Michael Danby on Q&A

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Michael Danby has welcomed the ABC Board finally acting by issuing a warning to Q&A executive producer Peter McEvoy, and thereby indirectly presenter to Tony Jones, over giving Sydney Islamist Zaky Mallah a platform on the ABC’s million rating Q&A program.

Michael Danby

And there is still at least one further review to come.

Michael Danby pointed out that: “One thing – maybe the only thing – that went unreported about Zaky Mallah was his tweet quoting Hitler.”
“While our politics differ on a few things, I have at least one thing in common with Tony Abbott’s local enforcer Kevin Andrews. I’m boycotting Q&A. Actually, there are two things. Like him, I’ve never been on” said Mr Danby.

“I’m frequently on Sky News sometimes even ABC News 24, and have given more speeches than most have had hot dinners, so my ability to talk under wet-cement is well-established, so it’s not inexperience they’re worried about. It’s my views. I have pro-Israeli views – and loudly expound them – that are at odds with those in charge of the programme. And while it’s their party and they invite who they want to, it’s worth looking at the door-list to see what they would accept.” said Mr Danby

Consider this Tweet of Zaky Mallah’s that went unreported

I destroyed 90% of the #Jews, leaving 10% of them for the world to understand why I killed them (Adolf #Hitler). #Israel

The fact that this one went unreported is testament to how many exotic flavours of nut there are in his nutbag. More recent tweets, threatening gang-rape and so on, got more attention.

And while we can and should contemptuously laugh at the loon, we also dare not forget that self-styled Iranian ayatollah Monis was presumed a harmless attention-seeker too.

Harmless until he took a weapon and held dozens hostage in the Lindt cafe in central Sydney.
It’s in that context that the Q&A high command decreed Mallah an acceptable guest. They knew his record. They’d looked at this social media presence.

If it bleeds, it leads” is the old TV news maxim, the desire for sensationalism is worry enough. But equally worrying is the political paradigm in which Q&A’s senior staff operate.

“Their agenda is anti-Labor leftist, anti-Israel, even sometimes anti-democratic” Mr Danby said.

In a hard-hitting article in the Australian Jewish News, which J-Wire has seen, Mr Danby confides: “Australia’s 120,000 Jews have been baited by this awful program for too long. But, as usual, the Jews are the canary in the coalmine. What happens to them first is then inflicted on the rest. Q&A’s long anti-Israel bias is coming home to roost. The ABC’s Managing Director, “the nice Mr Scott,” as Sydney Institute’s Gerard Henderson so wittily called him, seems oblivious to Q&A’s abiding agenda. Or perhaps he privately agrees with it?”

“Giving Zaky Mallah a leg-up is not the main problem. The problem is allowing TV producers with hard-line political agendas, operating in the shadows, distorting the public debate, and shifting it in a direction that only the “enlightened vanguard” like them, appreciate.” Danby argued.