Guardian Australia has rejected “unfounded allegations” of bias in its coverage of the Voice to Parliament referendum made by the No campaign, and will forge ahead with a new podcast series funded by a Yes23 campaign backer.
The podcast, dubbed The Voice Ask Me Anything, was launched last week and billed as a series that will run in the publication’s Full Story podcast feed every fortnight. The series “will cut through the noise” of the official Yes and No campaigns, with the financial backing of Yes campaign donor the Barlow Foundation.
The series accounts for one of two existing funding arrangements entered into by Guardian Australia with organisations that have since become Yes23 campaign benefactors. The first came in the form of a $300,000 grant from the Balnaves Foundation in March 2018 for Guardian Australia’s Indigenous affairs reporting through the Guardian Civic Journalism Trust. The arrangement with the Barlow Foundation was reached in 2020.
In April, both the Barlow Foundation and the Balnaves Foundation joined a coterie of more than 20 of Australia’s wealthiest philanthropists in pledging $17 million to support the Yes campaign for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
A spokesperson for Guardian Australia said the publication maintains complete editorial control over its journalism, regardless of who’s footing the bill, and pointed to relevant content labels and disclosures made about the funding arrangements.
“When we partner with a philanthropic funder, we agree on a broad area of coverage at the outset only, after which all editorial decisions are made by Guardian editors exclusively. Philanthropic partners never pitch story ideas to editors, nor do they have any access to the editorial process,” the spokesperson told Crikey.
“There are no exceptions to this.”
Last week, the No campaign offshoot Fair Australia seized on Guardian Australia’s funding arrangement with the Balnaves Foundation and charged the publication with carrying out its reporting with an “aggressive bias against” opponents of the Voice to Parliament.
It claimed reporters had quoted the campaign selectively and “lied” in requests for comment, and that it would therefore no longer engage with the publisher, just days after the official No case was panned for mischaracterising a quote attributed to constitutional expert Greg Craven. Fair Australia said it was “considering further action” against Guardian Australia.
“This relates to correspondence we’ve received from its reporters where they have demanded responses to assertions of fact later revealed to be knowingly untrue in their reporting, and their refusal to print important, relevant and newsworthy on-record context,” a Fair Australia spokesperson told Crikey.
“Given the defamatory statements about this campaign that Crikey has published in recent days — that we have been ‘caught out engaging in racist rhetoric’, that we ’empower, legitimise and amplify racism’ — we are also unlikely to engage with your organisation in future,” they added.
In a statement, Guardian Australia rejected “any claims of lies, selective quotes, bias” or any other allegations made by the No campaign spinoff without proof.
“We have asked Fair Australia to provide evidence for the claims they’ve made, and they have not provided any,” a Guardian Australia spokesperson said.
“As is good journalistic practice, we will continue to offer Fair Australia the right to reply for any reporting we do that concerns them. It will be up to them if they want to answer or not, but we will continue to give them the opportunity to do so.”
Catharine Lumby, a media professor at the University of Sydney, said the funding arrangements do not present the ethical quandary the No campaign would have readers believe.
“People can go and look up the foundation and they can work it out. I think disclosures are important with these funding mechanisms, but I don’t lie awake at night worrying about the ABC or The Guardian being biased,” she said. “Put it that way.”
The first episode of Guardian Australia’s new podcast went live last Thursday, and saw Ngiyampaa Weilwan woman and host Laura Murphy-Oates joined by Indigenous affairs editor Lorena Allam, Yes campaigner Kerry O’Brien and 2023 Young Australian of the Year for Queensland Talei Elu. It sought to answer mailbag questions from readers, including “Why is the Yes campaign so invisible?” and “Why is the over-55s cohort the most likely to vote No?”.
“I think people have real questions about the Voice, and are craving in-depth, thoughtful answers from people who best understand the issues. This is the place to find it,” Murphy-Oates said in a statement last week.
The podcast’s 230,000 unique monthly listeners can expect future episodes to feature experts who reflect “various viewpoints”, including opponents of the proposed Voice, the Guardian Australia spokesperson said.
“There has only been one episode published so far. We are committed to reporting fairly and accurately on all aspects of the referendum campaign and will continue to do so,” they said.
