Bias
28-Nov-2005On the weekend I learned that journalists in this country have been informed that there is a certain term that is considered bias, and will not be taken lightly by the Federal Government if it is used in reporting.
The term?
“Our troops.”
Apparently, we’re not to be allowed to think of Australian Defence Force personnel in Afghanistan or Iraq as “our troops.”
This is uncorroberated, but it’s interesting to see that we’re so coy about our commitment.
This was discussed in Crikey recently. AFAIK it originates with Queensland Liberal senator Santo Santoro who is taking (who else) the ABC to task for “overwhelmingly anti-conservative” institutional bias. One of the reasons he cited was an ABC editorial policy which apparently restricted use of the term “our troops”.
This is all straight out of the Dick Alston playbook. An anonymous journo responded to the allegations by saying that it is common practice for “us”, “we” and “our” to be off limits in reporting. As he put it:
There are many other good reasons not to use these terms, not the least of which is that the content is syndicated to other news agencies around the world.
That’s certainly a different perspective to the one that was put to me. If the Government is the cause of the editorial policy, and the main critic of it, that would be tragi-comic.
Syndication is a concern, but as I understand it syndication of ABC content is quite defined. The media in question were current affairs programs, which tend not to be syndicated and when they are, they’re stamped with contextual information.