ABC chair slams Jeff Bezos over Washington Post endorsement saga
Kim Williams has hit out at Bezos over the billionaire’s move to block the Post from endorsing a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
ABC chair Kim Williams has slammed The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ handling of the paper’s presidential endorsement saga while addressing the Melbourne Press Club (MPC) on Thursday.
“Jeff Bezos’ behaviour is increasingly appalling,” Williams said.
“Preventing a presidential election editorial. Effectively censoring the op-ed page. Paying $40 million to the president’s wife for a documentary series.”
Williams described this as an example of “media oligarchs … busily undermining the integrity of their publishing to advance their wider business interests”.
He even used the Post’s famous slogan to conclude, opining: “Democracy dies in darkness. And without accurate, truthful, timely news, our citizens die in floods and fires and cyclones.”
Williams was addressing the MPC to mark 12 months since taking over as chair of the national broadcaster, and at one point broke down in tears while reading grateful audience messages from people affected by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
After reading one message, which said that the ABC “kept me company, sane, entertained and informed, and I feel as though I now have new friends who were with me through some very scary and difficult nights, and long uncertain days”, Williams broke down in tears of pride, prompting applause from the audience.
Williams had spent the best part of an hour speaking about the importance of greater funding to the ABC as a pillar of Australian democracy, and stressed his admiration for ABC journalists working through the coverage of Alfred.
“The ABC performed as a well-tuned partner across those harrowing days. Our people were outstanding,” he said.
Asked whether he anticipated that a Coalition government would initiate a review of the ABC’s efficiencies following remarks from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton this week that refused to rule out cuts to the ABC as part of the Coalition’s mooted broader cuts to the public service, Williams was unequivocal: “I don’t think there is any doubt that in the event of Mr Dutton acceding to office that there could be a very early call for an efficiency and apparently an excellence review on what the ABC does.”
“Game on. The ABC is an accountable institution, and I have no doubt it will perform well.”
Williams said he thought the ABC had some areas in which it had “significantly lost the plot and drifted”, specifically referring to documentaries, but that the solution was “investment”.
Asked by Crikey about his National Press Club appearance last year where his remarks about Joe Rogan went viral, Williams said he “learnt a lot about pile-ons” in the process of being bombarded with abuse, “all in the service, allegedly, of free speech”.
Williams said in November 2024 that podcasters like Rogan “prey on people’s vulnerabilities”, saying he found Rogan and his ilk “deeply repulsive”.
“I had every device in my life consumed with tens of thousands of messages with varying vocabulary and grammatical firmament, which took over my life. I cannot begin to describe how vile these messages were and how violent some of them were.”
Williams also described recent News Corp reporting relating to the cost of the ABC as “drivel” and “fiction”, and said his irritation was “white hot”. Williams has previously said “the ABC is not here to provide public sport for News Corp”.
Williams called the article in the first instance an “inaccurate, unbalanced and agenda-driven attack on the ABC”.
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