With the general election just announced, the Australian public should prepare themselves for an onslaught of leftist commentary pouring from most mainstream media, from the kindergarten-level Guardian, through the Age and Sydney Morning Herald to a cluster of upstarts like Crikey, the Saturday Paper and other such forgettable aspirants. But above all, one must prepare for that great billion-dollar Monolith, the ABC, whose Marxist mentality will emerge, despite desperate efforts (by some, at least) to hide their incorrigible political bias. But is it just abuse to call the ABC political hacks Marxist?
Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute continually mocks the ABC as a ‘conservative free zone’. Not only is there not one producer or program presenter conservative in a meaningful sense, but there is not a single utterance of conservative thought to be heard anywhere. How did this appalling state of affairs come about when the ABC was once known for its maintenance of Australia’s conservative culture?
Henderson tells us in a comment piece in 2016 that it all started with the ascendance of Allan Ashbolt, long-time producer at the ABC. Ashbolt was Marxist and once a Marxist gets a toe-hold in any organization, steady subversion is the result which only stops when the organization is fully Marxist. So it happened at the ABC.
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Allan Ashbolt’s ghost still haunts conservative-free ABC
8 January 2016|Categories: Gerard Henderson’s Weekly Column
Not surprisingly, the appointment of Australian-born, Singapore-based Google executive Michelle Guthrie as the new ABC managing director and editor-in-chief created considerable media interest. Guthrie is the first woman to head the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster and her $900,000 annual salary means she is one of the most highly paid public officials in the land.
For all that, if precedent is any guide, it does not matter much who succeeds the current managing director Mark Scott. The truth is that no one really runs the ABC. Not chairman James Spigelman and his board, which meets just once a month. And, judging by the performance of Scott and his predecessor Russell Balding, not the managing director.
Rather, for decades the ABC has been controlled by various cliques that dominate areas such as television news and current affairs, metropolitan radio, Radio National and, in contemporary times, online publications such as The Drum.
Key national news and current affairs programs such as 7.30, Lateline, Q&A, Media Watch, The Drum (the TV production), RN Breakfast and Late Night Live are run by cabals that essentially re-employ or appoint like-minded people.
As Ken Inglis acknowledged in his sympathetic history This is the ABC, the leftist takeover of the public broadcaster began in the late 1960s when self-proclaimed Marxist Allan Ashbolt began stacking the organisation with young leftists. This coterie was affectionately labelled “Ashbolt’s kindergarten”.
It is this culture that has led to the reality that the ABC is a conservative-free zone without a conservative presenter, producer or editor for any of its prominent TV, radio or online products.
This is a sensitive point at the public broadcaster.