A little fact-checking as Aunty suffers slings and arrows of our daily assaults
Melbourne Press Club yesterday:
ABC News Breakfast host Michael Rowland: Michelle, what do you make of the relentless and ill-founded daily assaults on the ABC by The Australian newspaper?
ABC chief executive Michelle Guthrie: Someone pointed out to me that Leigh Sales has more followers than read The Australian, so I think we’re OK. (Laughs.)
Can someone fact-check that? Nicholas Gray, chief executive of The Australian, tweeted yesterday:
The Australian has 3.3 million unique readers in Australia per month across print and digital …
Leigh Sales’s Twitter account:
Followers: 353K.
ABC economics correspondent Emma Alberici tweets, June 16:
Putting aside the fact that @abcnews is never going to be sold, worth remembering that if the ABC disappeared today, our commercial rivals would not generate one extra cent of revenue. We don’t take their revenue. If we were privatised, on the other hand, we would.
Er, fact check? Darren Davidson, The Australian, July 31 last year:
Fairfax Media chief Greg Hywood (said) “… the ABC and SBS are using taxpayer dollars to distort the content market. This madness needs to stop.” … Tim Worner, chief executive of Seven West Media, accused the ABC and SBS of imperialism, saying their urge to smother rivals now threatens the viability of commercial rivals.
Couldn’t be privatised? Says who? Bernard Keane, Crikey, June 18:
… the argument that it’s somehow impossible to (privatise the ABC) doesn’t stack up … (It) could probably be completed within 12 months …
The host of ABC’s The Drum, Julia Baird, tweets June 18:
One bizarre claim in circulation is that there are no “mainstream or conservative” managers, producers or voices at the ABC … 1. This is factually incorrect. There are many. 2. Presenters are scrupulous in keeping political views private; no one knows how we vote.
Keeping their politics private? Complaint to the ABC, October 10 last year:
… whilst watching the ABC News … Andrew Probyn unashamedly proclaimed Mr Tony Abbott as “the most destructive politician of his generation”! This was the nightly NEWS — not an editorial, not Q&A, not 7.30 and not any other platform which invites journalists to voice their personal opinions. We were supposed to be listening to an objective report of Tony Abbott’s speech in the UK, not listen to a political activist masquerading as a journalist editorialising.
Fact. The Australian Communications and Media Authority, April 5:
Mr Probyn’s … declarative statement … was not in keeping with the ABC’s requirement to present news with impartiality.
Any chance of an apology? Tony Abbott, Sydney Live, 2GB, May 2:
… given the chronic bias in the ABC, given the incorrigible left-liberal cultural position that the ABC adopts … (you’d think) the very least they would do … is apologise.
Fat chance. Host Paul Barry, ABC’s Media Watch, May 7:
(Apology?) … not much chance of that … the ABC hasn’t even bothered to report the ACMA finding. Which it really should have done … Had Probyn made his comment on a chat show … he might have got away with it. But he delivered it on the 7pm news … And we agree that was a step too far.