Barrie Cassidy admits Abbott will be the target of biased journalists

When a member of the media actually admits that the coverage of an issue has been biased and unfair, it usually comes as a surprise. The bias isn’t surprising; but the admission is. When the subject arises, denial is usually the default response of most political journalists.

So it was interesting to hear Barrie Cassidy, presenter of ABC1’s Insiders, admit on Thursday that the way the media had handled the Tony Abbott/Women’s Weekly interview this week was not just a case of a few over-eager journalists distorting an interview that they had not read.

It was another example of media group think when it comes to the way they treat anyone expressing conservative views. And Tony Abbott can expect more of it to come, according to Cassidy.

“He [Abbott] was asked, ‘What would be your advice to your daughters?’ and he said that I would tell them not to give away their, err, lightly give away their virginity.

“That was misinterpreted by a lot of people who didn’t wait for the article to be published.

Media players, Cassidy said, deliberately verballed the Liberal leader as a kind of punishment for the views and values he holds.

There is a “media mindset” in play and Abbott was badly treated this week, Cassidy told 774 ABC Melbourne’s Jon Faine.

In Cassidy’s opinion, the media tactics—which he says are unfair—of homing in on any socially conservative comments Abbott makes, could force the Liberal leader to stop speaking candidly about social issues.

“Look, it’s not fair, in a sense, to Tony Abbott.

“He is asked constantly about these issues whereas Kevin Rudd, for example, is not.

“Kevin Rudd hasn’t been asked the question, ‘What would be your advice to your daughters?’ And would his advice be any different any way? What would he say, ‘No, take a cavalier attitude, go for your life?’ I doubt it.”

Cassidy said Tony Abbott has complained about this treatment, “but it doesn’t seem to make any difference”.

“We admire him for his candor. Well, certainly in the media we like him for his candor, and it would be a pity if he suddenly, as a result of this experience, pulled his head in and we didn’t get the same Tony Abbott,” he said.

“He will be verballed and the media is on to this sort of angle that they want, that he’s a social conservative who wants to impose all of those attitudes on to the rest of the community.

“That seems to be their mindset and he was really badly treated over the Women’s Weekly article. He didn’t say anything of the kind, based on Julia Gillard’s responses to it,” Cassidy said.

“Julia Gillard said he shouldn’t be imposing those views upon the community. Well, he wasn’t doing that. He was asked what would be your advice to your own daughters.”

Cassidy’s comments, of course, raise another point.

It is not just about the attitude of liberal journalists to someone expressing a conservative social view. It is also about the same old double standards in the coverage of politics.

If a senior Coalition MP had distorted the statement of a Labor politician the way Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard misinterpreted Tony Abbott this week, you can be sure that members of the press gallery would have made the distortion the issue and the offender would have become the subject of censure.

As media feeding frenzies go, the attack on Abbott was intense but relatively brief. (Although Sunday Telegraph columnist Claire Harvey was on the topic today, continuing with the untrue assertion that Abbott was lecturing “all fine young single ladies”.) When the Women’s Weekly appeared on news stands mid-week and the evidence of the gross distortion of Abbott’s remarks by Gillard and feminists in the media was revealed, the media/feminist outrage seemed rather hollow and became, one senses, somewhat counter-productive.

Perhaps the realisation dawned that Australians by and large are more in tune with the views of Tony Abbott on social issues than with the the moral relativism of the liberal media and ALP feminists like Julia Gillard.

Nevertheless, thank you, Barrie Cassidy, for acknowledging what so many in political journalism try to deny. The anti-conservative bias in the media is real and Abbott—and anyone else in the Opposition—will be a target for as long as he or they expresses views that contradict the liberal mind-set.