ABC boss Hugh Marks holds court on Lattouf, Bluey and Q+A

ABC managing director Hugh Marks held a roundtable of the nation’s media reporters to pitch his plan for the direction of the national broadcaster, in what appears to be the first step in Marks’ attempt to define his time in the office.

The meeting was held in a room named for former politician and ABC chair Neville Bonner, the first Aboriginal person to become a member of parliament, and attendees were fed a selection of sandwiches from Sydney cafe and catering enterprise The Grounds.

In the room was Marks, ABC head of entertainment Jennifer Collins, editorial director Gavin Fang, director of audio Ben Latimer and news director Justin Stevens. Also in attendance was ABC head of communications Freya Campbell, for whom the meeting was also an introduction of sorts to many in the room, having recently taken over from Nick Leys, who left Aunty earlier this year after a decade in the role.

Marks addressed the room for 15 minutes as the session began, without consulting any notes, telling media he wanted to make the ABC “the best place for people to work” and reiterating many of the key themes of his recent town hall address to staff. He articulated the ABC’s desire to move towards a simplified “three product strategy”, centring iview, ABC Listen and News Digital (its online news content).

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Asked by Crikey about the “clarity” given to ABC board members in the aftermath of the Antoinette Lattouf saga, Marks said that when he arrived at the organisation, he “could see the impact of inconsistent management structure on the work”.

“I wanted all of our teams being able to focus every day on their work without unnecessary distraction or lack of clarity of line of responsibility.

“It was very clear to me early on that I needed to be really firm in making sure that the right lines of reporting were in place, and that they would be respected … Kim (Williams, chair of the ABC board) is in absolute furious agreement with me on that.

“I’m constantly vigilant to make sure that is respected and the people around the table have the space to do their work well, and how important that that is for the organisation and all its staff — not just my team — they all need to feel that and hopefully that’s a culture shift that I’ve been able to achieve early on.”

Asked by The Australian Financial Review’s Sam Buckingham-Jones about whether the ABC had a new directive to settle legal cases faster in respect of the blow-out costs of the Lattouf matter, Marks said that in future the ABC would seek to find resolutions that were both more expedient and cheaper.

“We’ll always make errors — all media organisations do that,” Marks said.

“We own it and act on that and seek to fix that very early on, so hopefully we don’t end up in long, expensive litigation. We’ve had that chat as a team — everybody’s on board with that as a philosophy … you’ll have to wait and see whether we end up in another long, complicated case, but I’d like to think if we do, it’ll be for the right reasons.”

The question of the rationale for the demise of panel discussion show Q+A, axed earlier this year after nearly two decades on air, was also raised by Guardian Australia’s Amanda Meade. At its peak, the program had more than half a million viewers and was highly influential, dictating the week’s agenda in Australian politics.

“When it launched, [it was] community-driven, agenda journalism effectively, or commentary or debate. And I think it was brilliant. I think it had stopped being brilliant for that purpose.”

“We will come up with something that won’t be Q+A, but you’ll recognise it as being of that same genre,” he said.

News boss Justin Stevens added that when Q+A was conceived, it was reflective of a “moment in time”.