Andrew Bolt: ABC is finally paying for its bias
THE Leftist collective running the ABC really has gone too far when even the Turnbull Government is now attacking its bias and funding, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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THE Leftist collective running the ABC really has gone too far when even the Turnbull Government is now attacking its bias and funding.
ABC staff must have thought Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was on their side when he had his mate, Justin Milne, appointed chairman.
Milne added to that impression when in his first interview a year ago, he claimed the state-funded broadcaster was not actually biased.
Indeed, it made sense for Turnbull to have the ABC keep doing what its wall-to-wall Leftist staff were doing already: promoting his global-warming cause and attacking his chief rival, conservative Tony Abbott.
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But something has now changed. The ABC’s bias has become even too brazen for this Labor-lite government and it’s now open war — war that spilled into Budget cuts on Tuesday.
It started with complaints from the previously near-mute Communications Minister Mitch Fifield. He complained to the ABC two years ago when its Q&A program ran a vile anti-Israel tweet and gave a platform to a Muslim member of the audience who’d called Jews “pigs”. But the minister has dramatically stepped up his complaints of bias over the past year.
He complained when ABC presenter Yassmin Abdel-Magied used Anzac Day to promote her Muslim victimhood; when the ABC’s Australian Story plugged a book of then Labor senator Sam Dastyari; and when the ABC’s Triple J moved its annual Hottest 100 off Australia Day in protest against white settlement.
But what really riled Turnbull was an error-riddled and ideological attack by ABC reporter Emma Alberici on his company tax cuts. That had Turnbull reportedly “going ballistic” and even Milne protested. Fifield complained again last month when the ABC’s Tonightly TV show called an Australian Conservatives candidate a “c---” on air.
And now the ABC must pay. Tuesday’s Budget froze its funding over the next three years, stripping it of $83.7 million. Fifield has also ordered a review of “efficiencies”. These are small bites from a budget of $1 billion a year, but the ABC’s managing director, Michelle Guthrie, says they will cost jobs and programs.
“We will continue to oppose the decision,” she said.
Small problem, though. Who in the Turnbull Government will still heed the complaints of an ABC that’s so abused its legal duty to be impartial?
Why fund a broadcaster so hijacked by the Left?
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