It is a thesis of Media Watch Dog that no one really runs the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  Not the chairman and not the Board. And not the managing director and (so-called) editor-in-chief. Rather, the taxpayer funded public broadcaster is run by a number of cliques – perhaps soviets is a better word – which operate according to their own dictates.

Gerard Henderson, Friday

On Thursday night the Spec showed how ABC news and current affairs staff were acting in flagrant breach of instructions from News Editorial Policy Manager Mark Maley warning them to be impartial in their coverage of the same-sex marriage debate.

“It is very important that we are impartial”, he said in an email sent round that morning

But ABC Radio Sydney host Richard Glover decided he doesn’t take orders from anyone. The opinion pages of Friday’s Sydney Morning Herald featured a piece by him arguing in favour of … well, do I really need to spell it out?

Gerard Henderson rightly drew attention to the item in his weekly Media Watch Dog column that afternoon, noting:

Less than 24 hours after Mark Maley (the ABC’s editorial policy manager) issued an internal email urging ABC staff not take sides on the same-sex marriage debate, Richard Glover wrote a column for Fairfax Media titled “It’s time Australia gave equal marriage a fair go”. Mr Glover presents the Drive program on ABC Radio Sydney (702). His piece helps to confirm MWD’s view that no one really runs the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.

Glover reacted with all the glee of a naughty schoolboy who can’t resist making yet another fake fart soud when he’s sent from the room for his previous disruptions.

He leapt onto Twitter with joy, rejoicing in his new found infamy:

And decided he might as well be hung for a sheep than a lamb, retweeting his column — in case you missed it:

Glover is a senior, long standing ABC host. Yet he has effectively told all their colleagues there is no need to follow instructions.

He has more than demonstrated the soundness of the Henderson hypothesis.

Someone who won’t hesitate to give a politician the third degree has effectively decreed that staff at an organisation that receives over $1 billion of taxpayers’ money are answerable to no one.

ABC staff, Glover has decreed, are above accountability.

That’s for the little people.

And the latte left wonder why we ordinary folk go on about the elites in their bubbles.

PS: The opinion piece on the ABC News website from Thursday by a member of the ALP attacking the postal vote on same-sex marriage is still online — and no attempt to balance it with an opposing piece has been made. Not that you’re surprised.