So how will the ABC respond to increased scrutiny and the growing line of rejections for Q&A? My hunch is it will be a combination of the Zaky Mall
ah victim card and the Gillian Triggs wrecking ball.
Malcolm Turnbull, Federal Communications Minister is the latest in a growing list of ‘conscientious objectors’ to participate on Q&A. Things have got to be pretty bad when the leader of the Parliamentary Friends of the ABC won’t even attend their shows.
It will be interesting to see how the ABC takes this string of declines, following the fallout from providing a platform for convicted criminal and radical Islamist, Zaky Mallah. If the speech given by Mark Scott after he came out of hiding last week is anything to go by, the ABC will play the persecuted victim.
The ABC is likely to take the same line as its friend Zaky Mallah, who despite threatening to kill a government official, feels that he is the real victim. The ABC’s intention to use Mallah as a weapon, against the Government and its plan to revoke the citizenship of terrorists with dual citizenship, backfired most gloriously, and like Mallah, the ABC will most likely claim that it is the ‘true victim.’
Let’s be honest, this latest show of bias from the ABC is nothing new. For years there has been a flow between the ALP and the ABC (in both directions). One wonders whether there is in fact a secret tunnel linking Ultimo to ALP HQ in Sussex Street, Sydney. But in recent years, the ALP has started to slip out of favour at the ABC, and now the Greens and other far-left groups are increasingly being preferred.
That the ABC often invites a token conservative on The Drum or Q&A is a moot point. The culture of the ABC is hard left, like many of Australia’s leading and most viewed media institutions. Right now I can hear the howls, ‘but what about Murdoch! What about Murdoch! Someone needs to balance out Murdoch!’ Amusingly, most of these howls come from people who never read the Murdoch Press, yet purport to be experts on it.
The left wing bias of journalists American media has been well documented, despite the ‘Fox News’ red herring. Is it really conceivable that any more than 10-20% of the ABC’s media staff consider themselves either ‘conservative’ or ‘right of centre’? Of course not, especially when ‘right wing’ at the ABC means ‘bad’ and ‘not us.’
After recent events, the ABC will be unlikely to take its legitimate chastising honourably and on the chin.
Instead, the ABC will play the victim, and go down fighting, preferably taking the government and anyone else they can get their hands down with them.
