Despite an encouraging start, the former Murdoch and Google executive has drawn fire from staff angry at cuts, an allegedly detached leadership style and apparent lack of understanding of some of Aunty’s key values

'She doesn't get what we do': has ABC boss Michelle Guthrie got the insiders on her side?

At the Lowy Institute in August, the ABC managing director, Michelle Guthrie, praised Four Corners for its story on youth detention in the Northern Territory, singling out the investigative journalism program as one of the jewels in the public broadcasting crown.



“Investigations like the searing Australia’s Shame put together by Caro Meldrum-Hanna and her team on Four Corners that prove the adage that real news is revealing what someone else is trying to keep secret,” she said in her keynote speech.



So it was more than a little surprising to some ABC insiders to hear Guthrie’s suggestions for improving Four Corners at an end-of-year gathering of the program’s staff last month, an annual event to stocktake the year’s stories.



Asked what the program could do differently next year, Guthrie suggested they could be kinder to business and perhaps add some profiles of successful business leaders to the lineup of stories.



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When asked about The Forgotten Children, the heartbreaking program about the children stranded on Nauru as a result of Australia’s refugee policies, Guthrie qualified her praise of the program by saying they should have sought out some happy children to interview as well. There weren’t any, said one staffer.



Underwhelmed and gobsmacked were just some of the reactions to Guthrie’s contribution, sources told Guardian Australia.



An indication of how controversial her leadership has become emerged on Friday when her Wikipedia page was defaced. She was described as a “corporate stooge” for News International and as “director of corporate greed” for Foxtel.

“In December 2015, it was announced that Guthrie would become damaging director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), replacing Mark Scott who retired in April 2016,” her Wiki page has been edited to say.

Staff who have dealt with the new managing director, who is now six months into her $900,000-a-year job, say it is obvious she doesn’t come from a journalism background. But Russell Balding, who took over as managing director after Jonathan Shier’s disastrous 19-month term in 2001, was an accountant who managed not to embarrass himself while leading the nation’s biggest group of journalists.



While journalism is not a prerequisite for the top job at Aunty, an excellent understanding of the content across television, radio and online as well as a grasp of the public broadcasting ethos is essential.



Guthrie was seen as a breath of fresh air when her appointment was announced in late 2015. After a long and fraught selection process, the board got what they wanted: a woman, an outsider with no baggage and someone who was comfortable with the digital revolution. In Guthrie, who is 50, they found a smart, successful corporate lawyer with extensive experience in broadcasting and marketing on the international stage and, as her mother was Chinese, someone who reflected modern Australia.



She had spent the previous six years working for Google in Singapore, most recently as managing director of agencies, Asia Pacific, essentially in a sales role.

After stepping into the ABC role in May she made an immediate impact talking about the importance of diversity but her set-piece speeches gave little away about her long-term plans for the national broadcaster.

She has given two long-form interviews, both to magazines: one to the Australian’s weekend magazine and one more recently to the Australian Financial Review. “When the opportunity at the ABC came up I was intrigued and surprised,” she told the AFR. “I was up for the challenge of it”

Some of the controversial decisions announced under her tenure were already in train when she arrived, but she has, somewhat unfairly, had to wear the blame.

Axing the Fact Check unit and closing The Drum are just two that can’t really be sheeted home to her. Even the more recent decision to end the popular Catalyst magazine-style program was driven by the head of television, Richard Finlayson, rather than by her office. But the Catalyst decision, followed quickly by significant cuts to ABC Radio’s documentary, music and religion programming, have made her a target. She has been lobbied by faith leaders for ending Sunday Nights with John Cleary, questioned by Greens senators over the future of Radio National and asked to justify cuts to music programs by her own staff in Perth.

When Mark Scott left after 10 years at the helm there were 15 directors on the executive, including Guthrie. There are now just 13 as two have resigned in recent months. The director of the digital network Angela Clarke was first out the door in September, followed by international head Lynley Marshall, a veteran ABC executive who resigned last week.

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An early version of Guthrie’s restructure sees two of the three content divisions merged – TV, radio and news – so at least one more director position may disappear. She also had plans for a chief content officer, and job descriptions were drawn up for recruiters.

While she seems to have plans for reshaping the ABC, she hasn’t been very skilled at communicating her plans.

And, say her critics, Guthrie has thus far displayed a lack of understanding of the type of content the ABC produces and the differences in resources that are required. She talks about 100% reach which is an impossible goal unless the ABC becomes a populist broadcaster with less challenging content and adds more reality television, sport and game shows until they become as popular as Channel Seven.

“It’s clear she is not a lifelong viewer of the ABC,” one staffer said. “She just doesn’t get what we do.”

Guthrie confirmed this lack of insight herself last week. In an argument over the importance of Radio National, she raised the fact that RN is three times more expensive to run than Triple J. But RN, with its $23m budget, is a very different beast to Triple J, which is a station that plays music, as opposed to the deep research and production skills that go into a single RN program.

This week Guthrie spent two days in the final board meeting for 2016, in part justifying the cuts to RN, which have seen the ABC in the headlines again. But she was also pushing a restructure of the ABC she has drawn up to put her stamp on the organisation.

While she may be forging ahead confidently with flattening the executive structure and improving the broadcaster’s digital offering, Guthrie is struggling to convince the staff.

Guardian Australia understands tensions have risen in executive ranks over her lack of vision and leadership. They peaked recently when everyone in the executive and even some administrative staff were made to sign a nondisclosure form, a highly unusual move.



With decades of her career spent working for Rupert Murdoch’s global pay TV business, it was not surprising she turned to Jim Rudder, a Sky veteran, to help with her restructuring plan.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jim Rudder, head of interactive TV, at Sky Head Office Photograph: Frank Baron/The Guardian

The former product executive at Foxtel in Sydney has been hired along with “business transformation expert” Debra Frances on a short-term contract “to assist the executive in delivering our 2020 strategic objectives”, Guthrie told her executive team in an email.



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The hiring of someone from Sky played to the conspiracy theorists outside the ABC who have labelled Guthrie a Murdoch stooge who has been planted inside the ABC to destroy it. Within the broadcaster it was seen more credibly as another rejection of the existing executive team.



Unlike her predecessor, Scott, she is, critics say, not communicating a clear vision to or engaging with her heads of department. Sources say she cancelled one-on-one meetings with the directors and she doesn’t chair her own executive meetings.

But perhaps this observer role is her style. As she told the AFR: “Most people have liked that I have listened more than I have spoken. The more you sit back, the more you get a sense of what’s really going on, and who’s with you and who isn’t.”

Guthrie attends the meetings but allows her chief of staff Samantha Liston to chair, sometimes leaving the conversation to take a phone call, seemingly disengaged.

The directors are carrying on with their daily work, wondering what lies ahead.

Liston, the former director of ABC People who joined the ABC in 2013, was seconded to help Guthrie in her transition to managing director in the early days. But the two hit it off and she has now taken on the role of chief of staff, and according to some critics, has become a powerful lieutenant who is blocking access to Guthrie.

Executives who like Guthrie and want her to succeed say Liston is a roadblock and the sooner the managing director realises it the better. The relationship between Liston and Guthrie is spoken of as a “Peta Credlin and Tony Abbott dynamic”, with Liston acting as a gatekeeper and close adviser and no one else getting a look-in.

Liston has extensive experience in human resources as head of HR at Seven West Media, as well as stints at Fairfax and News Corp, but is politically naive, critics say.

“She [Liston] is from a corporate background and seems very disdainful of the ABC and the way they do things,” one journalist said. “She seems to see everything through the lens of human resources and seems appalled when staff speak out against management because that simply wouldn’t happen at Seven.”

Back in October when ABC staff voted by a margin of 71% to accept a three-year pay deal, with rises of 2% annually, it was the end of a long bargaining process for Liston and the unions. Liston was elated, sources say, and gathered up her HR staff and took them up to the boardroom for a champagne celebration.



As Guthrie had entered the ABC with the mantra of democratising things (she got rid of executive car parks for one), it was frowned on by other executives.



Whether Liston is playing too big a role remains to be seen, but it was Guthrie who was chosen by the ABC board to lead the organisation and many within say they are still waiting for her to do so. With Rudder and Frances talking to senior staff across the country and drawing up recommendations for a restructure, Guthrie is going to take a break.

