Diversity not on agenda in leftist echo chambers
Quelle surprise! – as the saying goes. Nick Bryant, the former BBC journalist, is the new presenter of Saturday Extra on Radio National.
Bryant’s first show as presenter was last Saturday. In introducing the program, he declared: “We’re committing to bringing you a diversity of voices – some of whom you will agree with, some of whom you won’t; but, hopefully, all of them will be insightful and make more sense of our world.”
Bryant added that Saturday Extra “will try to abide by one of the first rules of journalism – never be boring; I hope you’ll enjoy the new Saturday Extra”. Here’s hoping. The old Saturday Extra, on Fran Kelly’s watch, was boring primarily because there was scant viewpoint diversity – in that everyone essentially agreed with everyone else on essentially everything in a left-of-centre way.
The fact that an experienced journalist such as Bryant believes it is “new” for the ABC to cover a “diversity of voices” speaks volumes for the state of the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster. It remains to be seen whether this commitment will be followed in the face of objections by “Friends of the ABC” types who frequently demand that conservatives not be heard. But at least Bryant has raised the issue of viewpoint diversity.
In any event, Bryant honoured his promise on January 25. Covering the United States during Donald Trump’s second administration, Saturday Extra interviewed National Review’s Noah Rothman and the BBC’s Katty Kay. They presented divergent views in a considered way.
Kim Williams, who took up the position of ABC chair last March, has given numerous public talks over the past year. He has made some criticisms of the ABC. But he has not addressed the ABC’s lack of viewpoint diversity. This is its greatest weakness, and explains why the ABC lost so much of the conservative audience it used to have.
Expect more of the same when Williams appears at the Adelaide Writers’ Week, which commences in a month’s time.
Once again, Louise Adler is director of the AWW. And, once again, the taxpayer-funded festival in 2025 is a leftist stack. Among the Australian contributors to the event, I cannot identify one political conservative – although there are some speakers who seem non-ideological.
Yet the program is replete with leftists and left-of-centre types, including Josh Bornstein, Mike Carlton, Richard Denniss (of the leftist Australia Institute), Mark Kenny, Thomas Mayo, Amy Remeikis, Emma Shortis and so on. Boring? For sure. But left-of-centre types for the most part want to hear from comrades they agree with.
There are Labor types, including Bob Carr, Kim Carr and a couple of senators from the Greens political party – Sarah Hanson-Young and Barbara Pocock. But no conservative politician.
The Adelaide-based Amanda Vanstone, formerly a Liberal Party senator from South Australia, who is on the board of the Adelaide Festival that oversees the AWW, is listed as a speaker. But it is not clear what her topic is. In 2023, Vanstone was given a gig discussing cuisine. Moreover, she regards herself as a “small-l” liberal and not as a conservative.
It so happens that Williams is chairing the session titled “The Men of the Media”. There is no gender diversity here – let alone viewpoint diversity. Eric Beecher, owner of the left-wing Crikey website, is on the panel, along with Martin Baron, the former executive editor of the left-of-centre Washington Post and Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of the avowedly leftist Guardian newspaper.
Williams’s book, Rules of Engagement, was published by MUP in 2014 when Adler was its chief executive. The book is highly critical of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. So is Beecher’s The Men Who Killed The News (Scribner, 2024).
For his part, Baron told a function at the Harvard Kennedy School in May 2024 that “cable networks – particularly the introduction of Fox” – present “so-called facts”. Fox News in the US is controlled by News Corp. It is not known whether Williams agreed in advance to chair an AWW panel that is so devoid of viewpoint diversity.
And then there is the matter of Israel-Gaza. In recent years, Adler has been accused of stacking the AWW with critics of Israel. It’s much the same in 2025.
The American Jewish critic of Israel, Peter Beinart – who recently did a long interview with David Marr on ABC’s Late Night Live – has a platform at the 2025 AWW. His topic is “Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza”. Enough said. And John Lyons, the ABC’s global affairs editor – a long-term critic of contemporary Israel – will be speaking on the topic “Balcony Over Jerusalem – Israel, Iran and the New Middle East”.
I am not aware that any supporter of Israel’s defensive war against the terrorist Hamas organisation has been invited by Adler to express a divergent view.
The fact that such an event as the AWW, along with the literary festivals in Sydney, Melbourne and elsewhere, lack viewpoint diversity demonstrates that the left intelligentsia is uncomfortable with political debate. The fact is that there is more genuine political debate on Sky News in Australia and Fox News in the US than there is on the ABC or at the various taxpayer-funded literary festivals in Australia.
In her introductory message to the 2025 AWW, Adler regrets what she terms the “consensus among a political class committed to the status quo” in Western nations. It’s not clear that such a consensus exists in the politics of such nations as Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand or the US – or, indeed, in the likes of France, Germany and Italy.
Rather, a consensus of views and the lack of viewpoint diversity can be found in Adler’s AWW. However, the AWW director is in denial about this. She maintains that the “AWW has long been able to host civil and generous conversations that inform, engage and inspire our audience”. There may be such conversations – but there is no genuine debate.
By the way, Bryant is scheduled to appear at the 2025 AWW. If he stands by his embrace of a variety of views, he will surely find the lack of same boring.
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