Complaints to the ABC Ombudsman’s Office during the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum were “overwhelmingly” in relation to “bias” or “lack of balance”.
The national broadcaster’s chair of the Referendum Coverage Review Committee (RCRC), Mark Maley, released a report analysing the ABC’s reportage on the lead up to and the day of the referendum, where 60.8 per cent of Australia voted No to constitutionally enshrined recognition of Australia’s First Peoples.
More than half (51 per cent) of the ABC’s content was labelled as “YES”, compared to 23 per cent labelled “NO”, according to content monitoring from Isentia from 30 August.
Maley’s report found 315 out of the 383 content complaints to the ABC Ombudsman’s Office complained of “bias” or “lack of balance” in their reportage; 79 per cent of these complaints were in relation to a “favoured” Yes position.
However, Maley’s report notes that a share of voice is “not a measure of impartiality”.
“There are many factors it does not take into account, including when different positions are described or paraphrased or analysed,” the report said.
“It also doesn’t take tone into account. For instance, a challenging interview does not necessarily favour the person being interviewed.”
Maley listed seven reasons for the high level of Yes reportage compared to the No camp, including “availability of interviews”.
For example, Maley said Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, one of the high profile No campaigners, declined at least 52 interview requests with the ABC. Maley also reported she “did not agree to a single interview on a major broadcast program” with the ABC.
Other reasons included the nature of the news cycle, the lack of on-the-record opposition in Indigenous communities, neutral content and explainer content from the ABC that was considered as Yes content by the external analysis.
Maley’s report said ABC managers were advised to organise a “genuine diversity of perspectives” in reportage of the Voice, and that “no perspective should be unduly favoured”.
Out of the ten most prominent voices on the ABC at the time of the referendum, according to Maley’s analysis, five were supporting the No vote for the referendum. These voices were Warren Mundine, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Peter Dutton, Kerryanne Liddle and Lidia Thorpe.
Four sided with the Yes vote – Anthony Albanese, Noel Pearson, Linda Burney and Anne Twomey – and the other was Evan Ekin-Smith from the Australian Electoral Commission.
Audience engagement
There were 243 digital articles written on the ABC’s news website during the national broadcaster’s coverage of the referendum. According to Maley’s report, there were 30.4 million page views on these articles and a total of 98.4 million engaged minutes.
On Saturday 14 October – the day of the referendum – there were 3 million viewers of the ABC’s broadcast, Australia Votes: The Voice Referendum.
Streaming content on the day of the referendum was also at extremely high levels. On ABC Iview, 451,000 viewers were live streaming the ABC News Channel, which was 406.7 per cent higher than the 2023 year-to-date Saturday average.
On the ABC listen app, there were 85,000 listeners streaming ABC NewsRadio, 93.2 per cent higher than the 2023 year-to-date Saturday average.