The most ABSURD part of ABC reporter’s questions to Peter Dutton that no-one is talking about, writes PETER VAN ONSELEN

Should the Israeli national flag be banned from being flown in Australia if flags for the terrorist organisation Hezbollah are banned?

Is it ‘hypocrisy’ not to apply such a ban to both?

These patently absurd questions – rooted in false equivalency – came from an ABC reporter, directed at the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton yesterday.

That’s right, they were asked by a journalist working for the taxpayer funded public broadcaster, not some fringe radical new media operation devoted to spinning on behalf of the anti-Israel forces in the Middle East.

Dutton quickly called out the absurdity of what he was being asked, noting that it highlighted to him that ‘the ABC is in greater trouble than even I first imagined’.

That’s for sure, but not only because of the questions being asked.

The reaction from ABC management was arguably even worse.

The asking of the questions, framed as they were, is a direct snub to new ABC Chairman Kim Williams, who has called for activism amongst his journalists to stop.

Is management backing in the demands of the ABC chair?

The ABC News Director Justin Stevens wouldn’t comment directly on the line of questioning, The Australian reported. 

A limp self-justifying statement was issued by the ABC’s spin unit soon afterwards: ‘Questions at a press conference [yesterday] were not a piece of reporting nor a position being taken by the ABC’, the statement read. 

Talk about a lily-livered response. Whoever wrote it should go into politics. One wonders if Williams agrees with the obfuscating sentiment behind it.

Or if he agrees with his news director seemingly letting the line of questioning slide right by him. 

The Managing Director of the ABC, David Anderson, admitted he still hadn’t bothered to watch the exchange the day after it happened – giving him the out he presumably wanted when asked about it. 

This is the ABC we are talking about, remember. The public broadcaster is meant to be above campaigning and polemic point scoring when practicing its journalism.

But apparently ABC journos can ask questions – at a press conference being broadcast live and in full – without it forming part of their reporting.

If anyone at the ABC wants to partake in left-wing activism they should join The Guardian, for example.

Private media organisations are largely free to do what they want, unlike the public broadcaster which has different responsibilities.

If somewhere like The Guardian is not activist enough, moving into a think tank like The Australia Institute is always an option.

There are plenty of places to go if running polemic lines to support your cause du jour is the name of the game.

But doing it at the taxpayer funded broadcaster is both wrong and goes against the edict handed down by the chair.

Even if it seemingly doesn’t bother the network’s chiefs. 

The problem is, at the ABC the tail wags the dog. The culture is a bottom up one in which the inmates run the asylum.

And high profile journalists there are some of the worst offenders, as we’ve seen all too clearly in recent months.

Indeed as ABC management has been forced to admit at Senate hearings about the public broadcaster.

So it’s unsurprising when that activist attitude also infects more junior reporters tasked with asking straight questions at news conferences.

They see what the main ‘talent’ at the organisation does – and gets away with – and learn those bad habits for their own reporting.

There is even the suggestion the question asked was phoned in by one of these more senior ABC journalists, which helps explain why management has taken such a light touch. The reporter asking the question was seen reading from her phone.

Beyond a wholesale clean out at the ABC it’s hard to know how to fix the culturally engrained bias within the institution.

But that’s never going to happen.