Sack Milne for clear betrayal of the ABC
ABC staff revolted against boss Michelle Guthrie for not sticking up for them and danced on her grave this week when their board sacked her.
“Terrific decision,” gloated Four Corners producer Sally Neighbour.
“Are the staff going to mourn her passing? I think the answer’s ‘no’,” tweeted ABC Melbourne radio on its official account, quoting ABC TV presenter Paul Barry.
Bad call, guys. The man who led the coup against Guthrie, ABC chairman Justin Milne, turns out to be the hack who should be sacked instead. Or also.
A leaked email reveals that Milne told Guthrie to “get rid of” a reporter who had angered his close friend, then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Even worse, Milne’s email makes clear that he wanted economics reporter Emma Alberici removed for political reasons.
“They (the government) hate her,” Milne reportedly said in an email to Guthrie.
“We are tarred with her brush. I think it’s simple. Get rid of her. We need to save the ABC – not Emma. There is no guarantee they (the Coalition) will lose the next election.”
I have never seen a clearer example of someone on the ABC selling out the ABC’s independence to politicians – and Milne is the chairman!
In a statement yesterday, Milne did not deny writing the email. Nor would he explain it, weakly saying he would not provide a “running commentary”. So sack him now. Remember, it stinks that Milne was made chairman in the first place. He had minimal experience in the media, yet was given the plum ABC job at the urgent insistence of his friend Turnbull, for whom he’d worked at internet service provider Ozemail, helping to make Turnbull rich.
That, to me, already made him seem a compromised chairman, rather than the fearlessly independent one of an independent national broadcaster.
My fears now seem confirmed.
Milne in his first interview as chairman declared the ABC was not biased to the Left, blithely ignoring all the evidence, but it seems there was one bias he did soon detect and rage against.
It was a bias against Turnbull. Against his mate. His patron. The man who’d not just given him his ABC job but had also appointed him to the NBN board.
Turnbull was incensed in February when Alberici attacked his corporate tax cuts in a piece with the headline: “Tax-free billions: Australia’s largest companies haven’t paid corporate tax in 10 years”.
Alberici’s hit-job was the kind of snark that gives the ABC its reputation for bile and bias. And it was studded with mistakes, including a basic confusion of income with profit.
Turnbull, who as Communications Minister never fussed about the ABC’s bias against then Prime Minister Tony Abbott, could not stand this attack on himself. His office sent a 1000-word complaint to the ABC, which was forced to admit Alberici had made nine errors of fact.
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield later complained to Guthrie about Alberici’s further “errors and omissions of fact” in a second article.
And what a coincidence: Milne also badgered Guthrie about Alberici, even demanding she be sacked.
It appears such a brazen political interference by the ABC’s chairman that I am astonished Milne has not resigned already in humiliation at being caught out.
Here is the prime minister’s close mate taking up that prime minister’s personal beef to demand a reporter’s sacking, when Alberici’s failings were not in fact sackable offences.
Worse, Milne’s email suggests that his call to dump Alberici was driven by consideration of politics more than by consideration of journalistic standards or the ABC charter.
Milne wanted her gone to placate Turnbull’s government and warned Guthrie the government’s possible return made Alberici’s sacking more necessary.
That also implies Milne would not have found it necessary to sack Alberici under a Labor government.
Such political calculation is disgraceful. Which reporters would Milne demand be sacked to please a Labor prime minister? Which reporter would dare attack a Milne mate?
To repeat, Milne should go. Incidentally, what did Milne think Turnbull would do to the ABC if Alberici was not sacked? From what would her sacking “save” the ABC? What threats had Turnbull made?
Note, I’m not trying to have it both ways. True, I often called on Milne and Guthrie to fix the ABC’s shameless bias, which is unlawful given it is taxpayer funded.
But I never demanded they sack reporters for offending the government.
That’s censorship that you’d expect from a commissar of the Soviet Union, not from a chairman of Australia’s ABC. Watch Andrew Bolt on The Bolt Report LIVE 7pm week nights