THE ABC IN CRISIS?

As debate continued over the ABC’s fall in ratings, Managing Director David Anderson announced the ABC would be moving from broadcast radio to streamed or on-demand audio and that the organisation needed a “digital first” structure. Gerard Henderson, Executive Director of The Sydney Institute and a columnist for The Australian where his Media Watch Dog blog appears every Friday, has been an observer and critic of ABC Radio and TV current affairs for two decades. In a speech to The Sydney Institute Wednesday 14 June 2023, Gerard Henderson gave his assessment of where the ABC needed reform.

THE ABC IN CRISIS?

GERARD HENDERSON

Initially, I should state that I am not anti the contemporary Australian Broadcasting Corporation (nee the Australian Broadcasting Commission). Quite the contrary.

After all, to re-work the phrase of old, some of my best friends are ABC comrades. In this instance, I mention the presenter of ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live program – Phillip Adams  AO, AM, Hon DUniv (Griffith), Hon DLitt (ECU), Hon DUniv (SA), DLitt [sic] (Syd), Hon. DUniv (Macquarie), FRSA, Hon FAHA.  I am a regular guest on Comrade Adams’ little wireless program – having appeared in 1990 and again in 2015. Which means our next get-together is scheduled for 2040 – by which time your man Adams will be 101 and myself a mere 95.  God willing – or perhaps not.

In an effort to compete with Comrade Adams I gave myself as AC – as in Always Courteous.  I have since acquired another self-awarded gong, a BCABC.  So now I have the honorific AC, BCABC – aka Always Courteous But Cancelled by the ABC.

I also classify myself as a “bestie” of David Marr – my occasional sparring partner on our occasional appearances on the ABC TV Insiders  couch some time ago.  Why, I even delivered a video message – at the request of Greg Bearup – on the occasion of the wake for David Marr held around this time last year.  Only to discover that it wasn’t a wake at all – but a celebration of your man Marr’s 75^th birthday.  But all’s well that ends well – since David took me to lunch soon after, much to the surprise of some – including myself.

Moreover, I am not one to place all the faults of the contemporary ABC on current managing director and editor-in-chief David Anderson.  Indeed, I regard him as an improvement on his predecessors Mark Scott and Russell Balding.  Michelle Guthrie had only a brief term in office and it’s unfair to judge her in view of this.

On the one occasion that I had a personal conversation with Mr Anderson, in mid-2019, I wished him well with any proposals that he might have to reform the ABC by ensuring that it exhibit political diversity.  However, I added not to do so too quickly – pointing out that the ABC had provided great material for me as a columnist over the decades and that The Sydney Institute’s Media Watch Dog would be diminished without ABC journalists providing such great copy every week – before MWD goes out at Gin & Tonic Time on Fridays.

The ABC in Crisis?

The topic “The ABC in Crisis?” (aka Question Mark) is not a leading question in search of an answer in the affirmative.  For the reason that the answer is in the negative.

The taxpayer funded public broadcaster – with a budget of around $1.3 billion a year and with guaranteed funding for five years with more to follow – cannot be regarded as facing an existential crisis.  Commercial media is dependent on customers to buy its product and/or advertisers to use the product to attract or retain its own customers.

The essential task of ABC management is to head off to Canberra with an empty bucket and return with it loaded with cash.  In short, unlike commercial organisations, the ABC can never go broke – if only for the fact that it is not dependent on either ratings or advertising.  It’s not that the ABC is advertising free. It’s just that the ABC only advertises its own products, including commercial ones such as books.

It’s a put-down to suggest that no cause is completely lost until someone or other joins it.  However, the campaign to abolish or privatise the ABC is completely lost without anyone having to join it.  Indeed, this campaign is counter-productive since it gives members of the ABC Fan Club – including the ABC Alumni and The Friends of the ABC – apparently under new management as ABC Friends – a cause to fight a defenseless enemy.

The fact is that no Commonwealth government is going to defund or privatise the ABC. The Labor Party will never do so – nor would a Labor/Greens administration. Likewise the Liberal Party/Nationals Coalition will not do so. The ABC enjoys considerable support within the joint Liberal/Nationals party room – not because the members and senators are happy with the contemporary ABC. But because the public broadcaster has a body of support in regional and rural Australia where there are fewer media choices and less media coverage than in the capital cities.  In rural Australia the ABC is funded to be – and is – an essential service.

In this regard, it is important to note that about 90 per cent of criticism/complaints about the ABC turns on its News and Current Affairs area – plus, in many cases, what is presented as comedy.  There is little considered criticism of the ABC’s coverage of the arts or sport programs or music or its various locally produced and imported entertainment programs – or even local news.  I understand that there is a degree of resentment among ABC staff in these areas that their good work is diminished by somewhat self-important sections of the News and Current Affairs team.  But there is nothing they can do about it.

There is no doubt that the ABC has a particular appeal to children.  The Sydney Institute claims some praise for this.  Since Media Watch Dog commenced in 2009, it has carried inputs from two Blue Heelers – the late Nancy and the recently departed Jackie who became perhaps the best known canines of this breed.  At Media Watch Dog we believe that ABC TV’s highly successful Bluey series aimed at children, which commenced in 2018, was inspired by Nancy and Jackie. But, as befits the ABC, Bluey is a fake Blue Heeler – but one who fits in well with a public broadcaster which runs much fake news.

Including Sarah Feguson’s three part Trump-Russia series on Four Corners and Louise Milligan’s 30-minute long report on the 7.30 program about the late Cardinal George Pell – the thesis of which was demolished by a unanimous judgment of the High Court of Australia.  Along with Tony Jones’ fake claim about an alleged Catholic Croatian terrorist operation in Australia in the 1970s – despite the fact that he has not been able to name even one such terrorist, while denigrating the Croatian community in Australia. Needless to say, not one of this trio has attempted to correct their discredited work.

No Crisis – But Real Problems

Whilst the ABC is not facing an existential crisis, it certainly has its problems.  Just take last weekend’s newspapers, for example.

I have always regarded references to a five-year plan with a lack of seriousness.  The Soviet Union communist dictator Josef Stalin introduced the first notable Five Year Plan in an attempt to halt the economic disaster that was the Soviet Union in the years after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution – following the introduction of nationalisation and socialism.

As a young man, I admired P.G. Wodehouse’s novels and enjoyed his character Bertie Worster’s dismissal of Britain’s socialists as five-year-planners.

So, it came to pass with some amusement to read James Madden’s report in The Weekend Australian (10-11 June 2023) that ABC managing director and editor-in-chief David Anderson has announced a five-year-plan aimed at adopting a digital first approach in a bid to engage a younger audience.  James Madden reported: “The release of the five-year-plan comes as an internal advisory group is finalising its report into the ABC’s radio network, which has been plagued by plummeting ratings over the past 18 months”.

Meanwhile, in the ABC-friendly Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, on the same day, there was a report by Calum Jaspan headed “ABC comes out swinging over RN Breakfast listener figures”. This was in response to media reports of a dramatic decline in the ratings for RN Breakfast – Radio National’s showcase program presented by the high profile Patricia Karvelas. Not surprisingly, the ABC’s message was along the lines of “Ratings problem – what ratings problem?”.

Certainly, there are various ways of looking at ratings.  Moreover, RN Breakfast is influential whatever its ratings.  But here are the facts as presented by the Nine newspapers media reporter. RN Breakfast’s cumulative audience has decreased from 416,000 in late 2021 to 261,000 today. Calum Jaspan added:

An executive close to the broadcaster, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described the figures as “quite shocking” considering the investment that went into the show. Karvelas declined to comment. The ABC has been contacted for further comment.

That’s the ABC’s way of responding to criticism.  Patricia Karvelas – who every weekday morning demands that her guests answer her questions – declined to answer Mr Jaspan’s question.  And ABC Communications – which specialises in not communicating – threw the switch to “no comment” mode.

As The Weekend Australian  heading described David Anderson’s pronouncement: “ABC on mission to reclaim lost youth.” It’s not clear that the ABC even had a large viewer/listener base among young Australians – although it always had one with respect to children.  But it is clear that ABC’s youth audience has been dropping – in that it has lost sections of Australian youth.

I understand that the apocryphal experiences do not amount to evidence but it’s worth reporting that the young people I meet rarely, if ever, follow the ABC’s radio, television or online outlets.  And I am genuinely surprised at the number of middle-aged plus Australians who volunteer to me that they have given up watching ABC News and Current Affairs – including such programs as RN Breakfast, 7.30, Four Corners, Q+A, and Insiders.

As indicated earlier, I am not sure that the ABC ever had much of a following among the young – apart from Triple J.  In any event, it is losing its young audiences. Hence the engagement of five-year-planners to resolve the issue.

The ABC’s Conservative Free Zone has alienated many conservative listeners/viewers

And then there are the middle aged and older Australians.  Here I speculate about the declining ratings of the likes of RN Breakfast and Q+A among others.

It is my contention that the ABC is a Conservative Free Zone without one presenter, producer or editor for any of its prominent television, radio or online outlets.  This has been denied by sections  of ABC management along with some leading ABC personalities. But no one has been able to name one such conservative person.  From time to time, the name Tom Switzer is rolled out as evidence that the ABC has a conservative on board – Mr Switzer presents Radio National’s Between the Lines once a week at 5 pm on Saturday with repeats at 1 am and 2 am on the following Monday and Tuesday respectively.   This is hardly a prominent ABC program – as Switzer himself has acknowledged in an article which he co-wrote with Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian  on 24 May 2023.  By the way, I listen to the first half of Between the Lines at 1 am on Mondays and the second half at 1.30 am on Tuesdays.

The ABC has been a Conservative Free Zone for a very long time. The problem for the taxpayer funded public broadcaster is that, increasingly, conservatives have options both nationally and internationally to listen to or view something else.  Some ABC presenters – perhaps most notably Paul Barry on ABC TV Media Watch – are wont to sneer at Sky News, especially what they refer to as “Sky News After Dark” (even during Australian Daylight Time). But has Mr Barry or his colleagues even bothered to ask: “Where did Sky News get its viewers from?” since its beginnings over two decades ago.  The fact is that many Sky News viewers are one-time ABC viewers.  And they are prepared to pay a subscription to attain a diversity of views not available on the ABC.

It so happens that there is more diversity on Sky News than on the ABC.  Take the forthcoming referendum on the proposed Voice to Parliament and the executive, for example. Most Sky News presenters are in the “No” camp.  But not prominent presenter Chris Kenny and regular contributor Joe Hildebrand who are strong advocates of “Yes”.  I am not aware of one prominent ABC presenter or regular contributor who advocates a “No” vote – despite the fact that the opinion polls suggest that Australians are divided on this issue.

Conservative critics of the ABC maintain that there should be some prominent conservative presenters or contributors on the public broadcaster and call for an end to panels like those on Q+A and The Drum – which are stacked frequently with leftists or left-of-centre types.  Whereas the leftist critics of the ABC want the cancellation of all conservative voices on the ABC with whom they disagree. So conservatives favour diversity – while Green Left types advocate censorship.

I was an occasional (around six to seven times a year) panelist on ABC Insiders  between 2002 and 2019 before resigning when the executive producer, refused to confirm any appearances for 2020.  Samuel Clark, Insiders’ executive producer, provided no reasons why he would not give me any dates. But the leftist Guardian Australia quoted an anonymous sources (presumably Mr Clark) as saying: “Henderson did not sufficiently engage with the issues during the journalists’ discussions; the decision was nothing to do with his conservative views.”  Fancy that.

It took Insiders some 100 appearances by me over 17 years to work out that I did not sufficiently engage with fellow Insiders panelists.   Which, translated, means that I disagreed with other panelists on the Insiders’ couch. How shocking is that?

In my final years on Insiders, I was frequently told by young friends and relatives that I had trended on Twitter after an appearance.  I quickly learnt that this was not due to supporters or admirers – but from the baying leftist mob complaining that people like me have no right to be heard or seen on the ABC.

That was not my only surprise. On leaving the studio during my final appearances, I noted on a number of occasions that the production staff was focused on what the Twitterverse had to say about the program.  It was around this time I became aware just how much the ABC – in the social media years – was intimidated by a left-wing anonymous Twitter mob calling for censorship. This puts a lot of pressure on executive producers who determine the talent to appear on ABC programs as well as high-profile presenters who are readily contactable.

And then there is the fact that many conservatives – conservative women in particular – experienced vile abuse before and after ABC appearances.

Currently the ABC has set up an inquiry – yes, another inquiry – into how it should respond to the online abuse which ABC Stan Grant copped after his comments during the early part of the ABC’s coverage of the Coronation.  Yet in Senate Estimates on 22 May 2023, David Anderson failed to respond to the statement by Coalition frontbencher Senator Sarah Henderson that she had asked him on two occasions to remove abuse directed at her on the ABC’s website when it was advertised that she was to appear on Q+A. But no action was taken.

The failure of the ABC to have prominent presenters and producers on prominent programs is the fault of management which effectively allows members of the ABC staff collective – I call it the ABC soviet – to employ and promote their own.  The failure of so many ABC panels to present divergent views turns on the unwillingness of ABC producers – and, to a  lesser extent, presenters – to invite conservatives on the program, many of whom have been “cancelled”.  And then there is the fact that –  having had bad experiences in the past due to unbalanced panels and unprofessional presenters along with the frequently baying live leftist audiences – some conservatives will no longer accept invitations to appear on programs where they are to be sneered at by panelists and mocked by a predominantly Green/Left audience.

I note that in recent days my description of the ABC as a Conservative Free Zone has received backing from an unexpected quarter.  The academic and broadcaster Waleed Aly is not a political conservative.  However, on 25 May 2023, he had this to say on ABC Radio National’s The Minefield:

I used to get so frustrated about “no conservatives at the ABC, and it’s so left-leaning” – and all that sort of stuff – get very frustrated with all that, you know, “inner city lefties” while I lived out in the suburbs. For all that frustration, it’s not untrue in a certain way. And the unrepresentative nature of the ABC is not nearly one that is of demographics. It is one that has certain ideological bents.

The question is – how did it come to this?  Well, as the Marxists of old might say – it was no accident.  Indeed the progress of the ABC since the end of the Second World War can be traced with reference to its own publications and the views of its supporters.

Allan Ashbolt’s Left-Wing Kindergarten and its Legacy

The late K.S. (Ken) Inglis was a left-wing historian but a considered one.  He is the author of the semi-official two volume history of the public broadcaster This is the ABC (MUP, 1983) and Whose ABC? (Black Inc, 2006) covering the period from the public broadcaster’s beginning in 1932 during the first term of Joseph Lyons’ government until the final years of the Howard Coalition government.  In the latter book, Inglis documented the row between Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke and the ABC over its reporting of the First Gulf War.  This serves as a reminder that, at times, the ABC has unprofessionally criticised both Labor and Coalition governments – but always from the left.  Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam had no problem with the ABC since he was regarded as a progressive in a left-of-centre kind of way. And today the Greens and the Teal Independents are the ABC’s most vocal political supporters.

In This is the ABC, Inglis wrote about Allan Ashbolt and what was called “Ashbolt’s kindergarten”. Ashbolt joined the ABC in 1954 and was appointed to New York in 1958 at the conclusion of which he wrote the polemical An American Experience. It was the work of what Inglis describes as “a democratic socialist”.  Well, it was certainly socialist. Marxist in fact.  On his return to Australia, Ashbolt moved into what was then termed the ABC Talks department and later into other areas.  Sandra Hall was to call Ashbolt the ABC’s “conscience in residence”.  To others he was a middle class radical of Marxist intent on imposing his political will on the public broadcaster.

Ashbolt appointed young men of his political ilk – including Jon Cassidy and Marius Webb – who were early enrollers into Ashbolt’s kindergarten.  From the time Ashbolt returned to Australia in the early 1960s, ABC news and current affairs became increasingly dominated by a leftist staff collective who had graduated from his kindergarten.

As Ken Inglis pointed out, Comrade Ashbolt went to Caulfield Grammar School in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield. He also mentioned that Marius Webb went to Xavier College in the Melbourne suburb of Kew where he threw dye in the swimming pool on his last day. Another middle class radical. I remember, when growing up in Melbourne in the 1950s and into the 1960s, it was said that half the members of the Communist Party had been educated at Geelong Grammar and the other half had been Catholic altar boys.

Going through my book collection around Gin & Tonic Time last Saturday, I literally tripped over a pile of pamphlets and magazines on the floor. In doing so, I came across a copy of the May-June 1971 issue of Quadrant.  The cover story was titled  The Politics of This Day Tonight?  and carried photographs of the ABC stars at the time – Bill Peach (TDT’s presenter), Gerald Stone (a prominent TDT reporter) and Tony Ferguson (TDT’s executive producer).  The article was written by University of New South Wales academic George Shipp. In essence, Shipp claimed – supported by evidence – that This Day Tonight (the predecessor of today’s 7.30) was biased towards a left-liberal position and lacked objectivity.

The response was familiar.  The ABC in general, and TDT in particular, went into immediate denial. Then George Shipp was subjected to a vile personal attack by ABC barrackers for what was a mild-mannered, but tough-minded, critique of This Day Tonight’s political stance.  As far as I am aware, Shipp was shattered by the response and did not re-enter the debate.  The best way to prepare a response criticising the ABC is to eat glass for breakfast – but not many are capable of such a diet.  Certainly Mr Shipp did not choose such a dish – he was more a marmalade on toast kind of guy.

Step forward a quarter of a century. Bill Peach’s book This Day Tonight  was published in 1996.  In it, Peach boasted that This Day Tonight  in his day was not into “objectivity” but rather all about “assaulting the conservative values of post-war Australia”.   So George Shipp was correct – but he was not mentioned in Peach’s book.

Also in 1996, Stuart Littlemore – who was a prominent This Day Tonight reporter in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and later a long-time presenter of the ABC TV Media Watch program – wrote a book titled The Media and Me  (ABC Books). Reflecting on his time at This Day Tonight, Littlemore boasted that TDT  “had built its success on assaulting the conservative values of post-war Australia”.   He added that TDT  “was angry journalism, calculated to change Australian attitudes”. Once again Shipp was vindicated – but he was not mentioned in Littlemore’s book.

Littlemore’s inner-city contempt for political conservatives was evident when he wrote this in the Media and Me about a minister in the Coalition government led by William McMahon:

[John] McLeay was one of those petty bourgeois triumph-of-the-shopkeeping-classes Tories (he owned a carpet shop in Adelaide)….

Which raises the question: What’s wrong with carpet sellers?

A Lack of Political Diversity Results in Boredom

One of the problems with the lack of diversity at the ABC is that it makes for boring programs. Growing up Catholic in Melbourne in the 1950s I learnt from The Litanies and The Beatitudes where a supplication was endorsed by the evocation “Pray for Me” or some such.

I note that when The Drum was relaunched in early 2019, Michael Lallo wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald  that the re-constituted program would replace such sedate British shows as Antiques Roadshow in the 6 pm time slot.  It was not to be.

Co-presenter Ellen Fanning indicated that she wanted to preside over a program where “people aren’t throwing rhetorical bombs at each other”.  And fellow co-presenter Julia Baird declared: “We’ve reached a point in Australian political debate where we can sit there and say: “The emperor has no clothes – but how do we actually address that”.

So Ms Fanning was looking to an absence of debate. And Dr Baird (for a doctor she is) anticipated that The Drum’s panelists would essentially agree with each other.  I know of several Drum panelists who were “cancelled” by the program for engaging in arguments with fellow panelists. Moreover, Institute of Public Affairs employees have been banned from appearing on the program since 2018 – but not those of the leftist Australia Institute.  Little wonder that Chris Mitchell, writing in his excellent weekly column in The Australian on 31 April 2023, described The Drum as “now invariably boring”. Antiques Roadshow is lively by comparison.

There is more diversity on Sky News than on the ABC when it comes to panels. Regular Sky News left of centre contributors – sometimes on a daily basis – include Stephen Conroy, Sam Crosby, Michael Danby, Joe Hildebrand, Nicholas Reece and Graham Richardson – along with the likes of Rose Jackson and Linda Scott.  There is no such diversity on The Drum with respect to political conservatives.

The ABC’s declining ratings across so many news and current affairs programs, can partly be explained  by the boredom factor. It is not only conservatives who are turned-off by the ABC preaching as if it was the Catholic or Anglican or Presbyterian Church a century ago.  Even many a progressive (they used to be called left-wing) do not want to be lectured at across a range of issues.

This is a modern ABC approved version of the Litanies. It’s obvious that the ABC should be discussing such issues as climate change, Indigenous rights, gender issues, multiculturalism and immigration – provided there is a diversity of considered views that can be heard on such matters.  It’s just that the ABC has become obsessed with certain left-wing or left-of-centre causes and ignores many non-fashionable issues.

For example, on 28 May, 75 per cent of the Insiders program was devoted to Indigenous issues.  This would be reasonable in the lead-up to the referendum on The Voice – but this is up to between five to seven months away.

The ABC Staff Collective aka The ABC Soviet

The ABC is essentially a staff collective which is either supported or tolerated by ABC management. The lack of political diversity within ABC News and Current Affairs is as evident today as it was half a century ago.

The ABC chair and other ABC Board members (with the exception of the ABC managing director who sits on the board) do not run the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.  Nor should it – the role of the public and private sector boards is one of supervision.

The only way to demolish the ABC as a Conservative Free Zone is for a tough-minded managing director to enforce her or his powers as editor-in-chief to reform the organisation.  This would require prevailing over a staff collective which essentially appoints and promotes its own and which is far too influenced by the essentially Green-Left audience who view and listen to ABC News and Current Affairs and regard the public broadcaster as their property.

Anyone who runs a successful operation knows that it is most unwise to ignore or annoy the supporter base.  The ABC has done this by becoming a Conservative Free Zone.  To win back a significant part of its one-time base and attract new supporters will require more than a management-initiated five year plan.

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During the Question/Discussion period the following exchange took place about Gerard Henderson’s book Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt (Connor Court) which was published in November.  This is a transcript of the exchange – which has been slightly edited.

Question: Isn’t part of the problem of the ABC – a media problem? I noticed in your book about George Pell, for example. You said that something like – I don’t want to misquote you – something like 100 or more journalists piled-on. Whereas there was only few who supported him. And that seemed to me to be a barometer of the media as a whole. And it’s obviously easy to be as biased and partisan as the ABC if you’re in the middle of a whole media dross. So, I’d just like you to comment on that. To what extent is the ABC reflective of the media as a whole?

Gerard Henderson: I think that’s broadly true. But the ABC does have a special status in Australia, as a very important organisation. And I think it deserves attention for that reason. It is true in my book I listed 120 media people – about 40 of which were in the ABC – who had engaged in the George Pell pile-on. Nearly two years after my book came out – or 18 months after – not one Australian journalist – I don’t exaggerate – has come back and contested anything I wrote in there. Not one. But all of them have gone into denial and refused to comment.

I’ll give you a brief example. I wrote a book, George Pell, the Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt. Frank Brennan wrote a book Observations on the Pell Proceedings. Keith Windschuttle wrote a book The Persecution of George Pell. Windschuttle got one interview on Radio National’s The Religion and Ethics Report – after which there were enormous complaints from ABC management, from ABC journalists and the baying mob of the ABC audience who were going on social media. And after that, all discussion was stopped.

I’m a streetfighter, I don’t mind. But Frank Brennan’s a nice sort of guy. He used to be beloved by the ABC. Paul Keating called him the meddling priest, didn’t he? Because he was always on the ABC complaining about the Keating government not doing enough on Indigenous matters. But the ABC wouldn’t even have Frank Brennan on to talk about his book on the Pell Case.

I’ll give you three examples about my own case. This is what I was told – and I don’t tell lies and I don’t make stuff up.

• One well known ABC journalist said to me that the book was a great book but added that it was not possible to interview me about it due to what would be strong opposition from ABC staff, ABC management and ABC listeners and viewers.
• Another well-known journalist told me that the unwillingness of the ABC to discuss books on the Pell Case by Frank Brennan and myself was of concern but added the situation was “tricky”. It was not clear to me why a discussion on considered and documented books on the Pell Case after the High Court’s unanimous decision should be tricky.
• And a third well known ABC presenter said that it was not clear how a discussion on my book could be fitted into his radio program. And when I asked the presenter whether this also applied to the two ABC television channels, as well as some 60 ABC radio stations, there was no reply.

That’s a clear example of censorship. Whatever you think of the High Court’s unanimous judgement, the Pell Case was one of the most important criminal cases in Australian history. And three of us who wrote books on the Pell Case after the High Court’s unanimous judgement are just silenced and cancelled by the public broadcaster. But no one has come to me, of the 40 ABC journalists mentioned in the book, including Louise Milligan and Sarah Ferguson, not one has come to me and said anything in the book was incorrect or even exaggerated. So, that’s just intellectual cowardice in my view.

 

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