Liberals still have chance to reform ABC
THE Liberals still have a chance to reform the ABC — but must first sideline the acting chairman they stupidly appointed last week, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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THE Liberals still have a chance to reform the ABC — but must first sideline the acting chairman they stupidly appointed last week.
Kristin Ferguson? What was Prime Minister Scott Morrison thinking?
Ferguson, who relentlessly plugs her book, Women Kind, is not just a professional gender warrior pushing the identity politics the Liberals should loathe.
She also privately congratulated the ABC journalist who attacked the Liberals’ business tax cuts in an article that showed exactly the ABC bias the Liberals should fight.
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“Great work on the tax story,” Ferguson emailed economics correspondent Emma Alberici, whose article the ABC later admitted actually included nine errors.
“Thanks for making company tax digestible and understandable for the average punter watching. X.”
Oh dear. Ferguson praises economic analysis so bad that it even confused revenue with profit, yet now oversees the $1 billion-a-year ABC, with its four national TV stations, five national radio stations and online newspaper.
You know why the Liberals keep losing the culture wars? Because they either don’t understand them or don’t have the guts to fight them.
Consider the origins of this ABC crisis that last week cost chairman Justin Milne and managing director Michelle Guthrie their jobs.
Ferguson is now acting chairman because the ABC is so Left-wing that even Malcolm Turnbull and his closest mates finally cracked. Turnbull as communications minister had tolerated the bias of the ABC, whose staff helped him tear down and replace Tony Abbott as prime minister.
Turnbull then had close mate and former business partner Justin Milne made ABC chairman, who in his first interview declared: “I don’t come to the job thinking I need to fix the perceived bias in the ABC because I don’t know that there really is a bias.”
What a joke.
In fact, none of the ABC’s main news and current affairs shows is hosted by a conservative, and a University of the Sunshine Coast survey of ABC journalists found that those who responded were five times more likely than the public to vote Greens.
That’s why ABC presenters tend to push every Leftist social issue — the “stolen generations”, asylum seekers, “reconciliation”, anti-Catholicism, the evil of Donald Trump, multiculturalism, and, of course, global warming.
The bias is overwhelming, but Turnbull got angry only when the ABC turned against him. Suddenly, Milne could see ABC bias, as well. He ordered Guthrie to “get rid of” Alberici because Turnbull’s team “hated” her for berating their tax cuts.
Milne also told Guthrie to “shoot” political editor Andrew Probyn because Turnbull’s government was furious with his claim that Turnbull had manipulated the timing of the July by-elections. Milne even demanded the ABC not move Triple J’s Hottest 100 from Australia Day because “Malcolm will go ballistic”. What an idiot. Milne was finished as chairman the minute Guthrie leaked what he had done, just after her own sacking by Milne and the board. Milne was finished. No ABC chairman should demand staff be sacked simply for angering a politician.
But while Milne tackled the bias in exactly the wrong way, the bias he was fighting was actually real.
Yes, Alberici’s column was a shocker, and her politicking, especially on Twitter, confirms she’s an activist.
Probyn, too, is hopelessly biased. He also savaged Abbott as “the most destructive politician of his generation”, and in a news report three weeks ago, re-enacted a Liberal MP bullying women — when no woman has publicly detailed what bullying, if any, actually occurred.
As for the ABC moving its Hottest 100 off Australia Day, here was more pandering to the Green Left campaign to delegitimise our national day.
Such bias should have been fought by Milne, Guthrie and the rest of the ABC board as a breach of the ABC’s charter to be balanced. That bias still exists, and the board has a duty to fix it.
But is Ferguson the chairman to make changes, when she’s cheered on Alberici at her worst? When she seems a networker rather than a leader? When she preaches some of the identity politics that’s the racism of the Left?
True, Morrison is yet to decide who will do the job permanently or will fill the now-vacant ABC board position left by Milne.
But if he fails to appoint real agents of change, the Liberals will spend the next two terms of a Labor government with an even more emboldened ABC crusading against all they stand for.
Is this another fight the Liberals will dodge now, and pay for later?
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