Barrie Cassidy rejects bias criticism of Insiders, hints at need for new role

Insiders­ presenter Barrie Cassidy liked some Michelle Guthrie reforms but he says Aunty now needs a ‘salesman’ with media experience | PODCAST

Barrie Cassidy liked Michelle Guthrie’s strong focus on digital but believes the ABC could do with a more effective seller and defender of its interests. Picture: Stuart McEvoy.

Barrie Cassidy is told our interview will run for 30 minutes and is surprised. The presenter of ABC’s Sunday morning political discussion program Insiders ­inhabits a journalistic world that classifies politicians in minutes. “We have 10-minute politicians, 12-minute politicians and sometimes we have a 14-minute politician,” he tells The Australian’s Behind the Media podcast, available online today.

Cassidy seems to be in ­supreme command when interviewing and fronting a panel program but in person he is ­sur­­pris­ingly self-­effacing when the microphone is pointed in his direction.

At one point, when I playfully accuse him of being a pushy 13-year-old because he told the editor of his local paper in rural Victoria that he could do a better job writing the local weekend football coverage, he gives a slightly ­embarrassed laugh and queries the choice of words.

What the ABC needs now, he says, is a salesman who will back the public broadcaster.

He supported sacked managing director Michelle Guthrie’s ­initial reforms.

“What I liked about her is that she had a strong focus on digital. And that’s absolutely where the ABC and the rest of the media need to go. Because it’s the future.”

He was also in favour of her ­decision to thin out layers of the ABC bureaucracy and put the savings into content. “But I think the next managing director has to be better than her at one thing in particular, and that’s presentation. The ABC is one of the country’s largest institutions and we need somebody who is prepared to stand up for us to explain the ABC to the country, and the defendant when it needs to be defended.

“I think you do need somebody who is in part a salesman in that position and, personally, I would hope that that person has some considerable experience either with the ABC or with the media.”

Cassidy is “open minded” about appointing an ABC editor-in-chief, an issue raised when Ms Guthrie’s lack of experience in journalism and news became ­apparent. “It depends I think on who the managing director is as to whether or not you need separately an editor-in-chief. Having said that, though, I really do think that the job does demand media experience.”

His program is regularly ­attacked for being a left-wing love-in because its panel often feature journalists from Fairfax and the ABC. “Yep, I hear it a lot,” he says. “We get it from all sides, you know, and they’re just as vitriolic.”

He says much of the criticism is “silly”. “Because sometimes people assume that if you’re not big-C conservative, that if you’re not from the far Right and the Liberal Party, then you’re somehow left-wing, that everybody else is left-wing. And you look at the people we have brought into the studio from across the political commentary over the years. They’re not like that at all. You can’t pigeonhole these people. They’re outstanding journalists.

“But if I have a bias, it’s in favour of the story. I think their analysis is fair and it’s reasonable, and I just don’t accept that you can categorise these people in any way as left-wing because they aren’t big-C conservatives.

“Certainly, some of the more strident conservatives, such as Andrew Bolt and Miranda ­Devine, no longer appear, often for contractual reasons to Sky, which dislikes sharing talent.”

Is Insiders a job for life?

“It’s not a job for life. I’ll use the football parlance: I’ll take it one election at a time.”

Cassidy will be 71 when the election following the one scheduled for next year is called. “That will be time to pause and have a think about it, I think — after the next election. I certainly don’t want to leave journalism and I don’t want to stop doing what I’m doing. I would like in some way or ­another to hang in there as a political analyst or maybe get ­involved in documentaries.”

But he rules out a move to the Insiders discussion panel as ­unfair to his successor.

Insiders launched in 2001 with Cassidy as presenter and preceded the explosion of 24-hour news coverage by the ABC and Sky News. But the program has seen off commercial rivals in the form of Nine’s Sunday political interview with Laurie Oakes and programs such as Bolt and Meet the Press, partly, Cassidy says, because the ABC gave it the time necessary — some years — to bed in.

Cassidy is a bit perplexed when I describe the first program and its interview with then prime minister John Howard (who later nominated the program as his favourite) as a disaster. But the fact was Howard had ­shouted himself hoarse at a Wall­abies match the night ­before and was barely audible.

Cassidy had wanted for ages to do a program containing a political interview with a major politician and discussion involving senior members of the press gallery. But it had to ­include an element of enter­tainment.

He discussed the idea over dinner more than 17 years ago at a restaurant in Brussels, where Cassidy was posted at the time, with his houseguests, photographer Mike Bowers and Gaven Morris, now ABC head of news. He gives Morris a lot of the credit for the program format they sketched out that night.

It is clear from the end of our discussion that Cassidy is looking for a different future.

He speaks of “being tied down for 17 years to the same job when you lose all of your weekends. There are a lot of weddings that I’ve missed, a lot of parties, a lot of celebrations, and it’s just, you know, getting to the point where I need to do something else.”