From One Nation Senator, Sean Bell NSW
Bias at the ABC is rarely announced as bias. It doesn’t arrive as an explicit editorial instruction or a formal party-political position.
It appears in tone, emphasis, repetition, story selection and, most importantly, language. It appears in the words used to describe one side of politics compared with another.
The ABC does criticise Labor. But it uses language which frames it as a government that has got something wrong.
When it comes to One Nation or the Coalition the ABC reaches for different language. The issue is not simply whether a policy is right or wrong. It is whether something darker is happening.
It becomes “ominous”, a “radical realignment”, or “dangerous territory”. It becomes a “freight train”. This is the real bias in the ABC: it treats Labor’s failures as politics, but the rise of the right as a threat.
Senator Sean Bell’s office did an audit of 60 ABC political news, feature, and analysis items – 15 each about Labor, One Nation, Coalition, and Greens. It coded the ABC’s own language in headlines, introductory material and article text while excluding attacks attributed to politicians, interviewees or outside commentators – these are the ABC’s own words.
Labor doesn’t get a free pass. Of the 15 Labor items examined, 12 contained adverse editorial language. Labor was criticised over broken promises, tax decisions, political risk and poor handling of public backlash. That is scrutiny. It is what political reporting should do.
Of the 30 items concerning One Nation or the Coalition, nine contained ABC-authored harsh language presenting those parties or their political direction as menacing, radical, dangerous, or destabilising. Of the 30 items concerning Labor or the Greens, not one did.
Following One Nation’s victory in Farrer, ABC analysis described the timing as “ominous”, said the messages were “lethal” and warned of a “One Nation freight train” bearing down on the major parties. Another ABC analysis referred to One Nation’s “extreme views” and Pauline’s “harsher edges”.
One Nation does not need to be protected from scrutiny. Question our policies. Challenge our candidates. Expose hypocrisy and incompetence wherever they exist. But when Australians vote for One Nation, it is not the role of the publicly funded broadcaster to frame their decision as an approaching danger.
The ABC has a duty to provide accurate and impartial news. Its own standards require due impartiality and warn against favouring one perspective over another. That does not mean journalists cannot analyse politics. It means their analysis should explain events rather than instruct Australians which political movements to fear.
That is not impartial journalism. It is a political frame. The ABC should report politics, not referee it.
