Jul
9
2009
Blogging // Opinion

What’s going on at ABC news?

Author An article by Elahn    Comments 7 Comments
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My first in a new series of Aunty Insider posts.

This is an opinion piece. It’s not to accuse any one particular person, group of people or business. The people I work with at the ABC are wonderful hard working friends and are as much stuck in this stressful position as I am. I respect all of them and only take aim here at a broader, general picture of which affects us all. I speak only for myself and do not represent anyone else.

Last week I was working an edit shift at the ABC and was asked by a producer to show her how to edit something on her desktop edit application.

“I can’t show you”, I said.
“Because you don’t know or you don’t want to show me?” was the angry reply.
My answer came slowly. I was crossing a line from which I could not return, but my voice carried confidently and unwavering.
“I know how, but I won’t show you.”
Her look was of contempt and rightfully so.
“Explain why”, she demanded. I continued as she and the other journalists and producers listened in.
“I am casually employed by the ABC, like most other staff lately. I am on a fixed hourly rate and as far as I know I am here in the capacity of a video editor. Well, that’s what I’m lead to believe as every time I’ve done a shift for them over the last 5 years I sit in an edit suite and very quickly edit together stories for the 7pm news.
“Lately though, and without direct instruction from my superiors, there has been an expectation that I am also here to assist journalists and producers with their desktop editing. Not to mention I now have to use 3 different editing systems (Avid, FCP and Aurora) as well as understand how to get feeds from Reuters and ATPN and how to send stories to the automated control room and how to deal with technical problems, work various shifts of the day which may see me either starting at 6 in the morning or finish past midnight, deal with a new filing/bin structure, work with different producers, journalists, news control room operators and work on various programs such as the 7pm news, Ausnet, NewsHour and Lateline.
“On several occasions I’ve been asked to be on hand to offer editing support to journalists and every time I tell them I’m happy to as long as I get paid at a higher rate to my $40 per hour for editing. Every time I am confronted with silence, an indication of a big fat NO. There has never been an offer to discuss or negotiate.
“Over the 5 years I’ve been casually employed by the ABC in Brisbane and in Melbourne a great part of my yearly income is from them yet I’ve never been offered a more permanent position let alone a longer term contract (the one time a colleague and me applied for a full time position it was given to another person who didn’t meet the selection criteria). The scope of my scheduled shifts is as far as 2 weeks in advance.
“With the new editing systems that have been introduced to the newsroom, I as a casual have been offered no official training. Everything I know now I’ve learnt on the job and often motivated by deadlines and necessity. Full time staff and now journalists have been given official training, although only several weeks of it. I have close to 20 years hands on experience, always learning new systems and technologies. It’s what I have to do as a freelance operator. You never stop learning.
“My reward for doing a good job at ABC news is not only my fortnightly pay, it’s the continued offers for more shifts and the appreciation of the producers and journalists I work for. Yet lately my motivation for value adding and doing more than being an efficient and speedy editor is less and less. My efforts go unnoticed by management and just doing the bare minimum of my functions is now enough to get repeat employment. I’ve never missed a deadline and always produce the highest standard of work. Sometimes things go a little wrong and it’s only then do I get a call from management to ask what went wrong or I get an online form to fill out to pass on to maintenance for repair. I’ve never received an email to thank me for working overtime or for making the deadline with the lead story.
“So when this expectation that I will happily show journalists how to do what I’ve been doing for 20 years provides me with nothing in return I walk away from this place everyday feeling disrespected. Each day I show loyalty and honour to provide the best I can and each day I feel less likely to care so much.

“Call me mad for speaking up, and at this stage I have the feeling I’m the only one, but enough is enough. The blurring of my responsibilities with those of a trainer and technician has blurred too much.

“The sentiment I have is a shared one I believe. The position I’m in is to do what I’m asked by my colleagues. Failure to do so based on moral grounds is tantamount to a personal dislike of my fellow workers. Believe me when I say it is not. It is the exact opposite. It is because I respect those I work with and now I demand respect in return. I would like nothing more than for staff and management to work harmoniously.

“The issue comes down to three things, communication, respect and remuneration.
For a communication based industry it is poor. I do not have a clear channel of communication to my superiors. I feel they do not represent me and their department but only pass on what is told to them from higher up. I am left to feel less like a human being and more like a machine without emotions.

“Respect should speak for itself. Respect the fact I have skills and experience and when put under pressure can deliver. Respect my knowledge of editing theory and practice, computers, software, vtr machines, tape formats, compression settings, quality control, audio levels, media management, working well in a group and working by myself.

“Last but not least, Remuneration. You are asking me, in effect, to train the journalists how to edit. Editing is something I’ve been doing for 20 years. I am happy to put together a training program with a price tag attached, and it’s more than $40 per hour mind you. But with that price tag comes all the skill and experience I’ve mentioned above.

“So who of you that read this feel the same as I do? If you do speak up. Speak up now. The more of us that stand up for our craft, for our livelihood, for our rights to be respected the better the channels of communication will become. We need to get together on this and discuss the issues in an open forum, management and staff. We need to know what it is that motivates us to to the work we do. For me it is more about respect than about money. It’s more about communication than workload. If you are teaching someone else how to do your job you should stop now and ask yourself what it’s worth. If when you think about coming to work you are confronted with stress and anxiety but not because you are working on a breaking story but rather you are having to learn how the new system works then stop. Think about how much this is costing you, your health and sanity.

“Technology will always change, there is no stopping it. New systems and applications will need to be learned and taught. This is a given. Automation will evolve to replace people yet people will always be needed when, and only when things go wrong. Then, like the firefighter, our hearts racing and phones ringing, will we be called to put out the fire and save lives and bulletins.

“People need to come first. This I truly believe. If people are being put second to machines and cost cutting then something is wrong. We as humans are driven by purpose and love. If the world is moving to fast then let’s slow it down a little. Just enough to keep up with it. Resources need to put more into training and retraining staff, to open channels of communication, to welcome comment and feedback, to speak to staff on all levels and see what they can do to make the workspace better.”

I didn’t tell the producer all this, I’m telling you. I wish I could have told her all, but she understood in the end and apologised. I told her she didn’t have to apologise, that we were on the same level, dealing with the same angst and worry. I feel strongly enough about this I want to do something about it at the risk of falling on my sword. If I didn’t feel like I was doing the right thing I wouldn’t be writing this email and I wouldn’t be telling journalists I can’t help them. It’s now open for discussion. Pass this post on to others who you know may feel the same and let’s get the ball rolling.

If you work at the ABC then post your stories here. Be anonymous if you like but share your stories.

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About the Author: Elahn Zetlin

I'm Elahn from Melbourne, Australia. This website is a collection of my thoughts, ideas, interests and more

7 Comments + Add Comment

  • Nicki Bentley MarshallNo Gravatar July 9, 2009 at 8:11 am

    Nicki Bentley-Marshall at 16:36 on 09 July
    Obviously, I don’t work in the same industry as you, but that said I can relate to your plight.
    I watched my husband run a company for many years, pull it out of debt, solve all their major marketing problems, deal with all the staff issues and train all their staff only to have those he trained put into higher positions with more pay. The reason they gave was that no one could do the job he was doing as well as himself. Everyday they expected more from him without the financial benefits. Eventually he left and, much to their surprise, the company stopped functioning effectively and they had to employ 6 ( yes 6) new staff members to do his job. They called him and begged for his return with a slight pay rise. He laughed at their proposal and told them they had to be kidding. He would never have left had he been given the respect he so rightly deserved.
    I’m by no means telling you to leave, but stick by your guns, if you let people take advantage they will without doubt do so.
    Nic xxx

  • anonNo Gravatar July 13, 2009 at 3:48 am

    How can they treat an entire class of skills this way? Easy, remove the pretence to quality. The only yardstick for the ABC now is the Editorial Policy handbook. It refers to the content not the medium.
    Therefore an interview should be acurate but not litigious, it says nothing about it being ‘in-focus’ or ‘easy to understand’ or ‘jarring to watch’.
    As long as it could go on-air then on-line, who cares what it looks like? Not Auntie apparently.

    On behalf of the poor viewer, who remains to scrutinise the technical quality of the product? All that knowledge and skill has been replaced by technological advancement (thats code for culling costs).

    Soon the pressure of pre-production script creation AND post-production will, 1. keep stories from getting to air, or, 2. make those that do get to air quite hard to watch.
    Will people still watch? Yes.
    Will they care that the stories look like Uncle John’s home movies? Probably not. No one seems to mind the big black holes and silly supers going to air now. Perhaps Auntie is softening us up for the real change, change down. When we will see more of the, “jack-of-all-trade but master-of-NONE” stories.

    It’s not that the Journalists don’t care about the product they will be asked to create. It’s just that, by definition, they don’t have the depth of experience to know what’s wrong.

    How many people can recognise smoke coming from a car as bad? How many of us know what to do to fix it?

    They make, I fix. That’s how quality is done.

  • LucyNo Gravatar August 11, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    If it’s any consolation, desktop editing has been tried overseas in many locations and has had very limited impact. In most places, editors/cameramen still cut the packages, while journos do the simple stuff. Generally it has been found that a journalist does not have the time, nor the skill, to put together a package competently. Being an editor, you’d know that most of the work goes into tweaking/adjusting the audio, and that it’s fairly time consuming. Amazingly, ABC management weren’t told this by the Grass Valley salespeople and so they are learning the hard way. In the meantime, we are seeing increasingly crappy product go to air.

    Good for you for standing up to your journo “colleague” and for defending the craft. If only more editors at the ABC would do the same.

  • RiggerNo Gravatar February 6, 2010 at 3:50 pm

    I have been asked several times to ‘train’ others in various aspects of editing. At first I obliged, taking it as an acknowledgement of my level of skill and experience. Then eventually it backfired on me. While I was an ABC employee a subordinate I had helped to train was given a job on a prestige, high budget production despite being much less experienced. (When I challenged the appointment it became apparent that my subordinate got the job because she was female and I am not. But that’s another issue!). It happened to me again while I was freelancing and working on a very well known long running TV series. I was assigned an assistant from the company’s staff and asked to “show her the ropes”, this I did and she became a very good assistant. After year without a break I took a holiday but when I returned I found that my assistant had been given my job (on half the rate I was getting of course!).

    So in my case it’s “Twice bitten, Thrice shy.”! I am therefore very cautious about imparting any of my depth of knowledge to others, although sometimes it is unavoidable when acting as part of a team of editors and deadlines are looming. At one point I was so covert in protecting my knowledge that I’d go in after hours to fix things up. I have since stopped doing this as I didn’t get paid any extra and didn’t get any credit for it.

    I have found that good editors (and not just editors) have similar traits. They are very dedicated, conscientious and proud of their work, and this leaves us open to exploitation. After years of editing at a high level, I am only now learning to say “No” to requests to work outside my terms of reference.

  • ex abc casualNo Gravatar March 1, 2010 at 7:42 pm

    Hi elahn
    I have worked with you before and whole heartily agree your points. As a casual you really are asked to do silly things. I was being paid 40 dollars an hour at 2am in the morning there. I am a very experienced Final Cut Editor and there were moves afoot for me to get extra work and train up some of the old timers, management knocked it back. One stage looked like I was going to have a semi permanent shift that management seemed to be very exited about putting me in , never happened. While I will miss my fellow workers I wont miss the uncertainty the screwing around, the technical mistakes based around ignite. Working on weekends sitting doing nothing…being told id have a new contract post christmas now February and still no abc work.

    Im now moving onto bigger things.. I have to say elahn your a seriously good operator and I respect what you have said here good luck.

  • LucyNo Gravatar July 23, 2010 at 2:45 am

    Hi Elahn

    Curious to know if you still do any work at the ABC or did they react badly to this post? Work for casuals seems to be drying up in Sydney as they pump all their money into News24, which of course is edited (badly) by young, poorly paid journalists. As an earlier poster said here, they have “removed the pretence to quality” and consequently the quality of their news output is going down the pan

    cheers Lucy

  • ElahnNo Gravatar July 23, 2010 at 9:28 am

    I’ve been working for the ABC but not in news. I chose not to continue working for such disrespectful management. I have however continued to work on programs such as Gardening Australia where not only the management, but the producers and other staff are incredibly respectful, appreciative and great to work alongside.
    Editing within news, in my opinion, is becoming less a job for skilled craft editors. It is now a by-product of overshot, over written stories in need of making interesting. If you consider yourself an “editor” then make every attempt at working on projects where your skills and experience are appreciated and respected. Learn the craft, ask questions, find a mentor, hone your skills, and above all know your worth.

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