Leftie insiders keep aunty locked into groupthink

AFTER waiting more than a decade to hear from Aunty, finally word came last Friday afternoon. Aunty is the national broadcaster and the email came from the producer of ABC1's Insiders wanting to discuss "upcoming opportunities on the program".

Insiders extended a kind invitation for a different conservative -- me -- to join its Sunday morning weekly political program from time to time. What explained this offer from the blue? To be fair, Insiders did ask me when I started writing for The Australian. As a media newcomer, I said I needed time to settle in. But what explains 10 long years between drinks? Maybe signalling on national television that I am open to changing my mind about gay marriage, as I did recently on Q&A, was the clincher.

More likely, the invitation arrived thanks to the power of The Australian's letters page. Last week, a stream of frustrated letter writers said "enough"; they were giving Insiders the flick because "Sunday mornings regularly lead off with a Labor or Greens press release" and "progressives lecture me on the evils of Tony Abbott while loosely guided by Barrie Cassidy as Julia Gillard's cheer-leader". Letter writers expressed disappointment about the "continued absence of any conservative voices" among ABC news and current affairs hosts; it is a "slap in the face to half of the Australian population that helps pay for its existence".

While the ABC celebrates diversity by employing indigenous reporters and filling radio and TV spots with female voices, diversity of opinion is another matter entirely. Alas, the invitation from Insiders, while genuinely appreciated as an olive branch, misses the point. The issue is not whether Janet Albrechtsen or Niki Savva sits in the chair reserved for the show's sole conservative. The point is that our taxpayer-funded broadcaster thinks it appropriate, week in and week out, for the program to have a three-to-one ratio in favour of progressives.

It's the same over at Q&A on Monday nights, where conservatives routinely are outnumbered three-to-two by those who lean left. Or four-to-two if you count host Tony Jones. I have suggested to the producers they surprise their audience so that, just occasionally, the panel leans the other way. Why not shake it up, fellas? After all, it may better reflect views outside Ultimo and Southbank. So far, no good.

And something has gone awry at Aunty when ABC hosts laugh off how their comments will be picked up by this newspaper's Cut & Paste. There is nothing terribly funny about the ABC's stubbornly left-wing culture. After a while, it looks decidedly rude, which may explain why, on Sunday mornings, so many Australians are turning to Sky News and The Bolt Report on Network Ten. Ultimately, more of the same at Aunty may lead to more Australians agreeing with one letter writer whose solution is for a future Coalition government to privatise the ABC.

Don't get me wrong. There is no vast left-wing conspiracy at Aunty. It's more a pervading world view, more cultural than political. It's a sense among ABC news and current affairs hosts, reporters and executive producers that every civilised person will surely take a certain view about border protection, a carbon tax, the Catholic Church, gay marriage, a republic, multiculturalism and so on.

And this raises another point. When Aunty's rule of thumb is to consistently stack panels with like-minded views, it becomes mind-numbingly, predictably boring. And it suggests a certain smugness at the ABC akin to a spoiled kid knowing his rich parents will keep shelling out, no matter how often he flouts their rules.

This smugness explains why the ABC, across all its various TV and radio platforms, can get away with devoting one hour of radio a week on Radio National to conservative voices on a program called Counterpoint. The program's token existence mocks the ABC's statutory obligations to reflect the cultural diversity of this country. As does the presence of a token conservative on Insiders.

For a clue about the ABC's cultural bias, recall the stir from GetUp when 7.30's political reporter Chris Uhlmann questioned then Greens leader Bob Brown about policies. GetUp's progressive supporters were confused and then irate. Grilling a Greens leader was not normal broadcasting at the ABC. An online campaign alleged the ABC was becoming a "political mouthpiece for the ultra-conservatives".

Or go back to earlier this year when, following the death of Gore Vidal, Lateline ran a 20-minute tribute and host Jones interviewed Foreign Minister Bob Carr about the radical left-wing author. Fair enough, wrote Tom Switzer, editor of Spectator Australia, Vidal was an iconic American figure. But why, asked Switzer, did Lateline not offer a similar tribute to conservative champion Ronald Reagan when he died in June 2004? As Switzer noted, that week Jones interviewed foreign minister Alexander Downer "about Australia's role in Abu Ghraib".

Upholding the orthodoxy at the ABC means trading in journalistic curiosity. Take Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne. Talking with Insiders host Cassidy last month, Faine repeated his view that there was nothing to the Australian Workers Union scandal. Cassidy agreed. So did most ABC voices. "I've said so from the beginning," Faine said. From the beginning, a more intellectually curious journalist might have kept a more open mind. When Faine correctly predicted The Australian would pick up his words "as evidence of our willing blindness" about this issue, he revealed the fundamental problem with our national broadcaster. While Aunty laps up praise -- and there are many things to praise at the ABC, such as its regional radio stations-- its default reaction to even constructive criticism is to attack it, mock it, then ignore it.

In March 2010, then ABC chairman Maurice Newman warned against the tendency towards groupthink, especially on issues such as climate change. The default reaction kicked in. Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes was "outraged" at the suggestion of a pervasive world view at the ABC. On Radio National's The Science Show last month, Robyn Williams attacked Newman for comparing climate change to a religion. Williams also equated expressions of doubt about climate change to expressing the view that "pedophilia is good for children or that asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthma". Rather neatly, he exposed what happens to those who challenge the groupthink.

Nothing will change at the ABC unless and until those charged with complying with the ABC charter -- the chairman, board members, the managing director and the staff -- start doing so. Thoughtful critics don't want a right-wing ABC. But neither was it established with taxpayer funds as a countervailing force against commercial media. The ABC exists, says section six, to "provide broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community".

Why not surprise us, Aunty, by doing just that? Start with Insiders in 2013.