Piers Akerman: Green-Left bias makes ABC charter a joke

A media diversity inquiry might have some value if it focused on the ABC, which has assumed the role as the broadcast arm of the Green-Left from its urban headquarters, writes Piers Akerman.

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Taxpayers are going to be further gouged for an unnecessary ­attention-seeking stunt by the Greens when Senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s inquiry into media diversity gets under way.

Notwithstanding there have been at least nine such inquiries in the past decade, the Greens, with tacit Labor support, succumbed to the entreaties of two political losers, former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, to give them an opportunity to air their grievances with News Corp Australia — demonised by the Left as the Murdoch media.

This newspaper is part of News Corp’s stable and I’ve worked in senior positions across the group for 50 years, during which I’ve never been ­instructed to present the news in any way but honestly.

Diversity — like inclusion and ­social justice — is an interesting virtue signalling catch-all but almost meaningless in the rapidly changing media marketplace where the digital economy almost wiped out traditional print media around the world.

There would be some value in this inquiry if it focused on the taxpayer-funded ABC but that’s unlikely to happen as the ABC has happily assumed the role as the broadcast arm of the Green-Left from its inner-urban headquarters in the quinoa-and-latte belt.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Under the ABC’s own code of conduct it is meant to uphold the fundamental journalistic principles of accuracy and impartiality.

That its presenters present their Left-Green views shamelessly and breach the sanction against impartiality with impunity is undeniable yet no meaningful action is ever taken against them.

On the flagship Q&A program last Monday, Mr Turnbull launched a mendacious and spiteful attack on News Corp with the claim that its newspapers blamed arson for last summer’s deadly bushfires.

This was blatantly untrue and a search of the main mastheads found some 3335 stories about the bushfires between September and January and only 3.4 per cent mentioned arson.

Q&A’s host should have pulled Mr Turnbull up but naturally did not as the ABC is the principal broadcast proponent of global warming alarmism.

Unlike the media companies, which will be required to spend heavily to ­defend themselves and present researched facts before the Hanson-Young inquiry, there is no independent watchdog to represent those who are disgusted by the ABC’s biased app­roach to the its news gathering role.

At best, if the ABC even deigns to recognise a complainant, an in-house inquiry may be held and little effectual action will be taken in the unlikely event that the ABC’s staff will find against one of their own. It was not always so.

Malcolm Turnbull launched another attack on Newscorp on ABC’s flagship Q&A program last Monday.

In the lead-up to the March 1993 federal election, the ABC sacked a ­reporter for breaching its editorial guidelines and charter in what was ­determined by the Industrial Relations Commission to be a clear repudiation of the contract of employment.

Francine Chin appears to be the last person ever to be fired from the ABC for breaching its own standards regarding the unacceptability of political bias in reporting news and current affairs.

Chin, then Triple J’s Canberra-based political reporter had covered an address by then Opposition leader John Hewson before a crowd in Melbourne shortly before the poll.

In an on-air report, she said that Mr Hewson was a “f … ing liar, who tells lies all the time.”

Her bosses Barry Chapman, general manager of Triple J and ABC Radio ­Director Peter Loxton terminated her for serious misconduct with respect to her blatant disregard of the ABC’s ­Editorial Policies and Guidelines and the ABC’s Charter.

The media union’s NSW State Secretary Mark Ryan argued that Chin had never been guilty of any previous misconduct and had not received a warning, and therefore she had effectively been summarily dismissed for her first registered act of misconduct, which the MEAA deemed to be harsh and unjust.

Commissioner Greg Smith, however, found that the ABC had not acted harshly, unjustly, or unreasonably and that, on the evidence, it was open to the ABC to dismiss Ms Chin.

The decision shook the Left-leaning organisation momentarily but it has not, according to my research, found it necessary to sack any further staff for ignoring its own set of standards.

Its blatant political bias today makes the charter a joke. It should be registered as a political organisation and ­receive no further taxpayer funding.