{"id":804803,"date":"2026-07-16T22:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/804803\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T22:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:03:16","slug":"kim-williams-abc-chair-defends-broadcaster-against-bias-claims-in-sky-news-interview-with-chris-kenny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/804803\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim Williams: ABC chair defends broadcaster against bias claims in Sky News interview with Chris Kenny"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In his two years as ABC chair, Kim Williams has been generous with his time, becoming a regular on the writers\u2019 festival circuit and sitting for numerous interviews with probing journalists.<\/p>\n

But on Thursday evening, Williams was not in Kansas any more. The one-time News Corp boss turned public broadcasting champion faced his toughest media assignment yet, a 20-minute grilling by Sky News host Chris Kenny on his nightly show.<\/p>\n

\"KimKim Williams, ABC chair, showed he wasn\u2019t afraid to cop hard questions from a fixated critic of the broadcaster.Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n

While the News Corp-owned channel draws relatively few eyeballs to its After Dark programming, figures like Kenny are influential in conservative spaces, and are frequently critical of the public broadcaster.<\/p>\n

For Williams, it was a trip into what Sky billed as the \u201clion\u2019s den\u201d, a tricky away fixture before a small but hostile crowd. He gave not an inch \u2013 even when he has before \u2013 defending the broadcaster\u2019s journalism against a barrage of hostile, albeit predictable, questions about political bias, war in the Middle East, and its views on climate change.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Kenny came out swinging.<\/p>\n

\u201cSurely you would not contend that there\u2019s not a green, left bias at the ABC, that there\u2019s not an ABC position on climate change, net zero, Indigenous issues, for instance?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"ABC<\/a><\/p>\n

In response, Williams said he didn\u2019t know about the voting habits of his staff, dead-batting Kenny\u2019s claims that high-profile ABC journalists Sarah Ferguson, Laura Tingle, David Marr and John Lyons all voted Greens, Labor or Teal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, I would have no idea how the overwhelming majority of people at the ABC vote, and nor would I seek to find out,\u201d Williams said, adding the somewhat strained proposition some may not cast valid votes at all.<\/p>\n

He defended the broadcaster against Kenny\u2019s claims that it lacked ideological diversity and right of centre broadcasters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ABC can have a left-wing major program presenter. Where is the right-of-centre Philip Adams? There was never an answer to that,\u201d Kenny said.<\/p>\n

Williams said that the ABC has had conservative hosts \u201cfrom time to time,\u201d pointing to former Centre for Independent Studies boss Tom Switzer, who had a weekly show until 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a pretty good program,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

He held firm against questions about managing director Hugh Marks\u2019 decision to dump ABC news chief Justin Stevens in May<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Hugh [Marks] has made it very clear that he wanted to see a different focus. That he wanted to see something that was going to better accord with settings that that measured up in terms of a performance-oriented ABC,\u201d Williams told Kenny.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Justin<\/a><\/p>\n

Stevens is set to be replaced by Simon Robinson, who is currently a London-based executive at news service Reuters.<\/p>\n

Kenny asked Williams whether Robinson\u2019s role was to make the broadcaster \u201cmore pluralistic, less biased.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have every confidence that Simon holds values of pluralism very close to his heart, and he comes with all of the embedded values of the Reuters Trust principles, which are the oldest set of editorial policies operational on the planet,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Williams insisted that the ABC\u2019s work on Israel, Palestine and Iran was \u201cprobably the most comprehensive and disciplined body of coverage\u201d of the conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris, I\u2019m not here to actually be some kind of punching bag on assertions that you\u2019re just throwing at me,\u201d he said, though at times that is exactly what he appeared to be.<\/p>\n

The ABC chair also doubled down on his views expressed in a profile published in this masthead<\/a> that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu<\/a> is an \u201caberrant\u201d leader, but said that the comments were \u201cinappropriate\u201d to make at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a very keen follower of matters to do with the Jewish faith, and I do believe that Benjamin Netanyahu is an aberrant figure in the leadership of Israel as a nation. I make no apology for that,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do make an apology for expressing a view in a time of great conflict and where there is division in society, and I think it was inappropriate on my part.\u201d<\/p>\n

All up, it was an effective piece of stonewalling by Williams, who can now say he isn\u2019t afraid to engage with the ABC\u2019s toughest critics. Whether it changed any minds among Kenny\u2019s no doubt hostile audience is another matter. It certainly left Kenny eager for more, offering up the possibility of having the ABC chair on every six months.<\/p>\n

Williams didn\u2019t reject the offer.<\/p>\n

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"KishorKishor Napier-Raman<\/a> is a senior business writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously he worked as a CBD columnist and reporter in the federal parliamentary press gallery.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-804803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}