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The chair of the ABC has sounded the alarm on the health of democracy around the world, citing US vice-presidential candidate JD Vance's commentary about diminishing trust in institutions as a warning for Australian media organisations.
In a speech on Wednesday night, Kim Williams talked up the role of journalists at the ABC and other news outlets as defenders of truth and civility.
He also lamented the often angry tone of public discourse, with a nod to the rhetoric of former US president Donald Trump as an example of where debate has gone off the rails.
"Remove truth and you get a screaming match that creates and channels anger and hatred," Mr Williams said during the annual Sir John Monash Oration in Sydney.
"People yelling past each other, claiming that walls can keep enemies out, that drinking bleach can cure COVID, that everything that's going wrong with our nation, our society and our own lives is someone else's fault and must be avenged.
"Decisions based on untruths — stuff that is merely made up — is a recipe for policy disaster."
In pushing the media's role as a gatekeeper and fact checker for the public, the ABC chair made reference to Mr Trump's running mate, JD Vance.
In his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, the vice-presidential candidate said only 6 per cent of American voters believed the media was "very trustworthy".
"This isn't some libertarian mistrust of government policy, which is healthy in any democracy," Mr Vance writes in the memoir.
"This is deep scepticism of the very institutions of our society. And it's becoming more and more mainstream."
Citing the above passage, Mr Williams said he wondered how far Mr Vance had changed his views in the eight years since the book's publication, but those words held true.
"On the crucial point, he is correct — the very institutions of our society are losing the public's trust in large part because there is no longer a broad consensus about the facts," Mr Williams said.
Journalists must recommit to objectivity
Mr Williams, who took the reins of the public broadcaster's board earlier this year, also put some of his own staff on notice during his speech.
The respected media executive, who has a five-year term as ABC chair, said all journalists needed to recommit themselves to objectivity.
He pointed to the experience of another media executive, former Washington Post editor Martin Baron.
Loading..."Having grown up in a world of ubiquitous social media and identity politics, some of Baron's younger journalists were starting to regard themselves not as objective reporters but as activists and partisans," Mr Williams said.
"Angry at the glaring inequalities in American society, swept up in the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, they wanted to put aside staid notions about staying above the fray, and to enlist their newspaper in the cause.
"Tempting as it is to want to take sides, I think all of us in the media and cultural institutions generally must resist."
Mr Williams warned the consequences of doing otherwise were dire.
"When the truth is relative, democracy is imperilled," he said.
"In my view, objectivity must never be compromised in any media organisation, especially in a publicly owned one like the ABC."
Financial pressures imperilling media organisations
Mr Williams said the ABC's journalists were "capable of remarkable work" and had "demonstrated it time and again", and he wanted to "up the energy of serious journalism" at the taxpayer-funded institution.
But he did warn of financial pressures and the threat they posed to strong journalism.
The ABC chair pointed to tech giant Meta's decision to end commercial deals with Australian news organisations, worth tens of millions of dollars, as imperilling jobs and the viability of media companies.
"New ideas are needed to restore the commercial health of our commercial newsrooms," he said.
"It's my hope that they succeed — Nine, Seven, News Corp, the smaller independent players like Schwartz and Crikey.
"All are vital parts of our democracy.
"The ABC is not in opposition to commercial newsrooms — we are in an alliance with them to create an informed democratic citizenry."
Mr Williams also took a swipe at the conduct of media baron Keith Murdoch, father of billionaire News Corp chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch, as having pushed "fake news" during World War I.
He said Mr Murdoch and fellow war correspondent Charles Bean had campaigned to have General Sir John Monash removed from battlefield command in Europe, using their dispatches from the front to lobby the government.
"It was out-and-out nonsense — a disinformation campaign which collapsed when Prime Minister Billy Hughes, touring the front line, was told … that Monash had the esteem of all who worked with him," Mr Williams said.
"Bean's and Murdoch's folly was a great example of the idiocy of spreading fake news and of basing decisions on prejudice and ego."