Commentators especially in the Murdoch press and senior managers at the ABC are at odds over the corporation's decision to publish documents leaked by the former American CIA employee Edward Snowden. Both sides cite the 'public interest' in arguing, respectively, against and for the decision to publish.
The Murdoch side says the ABC acted contrary to the public interest by damaging bilateral relations with Indonesia. The ABC says it upheld the democratic principles of free speech and the public's right to know. Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have used the same arguments when challenged about the consequences of their actions; that both are now under the protection of countries criticised for their infringements of free speech points up the hazards of presuming to occupy this particular moral high ground.
This is not the first time that the ABC's reporting of matters related to Indonesia has caused diplomatic ructions. In 1980 the ABC's Jakarta correspondent Warwick Beutler was expelled from Indonesia mainly in retaliation for Radio Australia news broadcasts about the occupation of East Timor. The ban was not lifted until 1991.
In evaluating the Indonesian response to the ABC's report on apparent attempts by the then-named Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) to listen into phone conversations by President Yudhoyono and his wife, this background is relevant and insufficiently acknowledged in recent commentaries.
The Indonesian leadership's sensitivity to insult, particularly involving any perceived interference by an external power in their nation's internal affairs, lies at the heart of the matter — more so than judgments about the Australian 'public interest'.
It is, I would suggest, not so much the fact that the DSD targeted Yudiyono that offends the Indonesian government (after all, it is a commonplace of intelligence gathering that you seek out the highest possible source), as having the fact shoved in their faces. In the lead-up to the presidential election in July, the head of state has been made to look foolish. His ruling party will also be worried that the contents of private conversations might find their way into the hands of domestic opponents.
The strength of Jakarta's retaliatory measures should be assessed in terms of these factors.
The ABC exists primarily for its Australian audience (the services of Radio Australia and Australia Network being the exceptions), and it must reflect the values and serve the needs of Australians. I doubt, however, whether most Australians would consider that they needed to know about this specific DSD operation or that their system of democracy was weakened by it having occurred.
On the other hand, judging from the recent election results, most do want an effective border protection strategy and understand that Indonesian cooperation is vital to achieving it. If 'the public' were in the editorial chair at the ABC, weighing up these concerns, I wonder whether it would have chosen to 'publish and be damned'.
No journalist worth his salt would sit on an important story simply to avoid upsetting the powers that be. Journalists of good standing, nevertheless, will differ in their opinion of what constitutes a story 'in the public interest'. That a piece of information is likely to cause a strong reaction is, I suggest, not the main criterion for determining its news value. The ABC argues that it is responsible for reporting the news, not for how others react to it, which of course is correct if the report has news value.
So wherein does 'news value' reside? That loaded question has only ever known a loaded answer: it resides in an assessment of whether a piece of information significantly alters the public's understanding of their safety and security, their rights and obligations in society, the functioning of their system of laws and governance, and the conduct of those holding positions of influence or responsibility.
ABC managing director Mark Scott said the DSD story needed to be reported because it fitted into 'a big international debate on intelligence activities in this digital age'. The story, of course, also fitted into another debate — a domestic one — about relations with Indonesia and the Abbott Government's 'stop the boats' initiatives. Few stories have a single context. To acknowledge one and not the other is problematic.
The editorial judgment involved was — for all the certitudes professed on both sides — a delicate one. It was complicated by the way the information came to the ABC: indirectly from Snowden, via the Guardian, which if nothing else affected the timing. There was undoubtedly a context of public interest, deriving from the Snowden leaks about US intelligence surveillance of world leaders such as Germany's Angela Merkel. Whether most Australians would have considered it sufficiently important to risk the relationship with Indonesia is less obvious.
But many of the arguments being mounted by the Murdoch and other commentators against the ABC's decision are, in my opinion, self-serving and hypocritical. The ABC does not have a special responsibility to be 'diplomatic' in deciding what to report and what not to report because some foreign power chooses to misconceive the status of the public broadcaster as a government mouthpiece. The ABC does not have an obligation to adjust its news judgments to implicitly support government policies. The ABC even does not have an obligation to weigh up what the majority of the public might think to do in such a situation.
It must only exercise its professional judgment as to 'news value', and be accountable for it. In reporting the spying operation against the Indonesian leader, in my opinion, it acted responsibly and in the ABC's best traditions.
Walter Hamilton was a journalist and manager at the ABC for 33 years.