The ABC's is progressively removing itself from mainstream Australian opinion. The cooperative that ruins "Auntie" largely defines itself by being "anti". It is anti-Howard, anti-American, anti-globalisation, anti-business, and incapable of promoting the diversity of view that its charter calls for.
Its bias, the denial of which seems to be confined to Chairman MacDonald and a few ABC insiders, is well beyond the mainstream Labor Party. It provides better platforms to the most marginalised groups than to the democratically elected government. It takes on, at face value, the flimsiest of evidence to attack its pet hates and promote its agendas.
A recent case is Kerry O'Brien's sally into Western Australia where he "exposed" a totally apocryphal massacre "during our life time" of blacks by the white authorities. When the evidence for this was utterly demolished, a sheepish O'Brien could only mutter about a disparity of views on the matter.
My forthcoming paper demonstrates how Four Corners was a sucker for the most egregious propaganda fed to it by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) activists concerning an alleged destruction of the Great Barrier Reef. The program portrayed the WWF as the reef's saviour. It investigated a raft of causes of the reef's impending destruction: oil exploration, water pollution, grazing, and sugar cane. The allegations were utter rubbish: the reef is expanding and is not threatened but the program fitted the ABC mindset, allowing an opportunity to sensationalise fabricated depredations business is visiting on the planet.
Similarly we have the absurdly named Media Watch hosted by a succession of splenetic radicals with a licence to furnish untruthful and distorted material against any pet bogyman. I, myself, have been victim of such malice, as most recently the Australian newspaper which is fair game by dint of being controlled by the ABC's bete noir Rupert Murdoch.
One attempt to break out of its far left collectivist mould was to find a "right wing Phillip Adams" to fill a slot on Radio National. Tim Blair and Imre Salusinszky were the recruited. Their program was withdrawn after 12 weeks. There was no review of its ratings out in consumer-land but with a vague suggestion that Radio National would seek to have such mainstream views percolate throughout its programs rather than in a single spot. Fat chance!
Finally we have had endless episodes of children overboard and scourging the Australian authorities about the treatment of illegal immigrants. Government and Opposition policy is almost identical yet Lateline's coverage suggests a fierce partisan debate rages through the community. The program's speciality has been to find three like-minded experts to prattle on about how the authorities are heartless, unfair and discriminate against the unfortunate illegal immigrants. There is seldom a word that hardly any of the illegals are in fact found to be legitimate refugees.
Some progress is being made. Michael Kroger has urged greater ABC relevance, particularly in catering for the business community. At last it is to have an early morning business program. At last it has found a regular spot for one of the nation's top finance reporters Alan Kohler.
But the ABC remains largely cocooned from the community's values with its public faces being the politically correct Kerry O'Brien, Jill ("John Howard is Pinochet") Singer, and Tony Jones. The organisation no longer has a person of the authority of a Paul Lyneham to pull it back from the abyss of political correctness. Sadly, as shown by the loud cheers from the staff that accompanied Russell Balding's appointment as CEO, the situation is unlikely to change.
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