Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\nThe internal announcement said the ABC had conducted a top-down assessment of its external partnerships and concluded they were \u201cno longer providing sufficient value\u201d to the organisation.<\/p>\n
It also said ABC management was reviewing other existing partnerships and sponsorships, thereby \u201censuring that our standards of independence are maintained\u201d.<\/p>\n
An ABC statement sent to the Guardian on Tuesday said a review of workplace partnerships affirmed the ABC was meeting its obligations of editorial independence and impartiality.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will always invest in these fundamental principles,\u201d an ABC spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ABC remains committed to diversity and inclusion and will redirect funding to internal initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spokesperson did not respond directly to the Guardian\u2019s inquiry about whether Marks believed the partnership model with the three advocacy groups had created a perception of bias.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for LGBTQ+ community health organisation Acon said it made its insights and expertise available to organisations other than the ABC that were interested in working with LGBTQ+ communities, and building more inclusive workplaces for all Australians.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not seek to, nor do we have, any influence over the way media outlets, who are members of Pride in Diversity, report issues, including the ABC,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to offer our services to employers to advance their diversity, inclusion and belonging goals in their workplaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is believed the ABC was paying at least $12,000 a year to Acon. The partnership has been under scrutiny since the broadcaster\u2019s own Media Watch program raised issues about possible conflicts of interest in October 2022.<\/p>\n
Marks\u2019 predecessor, David Anderson, had personally accepted a gold award from Acon\u2019s Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) earlier that year.<\/p>\n
Under the AWEI scheme, the ABC earns points toward its ranking for specific editorial content, such as the trans-themed series First Day and the Innies and Outies podcast. Documents obtained under freedom of information laws by a women\u2019s rights group calling itself Acon Exposed revealed that Acon relationship managers had offered ABC journalists editorial tips to help the broadcaster climb the rankings, and found a record of an ABC journalist seeking advice from the lobby group on the correct definition of the word \u201cfamily\u201d.<\/p>\n
Media Watch host Paul Barry compared the Acon relationship to the hypothetical scenario of the ABC paying Greenpeace for awards while reporting on the fossil fuel industry, arguing that the partnership led to a perception of bias that was indefensible for a national broadcaster.<\/p>\n
Earlier that year, the ABC came under fire over its coverage of two gender issues that critics argued lacked the necessary balance.<\/p>\n
These included the ABC\u2019s allegedly cursory reporting on the controversial closure of the UK\u2019s Tavistock gender clinic and its failure to cover the high-profile high court case of Keira Bell, a detransitioner who challenged the clinic\u2019s use of puberty blockers for children.<\/p>\n
Former ABC chair Ita Buttrose was forced to admit to \u201cserious editorial lapses\u201d over a separate three-part series on transgender women in sport.<\/p>\n
Since then, the Acon partnership has become a political lightning rod during senate estimates, where coalition senators have frequently grilled ABC executives over the broadcaster\u2019s AWEI benchmarking.<\/p>\n
By formally exiting the scheme, Marks is effectively removing a major point of political friction, allowing the broadcaster to argue its editorial decisions are made entirely independently of external advocacy calculations. The move mirrors that of the BBC in 2021, when it withdrewfrom the UK\u2019s Stonewall diversity program to protect its reputation for neutrality.<\/p>\n
The Guardian has sought comment from the Australian Disability Network and the Diversity Council of Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ABC is walking away from three prominent diversity and inclusion groups after long-running external pressure over whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-591395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}