Tingle bias demonstrates problems at ABC

Kim Williams has been presented with an early test of his authority as chair of the ABC and commitment to an impartial public broadcaster that he must seize with both hands. If he fails to speak out and censure the demonstrable bias of high-profile 7.30 chief political correspondent Laura Tingle, Williams will follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Ita Buttrose, an experienced media performer who, despite much promise, failed to make a dent in the entrenched bias and unanswerable staff culture that underpins the decline in the ABC’s audience numbers.

The failure by managing director David Anderson to censure Tingle properly only confirms long-held suspicions that the public broadcaster is a left-wing worker collective, out of touch with community values, in which staff treat management with contempt. Mr Anderson told Senate estimates on Thursday that Tingle had hurt the media organisation’s “ability to be impartial” but said it was a “mistake and misstep” and backed her to “continue her good work” as one of the ABC’s most experienced and highly paid journalists.

Contrast this with the ABC’s axing of former political editor Andrew Probyn, who was a robust but impartial correspondent, something that reportedly upset the ABC’s staff collective mindset. As former ABC radio host Tom Switzer writes in Inquirer on Saturday, Aunty has become too big, too institutionally left wing and too arrogant to deal with wayward journalists. Rather than representing the nation as a whole, it has been captured by a left-liberal elite who represent only a small minority.

It is possible to believe ABC staff genuinely think their views represent a political centre and it is ABC critics who are the extremists. But this serves only to highlight how out of touch they are and how deficient management is in not reining them in. If the ABC were a commercial operation it would be entitled to conduct itself however it wished. But taxpayers fund the public broadcaster and it treats them with contempt. Mr Williams has a duty to deliver on the promise made following his appointment: “If you don’t want to reflect a view that aspires to impartiality, don’t work at the ABC.”