ABC MANAGING DIRECTOR MARK SCOTT SAYS TO DESCRIBE ABC PRESENTERS AS LEFTISTS IS "FAR TOO SIMPLISTIC". PICTURE: JEREMY PIPER
LAST week, I tried to save the ABC one last time by offering to take over as host of Media Watch.
I even wrote an open letter to ABC managing director Mark Scott to announce my willingness to replace Jonathan Holmes now that he's stepping down
I suspected Scott might otherwise gloomily assume I was not available, since I have my own much-loved show at Network Ten.
But I reassured him I'd tear up my contract for The Bolt Report. I'm kind of like that. I knew Scott was in a terrible fix.
As I wrote: "You must be mortified that in the 24 years of Media Watchdevoted to detecting such media sins as bias and group-think, not once has it had a host not of the Left.
"How worried you must be that its eighth host will be from the same cookie-cutter that's given us Stuart Littlemore, Richard Ackland, Paul Barry, David Marr, Liz Jackson, Monica Attard and Holmes."
Poor Scott. The staff who really run the ABC are making him look a real dupe.
They've already put every mainstream ABC current affairs show in the hands of the Left, from Q&A's Tony Jones to Radio National Breakfast's Fran Kelly.
This ideological monoculture is actually a breach of the ABC's contract with taxpayers, who give it more than $1 billion a year.
The ABC's own Equity and Diversity Annual Report says: "The ABC Charter requires the broadcasting of programs that . . . reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community.
"ABC Editorial Policies support the diversity of perspectives."
But within hours of my letter, the ABC rushed forward the announcement ofMedia Watch's new host - yet another man of the Left, Paul Barry.
But more shocking were Scott's explanations for turning down my offer.
It was suddenly clear he will never let a conservative head one of his prize current affairs shows.
To describe ABC presenters as Leftists was "far too simplistic", he protested to Radio National presenter Jonathan Green, himself so sophisticated that he celebrated the defeat of Liberal Prime Minister John Howard with a party at which guests whacked a Howard pinata.
Scott even claimed ignorance about his presenters' bias when 774's Rafael Epstein asked who on ABC balanced out Leftist presenters such as Kelly, Jones, Radio National's Phillip Adams, and 7.30's Leigh Sales (let's add Jon Faine, Robyn Williams, Virginia Trioli, Kerry O'Brien, Barrie Cassidy and Waleed Aly).
Replied Scott: "I don't know how our journalists vote. I don't know what their personal views are."
Spot the sly trick?
I also don't know how, say, Kelly votes. For the Greens or Labor? Did Adams in 2007 vote for Labor, his long-time party, or for the Climate Change Coalition his partner helped create?
Does Trioli, the ABC 24 presenter who made "he's mad" signals when interviewing Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, vote socialist or Labor?
Like Scott, I don't know, but I'm sure we both know they lean to the Left.
NOR did Scott seem frank in claiming he did not "know what their personal views are".
Does he truly not know Jones is a global-warming evangelist?
Has he never heard Trioli opine that the September 11 attacks were possibly the work of the FBI?
Is Scott unaware Science Show presenter Williams is such a warming catastrophist that he claimed sea level rises this century of up to 100m were "possible, yes"?
Another Scott defence was simply absurd. He protested that, against all those names, the ABC had Counterpoint, hosted by former Liberal minister Amanda Vanstone.
But to which ABC programs is this weekly radio show a "counterpoint"? How many ABC presenters is Vanstone alone meant to balance?
Scott's most misleading answer came when asked about ex-ABC chairman Maurice Newman's claim the ABC suffered "group-think" on global warming.
Scott denied it: "He was talking broadly around the media. It wasn't a specific criticism of the ABC."
Yet only last December, Newman wrote to Scott to accuse Williams of running "offensive and defamatory" material comparing climate sceptics to paedophiles, and portraying Newman as a flat earther. Newman also wrote inThe Australian that "a small but powerful group has captured the (ABC), at least on climate change".
For some, the answer to Scott's denialism is to replace him with someone stronger and smarter. But perhaps he proves no managing director can force the ABC to hire presenters to reflect the diversity of views of the taxpayers.
In which case, privatise the ABC; if the Left won't share, let them pay for the damn thing themselves.
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