‘Their whole body is made of glass. How can people react in such a, frankly, demonic fashion? I really stand back in disbelief,’ said ABC Chair, Kim Williams.

He appeared to be in shock that his disparaging comments about podcasting giant Joe Rogan didn’t go down so well with an audience the ABC has been trying (unsuccessfully) to woo. State media is being outplayed, out-competed, and abandoned in droves thanks to the rise of free market competition in the highly competitive ecosystem of social media and platforms like Spotify.

Why is the Australian taxpayer spending a billion dollars a year to prop up a vanity project for the fringe political fetishes of the far-left?

‘Of course they’re a threat to the ABC. I think they’re a threat to all views that are contrary to their own,’ Mr Williams added. ‘If they represent the newfound mainstream, our society is has deep troubles, and the only response that is available is to back education and knowledge. Knowledge is the antidote to this kind of hysterical rubbish.’

This is particularly ironic given that ‘knowledge’ is exactly why Joe Rogan’s podcasts have risen to prominence. He performs the duty state media has abandoned by sitting down with the world’s most influential people – be they tech giants or future presidents – for hours at a time.

Agree or disagree, viewers are given the opportunity to decide for themselves how these individuals cope in long-form conversations which tend to exhaust rehearsed dogma. Those who survive a Joe Rogan podcast rightfully earn the public’s respect. It is not Mr Rogan’s fault that the Right succeed and the Left fail.

Behaving like a jealous ex hasn’t done the ABC any favours.

Even now, the only reason people are talking about the National Press Club incident is to criticise the hypocrisy of the ABC and re-open the conversation about cutting public funding. Mr Williams brought this upon himself with a woeful display when he lectured the public about the dangers of ‘misinformation and disinformation’ and then gave a harsh review of a podcaster he admits to never having listened to. That is a difficult position to defend.

‘Look, I am not sure that I am the right person to respond to that question. I am not a consumer or enthusiast about Mr Rogan and his work.’

Cue the soft laughter from the press club. How does the ABC obtain a slice of the Joe Rogan audience?

‘I think people like Mr Rogan prey on people’s vulnerabilities. They prey on fear. They prey on anxiety. They prey on all of the elements that contribute to uncertainty in society and they entrepreneur fantasy outcomes and conspiracy outcomes as being a normal part of social narrative.

‘I personally find it deeply repulsive and to think that someone has such remarkable power in the United States is something that I look at in disbelief.

‘I’m also absolutely in dismay that this can be a source of public entertainment when it’s really treating the public as plunder for purposes that are really quite malevolent.’

We’d like to offer a casual reminder that the ABC is an organisation that survives almost solely on the plunder of taxpayers. Suffice to say, having upset Joe Rogan’s listeners, the ABC is no closer to finding its market share.

When asked about misinformation and disinformation, Mr Williams said this:

‘Well, I would hope that the best antidote to misinformation and, more alarmingly, disinformation – and we should clarify both those terms. Misinformation relates to false information that is spread often due to ignorance or mistake or in good faith, which actually is not done with an intention to deceive people. But disinformation is quite the opposite. It’s the deliberate spreading of false information. I think the best antidote is an abundance of truthful information, and validated information, and verified information.’

Validated and verified information such as his opinion on a podcast he does not consume?

‘I mean, Joe Rogan did an enormous, in my view, an enormous amount of damage back in 2020 and 2021, when he was particularly virulent in many of his remarks about vaccinations.’

Begging your pardon, but did the ABC repeat the categorically false statements about health orders and vaccines? If memory serves, it regurgitated rather than investigated and then spent several years fannying about doing the bidding of the government.

‘Public safety’ was misinterpreted by the ABC to mean ‘obedience’ instead of ‘truth’. It was in part thanks to daily fear-mongering press conferences that abuses of power and public harm were committed in broad daylight. The ABC’s continuous failure to do as Joe Rogan has done, and ask the difficult questions of those who disagree with Big Pharma, has meant that individuals who acted inappropriately in positions of power have been allowed to slink off without being held to account.

Unlike Joe Rogan, who is a private entity and can do what he likes, the ABC is funded by the public to do a job which – at every turn – they fell short having been led astray by the personal fears and prejudices of some journalists and, we can speculate, the desire of the media entity to curry favour with politicians.

The ABC has no right to criticise anyone over Covid and, in my view, no right to continue taking public money after it failed to critically engage with the information it was being fed by pharmaceutical companies, drug regulators, and health authorities while members of the public took to the streets begging for their basic human rights while state premiers, in some cases, unleashed anti-terror units on them.

‘I don’t think people have unlimited license to say what they want, simply because they believe something to be so,’ said Mr Williams.

‘We must perform to higher standards. We must perform to standards that have regard to facts. We have to perform the standards that actually have scientific validity. I think Joe Rogan at times, not uniformly, but at times, breaks those rules.’

How would Mr Williams know if he hasn’t listened to him?

‘What fascinates me is you say something negative about Joe Rogan – and I have been swarmed with the most unbelievably vicious responses … where is this super sensitivity deriving from? You make a comment in response to a legitimate question from a journalist. You answer it concisely and give an honest answer in terms of what your own perception of Mr Rogan is. And suddenly I get this huge pile-on from people in the most aggressive way, saying that I have a warped outlook on the world, that I am an embarrassment to our nation, that I am in some way unhinged, that that I am a supreme example of arrogance and disconnection with Australian society. I have to say to you, Raf, I just don’t get it.’

I think you summed up the problem perfectly, Mr Williams. Your problem, that is.