Media 'watchdog' has blinkered vision

Once a previous Media Watch presenter, Stuart Littlemore, spent most of his own program - discreetly named “Littlemore” - in a very personal attack on me. I had dared to question the cross-media and foreign-investment restrictions: the ABC refused me what any newspaper would be embarrassed not to allow - a minimal reply. Why? Surely I knew that “Littlemore” wasn't a current affairs program, so why should I expect any balance?

So it's all right for Media Watch to be permanently impregnated with what Marr lovingly calls a "soft leftie kind of culture" - even if research confirms that most Australians (whether they vote for the Coalition or Labor) oppose the Left's agenda. So here's a simple suggestion: shouldn't the ABC board insist that its promulgated requirement for balance actually apply to Media Watch?

When Marr dismissed the code requirement for balance as "nonsensical", I pointed to the one and only program on ABC TV that is clearly balanced, Insiders on Sunday mornings. Even then, the conservative voice is always in a minority. But at least this ensures that any opinion, Left or Right, can be balanced. And not just "as soon as possible", as the code prescribes, but instantly.

Rather than continuing to be yet another left-wing taxpayer-funded opinion program, Media Watch should consist of a balanced panel exchanging no doubt robust opinions about the media. (Marr is strenuously opposed to this.) The chairman should have the skills of a Barrie Cassidy - and his courage, too.

Recall Cassidy's brave remarks on commercial TV about the ABC's almost deranged attempt to impose an extraordinary dose of political correctness after 9-11: "At the ABC, a memo went out about a week ago to all radio commentators that they were not to say anything derogatory about the Taliban … So here I am on Channel 10, I can say that the Taliban execute women for adultery. They've been known to throw acid in the face of young girls who don't wear veils and so on. I can get it off my chest on Channel 10 but I can't say it on the ABC."