Gerard Henderson, co-founder of the Sydney Institute, is a prominent critic of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Australia's national broadcaster. In his Media Watch Dog blog, he wrote:
"The Daily Telegraph in London reported on Tuesday that Tim Davie, the incoming director-general of the BBC, has a reform program for Britain’s public broadcaster – which is funded by means of a compulsory licence fee.
Put simply, Mr Davie wants to tackle what he regards as left-wing bias in the BBC’s comedy output. As Bill Gardiner reported, the incoming managing director believes that the comedy shows on BBC radio and television are unfairly biased against the Tories, Donald Trump, Brexit and the like. Tim Davie is also concerned that too many BBC comedy shows promote a “metropolitan, London-centric and left-wing view of the world”. Sounds familiar?
In his Daily Telegraph report, Bill Gardiner mentioned that some BBC presenters have criticised the left-wing takeover of BBC comedy. For example, Andrew Neil who referred to The Mash Report as “self-satisfied, self-adulatory, unchallenged left-wing propaganda”.
Many of the problems identified by Mr Davie can be found on the ABC. Its main comedy programs – The Weekly with Charlie Pickering and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell – are hostile to the Coalition. And Mark Humphries, who appears each fortnight at the end of Thursday’s 7.30 program, has essentially one “joke” – sending up a Liberal or Nationals politician as a toff or a hick in a manner which bears no resemblance to anyone except Mark Humphries.
Bill Gardiner also reported that, under Tim Davie’s management, BBC journalists and presenters will be reined in on social media from airing their political views while there will be a crackdown on BBC celebrities making money on the side moonlighting for private companies. All this was anticipating Mr Davie’s speech to BBC staff yesterday.
In the Daily Telegraph on 3 September Robert Mendick reported what Mr Davie said in his address. It was much the same as had been forecast. Except that the new BBC director-general was even more blunt – telling staff:
We urgently need to champion and recommit to impartiality. It is deliverable and it is essential…. If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC.
In other words, there will be no future roles at the BBC for activist journalists who are driven by what the new director-general terms their “personal agendas”. As MWD readers know only too well, the ABC is replete with left-wing activist journalists advancing their political agendas.
It is early days and no one knows whether Tim Davie will press for reform when he settles into the job as BBC director-general. In Australia, Mark Scott promised to reform the ABC when he was appointed managing director and (so-called) editor-in-chief in 2006. But Mr Scott was quickly subsumed into the ABC’s Conservative-Free-Zone culture and backed off. His successors Michelle Guthrie and David Anderson did not even bother to address the need to introduce political diversity into the taxpayer funded public broadcaster. Also ABC presenters, since Mark Scott’s time, have felt free to weigh into various debates on social media. They present as activists in the morning and journalists in the evening.
Tim Davie may not succeed with his stated intention to reform the BBC, including the creation of political diversity. However, if he does, this might provide a model for the next ABC managing director when he/she inherits a Sydney/Melbourne centric public broadcaster which is replete with left-wing activists."
As for the ABC, it is vital national institution in Australia, fulfilling a function that commercial media outlets cannot. Having said that, I get tired of its comedy programs, relentlessly making fun of conservatives, as if having conservative political views is something to be ashamed of. The last time I watched Mad as Hell, I think I may have laughed only once or twice. And I thought I was just becoming a cranky, middle aged white man.
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