Not a fan of Joe Hildebrand? (He just followed me on Twitter too, woop!!)
I have genuinely no idea who he is. I was just going by the headline and the fact it was from the Daily Telegraph, both good reasons to set expectations low.
That article you posted above... is it basically saying that the ABC is pandering to conservatives with incorrect views on gay marriage, refugees, climate change, etc, because it was intimidated into thinking it was too left-leaning? Because if so, I'm not sure I like it too much. I'm left, but Q&A would get pretty boring pretty quickly if they had a panel of five lefties with "correct" views on such topics.
I don't think that's what it's saying at all. Really, it's just another piece on the problem with "balance" in journalism, but with a good Aussie example. The key phrases to me are that the media "could, and should, act as gatekeepers — ignoring charlatans and snake oil salesmen", but that "sometimes inaccurate and often ultra-conservative views [are given] more credence than they deserve". The ABC, demonised in the Howard years as so left wing, now routinely has far right crackpots like Clive Palmer on Q&A (on what planet does he have the intellectual capacity to justify a Q&A appearance anyway?!), but never even finds somebody - sane or crazy - from the far left. For instance, with so much discussion on the Occupy movement, where are the Occupiers? Balance now just seems to be appeasing our increasingly large lunatic right wing fringe by letting them spout off factually inaccurate and hateful rhetoric. It's not about deciding who has got the "correct" view, really; it's about accurately representing the debate rather than just loading it with nutters who, since they have media connections, can mouth off about "zomg left wing bias" if they aren't invited often enough to satisfy their ego.
That awful doco about "I Can Change Your Mind About Climate Change" is another case in point. A truly balanced doco would NOT have a 50/50 divide between whatever that chick's name was and Nick Minchin.
No less than 97% of climate scientists accept anthropogenic climate change. An hour long show would give less than a minute to the nutters who reject climate change and focus upon the lively debate amongst the overwhelming majority of scientists who do accept it - what to do, how to manage it, specifics of how it was caused, what the data indicates for the future, etc.