Just how stupid do ABC marketers and presenters believe their audience actually is? On the evidence, the answer is very.

The trend this year of self-styled ‘celebrity’ presenters from Virginia Trioli to Annabel Crabb offering weekly online wraps for their adoring fans is really just another form of advertising. It’s tawdry, unwelcome, insulting and succeeds in diminishing the journalists along with the national broadcaster itself.

For an organisation which claims to be implacably opposed to advertising — which is prohibited under its Charter — ABC radio and especially television sure does a lot of it, particularly of the self-promotion hybrid.

Those smart young...