In the face of sustained pressure from the government and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, she has seemed incapable of mounting a sustained and effective response.

And in this environment of hostility, ABC journalists have felt under siege.

As editor-in-chief – which comes with the managing director’s job – Guthrie was unable to give the kind of robust editorial leadership that journalists need if they are to report fearlessly and independently.

It was clear by the middle of this year that whatever qualities Guthrie brought to the job, editorial leadership was not one of them. Thus the ABC was at a crossroads. It had as its managing director and editor-in-chief a person with no journalistic background who had shown scant signs of understanding the impact of the federal government’s relentless bullying on the ABC’s editorial independence.

 

via Michelle Guthrie’s stint at ABC helm had a key weakness: she failed to back the journalists