One word in an email exposes what’s so rotten about the ABC. It’s hard to overstate how damning it is – no wonder Aussies are turning away: PETER VAN ONSELEN

The ABC likes to talk as if it sits above the fray: the calm, publicly funded antidote to a commercial media frenzy. 

That self-image is increasingly its greatest delusion. Whenever the public broadcaster is challenged, the reflex too often isn’t to check, clarify and possibly correct what might have transpired. 

Instead it simply closes ranks and treats scrutiny as an act of hostility, rather than a normal feature of democratic accountability for a taxpayer-funded organisation.

The internal emails released through Senate estimates about the furore last year surrounding what Isabella Higgins said live on air are case in point. 

For the uninitiated, Higgins appeared on the Sunday morning political show anchored by David Speers, Insiders (yes, it’s still going), where she labelled Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s comments about migration voting patterns as ‘racist’. Formal complaints soon followed as did online criticisms of the remark, with Coalition colleagues lashing the comments as ‘disgusting’. 

It emerged this morning that the ABC News Director, Justin Stevens, told colleagues via email that while he hadn’t even watched the relevant segment yet, ‘supporting Isabella’s journalism and work for the abc regardless will be important.’

Regardless? Regardless of what? As in, regardless of the facts of the complaints being made? Or regardless of what any investigation might ultimately determine?

It is hard to overstate how damning that one word is. It’s what you say when the priority isn’t whether the journalism was sound or not, but whether the institution looks united to repel criticism, however fair or unfair it might be.

The show’s executive producer, Sam Clark, knew how to take his boss’s directive, replying, also in writing, that they would ‘fully back her’.

Did that come after a thorough investigation? Nope, that response came before a transcript of the segment had even been written. In fact, it came 14 whole minutes after Stevens made it clear to his subordinates that Higgins would be backed regardless of, well, anything.

I’m not sure what’s more offensive: the lack of standards and pre-determination at play here, or the stupidity of putting such one-eyed thoughts in writing when the ABC as a taxpayer-funded organisation is subject to Senate Estimates oversight and FOI accessibility.

What does this say about the ABC’s internal culture? The moment there is any sort of criticism, the most senior person in the news division instantly defends the journalist, without having even seen what transpired. And his subordinates jump to attention. 

It’s an embarrassing sock puppet routine for a show that’s insufferably smug at the best of times, albeit more so when Patricia Karvelas is in the host seat rather than Speers.

And how intellectually callow is the whole charade uncovered at Estimates. It’s the editorial equivalent of reviewing a book you haven’t read, condemning an opinion piece you haven’t bothered to examine, or delivering a verdict on a television show you haven’t watched. And it’s the sort of laziness that, in any other context, the ABC would rightly mock on one of its not-so-funny satirical programs.

This tawdry saga highlights where the ABC’s bias problem lives. It’s not a simple matter of whether the broadcaster hires enough conservatives (which it doesn’t). Nor whether its journalists disproportionately vote one way or the other (surveys shows they overwhelmingly vote for left-leaning parties). Nor is the issue solely about whether its panels on a Sunday morning lean left, which they absolutely do.

The deeper issue is a weakening of a habit of self-scepticism at the ABC. Organisations that remain credible develop routines that force them to doubt themselves before they accuse others with impunity.

The ABC’s own editorial guidelines are explicit about accuracy and impartiality, and about presenting material facts in context rather than through an advocacy lens. Those words matter only if they are followed when it is uncomfortable to do so.

If the instinct from the boss is to ‘support regardless’, and sycophants respond to that edict with a pledge to ‘fully back her’, then the standards are not really standards at all. They are decorative language to be cited when convenient and ignored when inconvenient.

And don’t think this example uncovered in Parliament is isolated. It fits a broader ABC siege mentality that transforms external criticisms into moral threats and internal scrutiny into an act of cultural betrayal.

There is also a deeper arrogance on show here, one the ABC rarely sees because it has grown so accustomed to its own moral confidence. When a newsroom assumes it stands on the right side of history, it becomes dangerously relaxed about processes. Ends justify means. It starts to treat its judgements as self-validating. It forgets that taxpayers fund the ABC and they aren’t all as one-eyed as those who work there are.

I’m not just talking about disillusioned conservative voters who tune out. I’m talking about those in the middle who don’t see every issue through the same left-wing lens so many employed by the ABC do.

The simplest test is this: would the ABC accept ‘support them regardless’ as an adequate explanation from a politician, a CEO or a judge? Of course it wouldn’t. It would call it out, without mercy, especially if anyone on the right of politics or in corporate Australia did it.

The ABC should apply the same standard to itself, and the News Director should stop confusing loyalty with professionalism. If he can’t see the difference, he should resign.

As a side-note, the bald-faced idiocy of the predetermined response to criticisms of Higgins by ABC bosses reminds me of the Bill Shorten television interview back in 2012.

In that interview, the then Labor minister said he hadn’t heard what his PM said, but he supported what she said all the same. 

It won the annual Matt Price Award for the silliest moment in Australian politics that year – handed out by Insiders. And the interview that teased out that response by Shorten was conducted by Speers on Sky News before his move to the ABC. Funny how things turn out…