ABC chair defends broadcaster against bias claims in Sky News interview with Chris Kenny
In his two years as ABC chair, Kim Williams has been generous with his time, becoming a regular on the writers’ festival circuit and sitting for numerous interviews with probing journalists.
But on Thursday evening, Williams was not in Kansas any more. The one-time News Corp boss turned public broadcasting champion faced his toughest media assignment yet, a 20-minute grilling by Sky News host Chris Kenny on his nightly show.
While the News Corp-owned channel draws relatively few eyeballs to its After Dark programming, figures like Kenny are influential in conservative spaces, and are frequently critical of the public broadcaster.
For Williams, it was a trip into what Sky billed as the “lion’s den”, a tricky away fixture before a small but hostile crowd. He gave not an inch – even when he has before – defending the broadcaster’s journalism against a barrage of hostile, albeit predictable, questions about political bias, war in the Middle East, and its views on climate change.
Unsurprisingly, Kenny came out swinging.
“Surely you would not contend that there’s not a green, left bias at the ABC, that there’s not an ABC position on climate change, net zero, Indigenous issues, for instance?” he said.
In response, Williams said he didn’t know about the voting habits of his staff, dead-batting Kenny’s claims that high-profile ABC journalists Sarah Ferguson, Laura Tingle, David Marr and John Lyons all voted Greens, Labor or Teal.
“In fact, I would have no idea how the overwhelming majority of people at the ABC vote, and nor would I seek to find out,” Williams said, adding the somewhat strained proposition some may not cast valid votes at all.
He defended the broadcaster against Kenny’s claims that it lacked ideological diversity and right of centre broadcasters.
“The ABC can have a left-wing major program presenter. Where is the right-of-centre Philip Adams? There was never an answer to that,” Kenny said.
Williams said that the ABC has had conservative hosts “from time to time,” pointing to former Centre for Independent Studies boss Tom Switzer, who had a weekly show until 2023.
“It was a pretty good program,” Williams said.
He held firm against questions about managing director Hugh Marks’ decision to dump ABC news chief Justin Stevens in May.
“I think Hugh [Marks] has made it very clear that he wanted to see a different focus. That he wanted to see something that was going to better accord with settings that that measured up in terms of a performance-oriented ABC,” Williams told Kenny.
Stevens is set to be replaced by Simon Robinson, who is currently a London-based executive at news service Reuters.
Kenny asked Williams whether Robinson’s role was to make the broadcaster “more pluralistic, less biased.”
“I have every confidence that Simon holds values of pluralism very close to his heart, and he comes with all of the embedded values of the Reuters Trust principles, which are the oldest set of editorial policies operational on the planet,” Williams said.
Williams insisted that the ABC’s work on Israel, Palestine and Iran was “probably the most comprehensive and disciplined body of coverage” of the conflict.
“Chris, I’m not here to actually be some kind of punching bag on assertions that you’re just throwing at me,” he said, though at times that is exactly what he appeared to be.
The ABC chair also doubled down on his views expressed in a profile published in this masthead that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is an “aberrant” leader, but said that the comments were “inappropriate” to make at the time.
“I’m a very keen follower of matters to do with the Jewish faith, and I do believe that Benjamin Netanyahu is an aberrant figure in the leadership of Israel as a nation. I make no apology for that,” Williams said.
“I do make an apology for expressing a view in a time of great conflict and where there is division in society, and I think it was inappropriate on my part.”
All up, it was an effective piece of stonewalling by Williams, who can now say he isn’t afraid to engage with the ABC’s toughest critics. Whether it changed any minds among Kenny’s no doubt hostile audience is another matter. It certainly left Kenny eager for more, offering up the possibility of having the ABC chair on every six months.
Williams didn’t reject the offer.
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Kishor Napier-Raman is a senior business writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously he worked as a CBD columnist and reporter in the federal parliamentary press gallery.Connect via X or email.
