In a lengthy essay at Creative Economy, Margaret Simons takes on my criticism of the ABC trying to replicate the already existing commercial and civil society organisations - as well as individuals - that provide ‘town squares’ for public debate. (I spell out my argument here, here and here.)

Simons has two responses. The first is that the ABC could encourage direct conversation between media professionals and the public - unlike private blogs, which she implies lack the ‘professional’ voice. I’m not sure how she squares that view with the now highly influential mainstream commercial journalists who now have widely-read blogs, many of which are very participatory. The idea of collaboration between professionals and audience is one which most commercial organisations are groping towards. So it is hard to see what ‘public good’ that is being under-provided here.

The ABC could certainly offer its journalists the opportunity to blog under its brand, but to my mind, there doesn’t seem to be a good case to change the ABC’s charter or provide significant extra funding to produce participatory content. For somebody who is enthusiastic about the creative potential of the audience, Simons doesn’t seem have much faith in the town squares that the audience create themselves. Civil society is actually pretty resourceful.

The second response is much less convincing. The distaste the ABC supporters have for advertising has always struck me as a first and foremost an aesthetic argument, rather than a policy one. Introducing advertising would certainly favour the production of more popular programs over less popular ones, but surely striving for popularity would be one of the most ‘audience-responsive’ reforms the ABC could make. Anyway, it is hard to see why advertising is ruining the public square.

For this reason, I think Simons is overly cynical when she describes the commercial media as a “shopping mall” - if that’s all our commercial print, radio and television media really is, then there is a lot of good journalism sold in that shopping mall. Certainly, there is tension in the commercial media between the considerations of business and the considerations of journalism, but, all things considered, journalism is doing pretty well.

Simons ends with a call for the ABC’s charter to be revised to be made less prescriptive. The charter could certainly do with some revision, but I would argue it needs to be made stricter, not more open. There are few government funded bodies in Australia that are as undirected and open-ended as the ABC.

If the broadcaster feels that it is being constrained by its charter at the moment, that is certainly not obvious in its activities - I hate to keep harping on about the ABC’s Second Life adventure, but any charter that allows a government department to do something like that is hardly too shackled.