Radio Australia's Indonesian Bias
p. 29 · Read in the full issue
Complaints made in PIM early this year over the alleged bias of Radio Australia to the Indonesian side of the West New Guinea dispute, had a headline-hitting echo in Australia in July. (Our complaints were about English and French language broadcasts).
The Dutch-Australian Weekly, the biggest-circulating Dutch language newspaper in Australia, made the first charges and precipitated a witch hunt in the ABC, independent investigations by the Dutch Embassy and the Australian Department of External Affairs, and “statements” by all concerned.
The broadcasts objected to were all in Indonesian (a form of Malay) which are broadcast on the Indonesian session of Radio Aus tralia by a team of Indonesians under contract to the ABC. What was said was supposed to have been monitored by “Indonesian-speaking”
Australians, although later it was stated that this was impracticable 24 hours a day.
What the Dutch complained about was the bias to Indonesia in the West New Guinea trouble; the reference to West New Guinea as Irian Barat —the Indonesian term for it; that fantastic Indonesian claims of victories in NNG had been broadcast in a “jubilant voice”; and the fact that broadcasters had wished the “Indonesian volunteers a happy and successful battle”.
It was at first suggested that the broadcasts might be from a pirate radio transmitter, but Sir Charles Moses, general manager of the ABC, says it is unlikely. He said that checks of tapes of broadcasts have failed to find any offending material but not all tapes are kept. The trouble might have occurred, he said, in the announcer “ad libbing” between prepared newscasts. A full inquiry is being made.
Radio Australia recruits all her foreign broadcasters (except French) from overseas and brings them to Australia on contract and so far as its Indonesian announcers are concerned it seems that it could have failed to instil in them the fine “disinterested BBC” approach to newscasting. In the touchy circumstances of WNG, it might have been as well to have employed the “fluent Indonesian-speaking Australians” the ABC says it has got as monitors, for news-reading.