Column - My job application for Media Watch
Andrew Bolt
2 MAY 2013
TO Mark Scott, ABC managing director:
Mark, I see Sportsbet has me at $10 to take over as host of your Media Watch TV program. Let me end the uncertainty that’s blown out my odds.
Don’t assume I’m not available. Hear that ripping sound? That was my contract for my Network 10 show.
Mark, I want you to know I stand ready to serve when your current host, Jonathan Holmes, stands down by the end of the month, as I read.
I know how welcome this news will be.
You must be mortified that in the 24 years of Media Watch devoted to detecting such media sins as bias and group-think, not once has it had a host not of the Left.
How worried you must be that its eighth host will be from the same cookie-cutter that’s given us Stuart Littlemore, Richard Ackland, Paul Barry, David Marr, Liz Jackson, Monica Attard and Holmes.
For some of those hosts, this monoculture may seem proper. As Marr once declared: “The natural culture of journalism is a kind of vaguely soft left inquiry.”
His unfortunate view is apparently shared by many ABC gatekeepers.
Why else is every mainstream ABC current affairs show hosted by the Left, from Q&A’s warmist Tony Jones to Radio National Breakfast’s Fran Kelly?
But you and I know better, don’t we, Mark? And not just because we know conservatives tend to be more rational - quicker to see through fads such as the global warming scare that had even your science presenter, Robyn Williams, babbling how a 100m sea rise this century was “possible, yes”.
We know this one-sidedness is also a breach of the ABC’s contract with the taxpayers, who give it more than $1 billion a year.
As your own Equity and Diversity Annual Report says:
“The ABC Charter requires the broadcasting of programs that ... reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community. ABC Editorial Policies support the diversity of perspectives.”
Well, now you and I can prove the ABC really does embrace diversity. Let’s give Media Watch its very first conservative presenter for its 25th anniversary.
What a refreshing difference we’d make. Take Monday’s Media Watch. It had a long segment attacking journalists who passed on a false rumour - ultimately of no real consequence - that one of the Boston bombers was actually an Indian student.
But it said zip about the commentators, including your own Waleed Aly, who falsely predicted the bombers were white Right-wingers.
More astonishingly, it did not discuss the reluctance of Fairfax and ABC journalists to mention the terrorists had in fact turned out to be, er, um, Muslim.
What diversity we’d add.
True, the sacrifice would be great. ABC ideologues would stone you for hiring me. (Could you compromise by picking Gerard Henderson?)
But it would be harder for me. I’d have to leave a successful show and betray a network that’s been fantastic to me.
Still, duty calls. I’m game. The real question is, are you?