Men's Day (19th November) arrived, no mention of the occasion was made (whatsoever) on the two most prominent ABC TV channels (ABC20 & ABC24).

I have received a reply to my complaint from the 'The team at ABC NEWS' (see attachment 2 in attached pdf) that does not address my basic complaint at all. They do acknowledge that the event was not mentioned at all on TV but point to an 'International Men's Day collection' iview page. They also state: 'We would like to assure you the lack of coverage of this event is not an indication of sexism. ABC NEWS does not endorse any kind of discrimination.'

The dedicated 'Men's Day' iview page has links to various male-oriented stories (see attachment 3 in attached pdf) that have been shown over the years – nothing recent. And the page is only accessible if you have the absolute address for it (https://iview.abc.net.au/collection/2572). You can't find the page by searching for 'International Men's Day' (see attachment 4 in attached pdf).

I think the slovenly and haughty nature of the ABC reply indicates an attitude of contempt for anyone who dares to questions the unbiased and fair nature of ABC news reporting and is sadly, a further proof that the ABC is following a deliberate policy of misandry. There can be no other explanation.

P.S. Please see the attached pdf of my full complaint to access the attachments:
Attachment 1: My complaint of 30th Dec. 2022.
Attachment 2: The ABC reply of 6th Feb. 2023.
Attachment 3: The ABC iview International Men's Day collection.
Attachment 4: Results of iview search 'International Men's Day.

On 20th February I received an email from Fiona Ross, a 'Compliance and Investigations Officer' at the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

from: Fiona Ross
to: "ibruce4@gmail.com"
date: Feb 20, 2023, 3:11 PM
subject: RE: Your complaint about the ABC’s coverage of International Men’s Day [SEC=OFFICIAL]

Your concern is that the ABC extensively covered International Women’s Day but did not effectively cover International Men’s Day.

While we acknowledge your concern and your reference to the impartiality provisions of the ABC Code, choices regarding programming and the news stories the ABC chooses to broadcast is an editorial decision for the ABC and does not fall within the ACMA’s remit.

In future, if you wish to make a Code complaint please note you must identify a specific program including the program name / date / time and also explain why you believe the specific program has breached the ABC Code.

Code complaints need to be made to the ABC within 6 weeks of the date of broadcast.

Australian Communications and Media Authority
E broadcasting@acma.gov.au
W acma.gov.au

from: Ian Bruce
to: info@acma.gov.au, authority.secretariat@acma.gov.au
date: Feb 24, 2023, 4:52 PM
subject: Review of complaint to the ACMA

I am sending this email to authority.secretariat@acma.gov.au and info@acma.gov.au as I am unable to find an email for yourself. Note that the 'mailto' link on https://www.acma.gov.au/authority doesn't work.

I lodged a complaint with the ACMA on 17th February 2023 (about ABC TV failing to represent the interests of men—in particular the failure to make any mention whatsoever of International Men's Day on 19th November 2022) and received a reply on 20th February.

The reply from the ACMA told me that I can only complain about an ABC program, not a lack of a program.

I can't follow the logic of this, as I specifically said my complaint related to Part IV, Section 4 of the ABC Code of Practice, which states: 'no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.'

I am complaining about a deliberate exclusion: failure to mention International Men's Day.

As the ABC reply directed me to an obscure page on iview headed 'International Men's Day', we can take it that they knew about the international event. So their failure to mention the event was a 'knowing' exclusion.

I list the full record below, but my question to you is whether or not you agree and stand by the reply I have received from the ACMA?

Thank you for your email received by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) on 24 February 2023.

You have asked that I confirm advice in a response you received from the ACMA’s Content Investigations team which related to your earlier complaint to the ABC about its compliance with the impartiality and diversity of perspectives obligations in its Code of Practice (Standard 4.2 of the ABC Code).

Standard 4.2 requires the ABC to present a diversity of perspectives so that, over time, no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.

To the extent that your first complaint to the ACMA raised concerns about programming decisions made by the ABC, it was correct to characterise these as editorial decisions for the ABC over which the ACMA has no remit.

In your subsequent correspondence, you asked about the application of Standard 4.2 of the Code, in circumstances where a complaint is about the absence of programming on a particular perspective.

Standard 4.2 does not oblige the ABC to cover all possible matters and issues in its programming or broadcast programs relating to specific events or subject matter. It requires the ABC, where it has made an editorial decision to cover an issue, to ensure a diversity of perspectives is presented.

I therefore confirm our previous advice that this was an editorial decision of the ABC and does not fall within the ACMA’s remit. I appreciate that you may take a different view. If you are not satisfied with the way we conducted ourselves in this matter, you can complain to the Commonwealth Ombudsman .

I followed the reference given for 'International Men's Day'. It listed many articles, all to do with a man or men, but the only mention of 'International Men's Day' was in a small caption at the top of the screen. The first 8 are as follows:

A search of the ABC iview site for the term 'International Men's Day' yields a lot of results, but the only mention of 'International Men's Day' is what I typed into the search box: