Uhlmann joining Sky News is a good thing — unless he adopts a Credlin-like ideology

Chris Uhlmann has packed a lot into his 63 years. At 35, the former seminarian unsuccessfully ran for the ACT Assembly as part of Paul Osborne’s independent ticket in 1998, a conservative campaign opposed to abortion and euthanasia.

He was also the ABC Canberra breakfast host in September 2001, when rugby league legend Mal Meninga — who had just announced his intention to run in cahoots with the same pro-life group to contest a seat in the ACT Assembly — famously sighed, said “I’m buggered” and walked out of the studio, ending his political run.

That 1998 run was the last time Uhlmann was overtly political in his career. Until last week, that is, when the ABC and Nine Network veteran shocked many of his friends and former colleagues by coming out of retirement to join the overtly political Sky News.

I last saw Uhlmann when he attended Jon Faine’s final show as the presenter of ABC Melbourne’s Morning program at the Melbourne Town Hall on Friday October 11, 2019.

The two men were close. I spent two weeks filling in for Faine way back in 2005, and Uhlmann, his senior producer, was every bit as good as Faine promised in assisting a novice through that terrifying experience.

Alas, fast forward 19 years and Faine is not impressed with Uhlmann’s move to Sky News, providing Crikey with the following statement:

Chris Uhlmann joining Sky News is a surprise. Either he or they must be wanting to hit the refresh button. Will he adopt their tedious house style of telling their tiny audience what to think? Or do they want to suddenly begin to embark on the until now disdained discipline of presenting a ‘contest of ideas’ and trusting the viewers to make up their own minds? I loved working with Chris all those years ago and have great respect for his journalism. I wish him all the best as he joins some of the most belligerent, bellicose, incurious and smallest minds in the Australian media.

Ouch!

On returning to Canberra in 2006, it didn’t take long for Uhlmann to soar through the ABC’s ranks in both radio and television, carving out such a reputation that Nine deemed him a suitable successor to Laurie Oakes in 2017.

It shouldn’t come as any great surprise that Uhlmann will likely finish his journalistic career at Sky News. After all, he told Good Weekend in 2016 that he was “the most right-wing person in the ABC”. This, of course, is not correct. More than 20 ex-ABC journalists have finished up as conservative MPs, an issue Crikey has been covering for many years.

Even just at the staffer level, there have been dozens of defections from the ABC to Coalition ranks. For instance, Mark Simkin had been ABC television’s chief political correspondent for five years when he joined then prime minister Tony Abbott’s team as head of communications in late 2014.

The unusual aspect of Uhlmann’s defection is that most journalists who carve out a 20-year-plus career at the ABC or the old Fairfax papers are unlikely to join News Corp for the first time when in their 50s or 60s.

Kel Richards is a rare example, although he’s now 78 and only doing the odd spot, such as a words segment on Credlin. Uhlmann will be a lot busier, making daily appearances with Kieran Gilbert in the morning, plus knocking out some documentaries, something he first tried his hand at with Nine’s 60 Minutes on topics such as the Ukraine war and Myanmar’s drug trade.

Sky’s documentaries team is a little thin, overly relying on the likes of former Coalition staffer Chris Kenny, who is busy enough with his nightly Sky show.

The most contentious element of Uhlmann’s move was the decision to go with a regular Tuesday night spot with Peta Credlin. The only worse option would be talking politics with Andrew Bolt.

Credlin had never been a journalist when she joined Sky in March 2016, partly in order to undermine the reelection of Malcolm Turnbull at the 2016 double-dissolution election. After Turnbull narrowly survived, she briefly took up a policy position with James Packer in August 2016, but then went all in with Sky when given her own nightly program, Credlin, in November 2017. This was significant in the whole “Sky after dark” pivot to the right.

Credlin had some history debating with non-conservatives — her first Sky News show was a double-header with Kristina Keneally — but she was much more comfortable engaging in fawn-fests with the likes of Alan Jones where they largely just agreed with each other.

If Uhlmann takes on the hyper-partisan Credlin, it could make for interesting television, but if he suddenly adopts a Credlin-like ideology, many years of hard-won journalistic independent credibility will be undermined.

Like with most things, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Given the reputational damage to the Murdochs — after everything from the phone-hacking scandal, the January 6 Capitol Hill riots, and the $1.2 billion Dominion settlement — Sky needs someone like Uhlmann more than he needs Sky.

Sky needs to attract some serious journalistic talent to the network — rather than just hiring washed-up former Coalition MPs such as Cory Bernardi, Bronwyn Bishop, Gary Hardgrave and Campbell Newman. Indeed, no media empire has paid as much money to as many former politicians as the Murdochs (see this list of almost 50 examples).

The challenge for a continuous news channel like Sky is finding 18 hours a day of fresh, live content. Uhlmann would be more than capable of hosting a three-hour news shift, filling in for any of the Sky after dark characters, or taking on special assignments such as Sky’s regular election campaign people’s forums that David Speers perfected and then Kieran Gilbert continued.

Given the various editorial atrocities committed by the Murdochs over the years, at one level it is disappointing that someone like Uhlmann is giving this toxic family a bit of journalistic credibility at a time when the world is bracing to see if one of their creations, Donald Trump, returns to the White House.

However, from a political culture point of view in Australia, hiring Uhlmann is certainly better than the Murdochs employing even more ex-conservative politicians at Sky.

There aren’t many political journalists who genuinely occupy and believe in the radical centre, but Uhlmann is one of them. It will be good to have him back in the game after less than two years in “retirement”.

Will Uhlmann’s contributions tempt you into watching Sky News? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.