New ABC chairman blind to bias, but even Media Watch can see Aunty leans too far left

Perhaps Justin Milne needs stronger specs if he really can’t see Aunty’s clear partiality.

New ABC chairman Justin Milne speaks exclusively to The Australian, yesterday:

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 …

No bias at the ABC? Even former Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes thinks Aunty has a problem. The Age, April 5 last year:

For decades, Coalition senators have been asking ABC managing directors at estimates hearings: “Where is the right-wing Phillip Adams?” The ABC’s answer has been to give half an hour here and there on Radio National to … Amanda Vanstone and Tom Switzer, neither of them more than mildly right of centre. Frankly, it is little better than mockery.

ABC Sydney Mornings host Wendy Harmer on Q&A, November 2, 2015:

I sound like an old-fashioned socialist, don’t I?

ABC Melbourne Mornings host Jon Faine compared ABC cuts to Putin. The Age, February 2, 2014:

Is the ABC un-Australian? Is a review worth doing? Last December, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin tightened his control over that country’s media … Last week, Tony Abbott announced a review of the ABC and SBS …

Incumbent Media Watch host Paul Barry spanked ABC News for failing to cover issues in the Islamic community, March 13:

Radicalisation of young Muslims is a serious issue … And it appears to have been one of the key concerns at Punchbowl Boys High, which has a large proportion of Muslim students and was becoming isolated from the community. But, remarkably, it did not make the ABC’s 7pm news. And on ABC Radio Sydney, where hours of programming was available 10 days in a row there was nothing. Not on the Breakfast show. Not on the morning show. And not on Drive.

Milne clearly has his fingers in his ears if he’s ignoring Media Watchof all things. Aunty ’s new chairman continues in The Australian yesterday:

I like ABC for news like all Australians do because the ABC attempts to be unbiased, it attempts to tell it right down the middle so it’s a good reference point for many Australians.

But Milne can see Q&A’s bias issues, yeah? Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian, June 30, 2015:

Free speech on Q&A means stacking the panel, the audience and the questions to skew left.

Nope. Milne in The Australian yesterday:

I think Q&A serves a purpose and it clearly stirs people up and creates an audience, which is part of the job of being a media organisation.

But the most stinging critique of the ABC’s bias came from indigenous leader Noel Pearson at the launch of Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader by Troy Bramston. Barangaroo, November 21 last year:

Not least the country’s miserable, racist national broadcaster: a spittoon’s worth of perverse people willing the wretched to fail … They need blacks to remain alienated from mothers’ bosoms, incarcerated in legions, leading short lives of grief and tribulation — because if it were not so, against whom could they direct their soft bigotry of low expectations? About whom could they report of misery and bleeding tragedy?

But what’s the new chairman’s response to ABC bias? A shrug. Milne in The Australian, continued:
I won’t be sitting there with a score sheet.