Balance! I'll give you balance…
May 27th, 2009 by Helen | Published in Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, Media, Politics | 120 Comments
Because of a deliberate campaign by the right-wing senator Eric Abetz, the ABC has gone out of its way to boost the Liberal voting and conservative element in the studio audience for the political discussion program Q & A.
ABC managing director Mark Scott told a Senate estimates hearing yesterday that, of the 2500 people who had attended the program this year, 34.4 per cent said they supported the Coalition, while 33.9 per cent voted Labor. Green voters comprised 12.8 per cent of audiences, while 2.4 per cent supported other parties and 16.6 per cent declined to reveal their voting intention…
…To restore the balance, Q & A producers leaned on Liberal politicians, firms such as Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers and organisations including the Australian Christian Lobby, the Australian Union of Jewish Students, the Australian Family Association and the Australian Retailers Association in their hunt for conservatives.
The Howard government has gone but their miserable culture wars live on. The ABC has to bow to the whims of wingnuts like Abetz or, presumably, stand accused of commie radical advocacy. There is a huge double standard at play here.
If that tactic had been employed by the ABC to boost input from people Mr Abetz didn’t approve of, it would have been called “stacking”. If efforts had been made to boost input from marginalised or less powerful groups in society, it would have been called “affirmative action”, and you know how well that goes down with the Abetzes and Albrechtsons. Oh, well, consistency, you know, the hobgoblin of little minds, etcetera.
12.8 percent* Greens in the audience is called “over-representation”. When a single Liberal senator pressures the ABC to use affirmative action and stacking to increase the rightwing content of the audience, it’s called “balance”. Anyway, that explains why there are so many inane questions from young apparatchiks-in-the-making in this program’s audience.
*Updated – “Percent” left out of original draft; Not 12.8 people, whatever that would have meant.
The ABC should care what the cretin Abetz says because……?
Well, you may be right, but in a sense your post is just an example of the very thing you lament.
spog, I’m not entirely sure that your comment makes any sense. Helen’s point is that the audience was stacked. How, exactly, is Helen’s post stacked?
How, exactly, is Helen’s post stacked?
34.4% of it was written by young libs yet to experience sins of the flesh. Mainly the adverbs and prepositions.
The Howard government has gone but their miserable culture wars live on.
Yeah, they kill the father, then let the father live on as the law.
Good post by the way. The tories in the Q&A crowd add at least as much stoopid as they do ‘balance’.
If I was an ABC employee and part of a lefty cabal, I’d have pushed for attendees only from groups like the Young Liberals, who’d doubtless talk and speak like Young Liberals, and turn most civilized viewers off that party… then let Lib parliamentarians cry “unfair… they only invited the most idiotic of the rightards”
Yes, good post. But maybe it’s counterprodutive – viewers get to see how imbecilic some of these people are. It makes for tedious viewing though.
At least the young conservatives ask the important questions…
“…Senator, don’t you agree that the Liberal party has all the hawt women?“
Ah, mercurius! A mate and I were discussing the whole “hot chicks who read Ayn Rand” thing the other day. He put it beautifully: “Chicks who’d join the Young Liberals are ugly and stupid, and don’t put out.” Says it all, really.
and all the men have beautiful shiny hair Mercurius
Tautology Alert.
But wot about the LaRouchites in the audience? How do they fit into the all-representative pie chart of life?
Now that Rudd is in power I approve of such things for two reasons. One, it keeps him on his toes. Not a bad thing. And two, even more importantly…it was assumed that when the ALP got in they would sweep the ABC clean of righties. However it seems the opposite is in effect. They’re leaving the ABC to do as they want, maybe even encouraging them to stack the ABC against them. Can you imagine Howard or his lot doing that?
At least the young conservatives ask the important questions…
“…Senator, don’t you agree that the Liberal party has all the hawt women?“
That was a shocker, Mercurius. Should have got around to posting on that.
LOL@THR. If you don’t watch those prepositions they get up to all kinds of mischief.
It is smart tactics by the ABC. The last couple of Senate estimates have been noticeable for the almost complete lack of questioning by the Liberal Senators, compared with what used to happen, on alleged political bias in the ABC news and current affairs reporting. It was hugely expensive for the ABC to investigate and respond to every complaint made at Estimates and a big management distraction as well.
The ABC, by the simple expedient of airing this one dumb program, have bought the Liberal Senators’ silence very cheaply.
…”it was assumed that when the ALP got in they would sweep the ABC clean of righties”…..
The stupidity of so much of the Rudd government’s decision making appalls me. However, when it came to replacing members of the ABC Board, they set up a working group (“committee”) consisting of a range of “eminent” Australians, called for applications and decided the new Board members on merit. Knockers can dismiss this as sweeping “the ABC of ‘righties’” and maybe even (shock! horror!) developing a “meritocracy”, but replacing the likes of your Krogers with people of talent, knowledge and vision, is a breath of fresh air.
Now we need some real funding and a mechanism to prevent governments starving it into irrelevance and banality.
Of course the question can be asked whether the 34.4% who vote Coalition are actually representative of the full spectrum of Coalition voters in the Australian community, not just RWDB bloggers, greenhouse denialists, right to lifers and other such Theakstones.
OK, so the ABC makes a successful attempt to attract an audience for a political discussion program which reasonably reflects the composition of political views among the population at large. Helen then has hysterics about culture wars, the ghost of John Howard, and the ABC bowing to wingnuts from the right.
The only thing one can unequivocally conclude from this is that Helen, and apparently most of the commenters, believe that the natural state of the universe should involve and has involved the ABC only trying to attract an audience from the left, and that any change in the practice however minor should be vociferously attacked.
Great illustration of what Abetz and others say about the ABC and the left. Are you trying to prove him right?
And this whole post is predicated on the studio audience for one program. Not the content of even the one program, let alone the content of the rest of the ABC’s output. One might conclude that this is because the poster believes that all this content is satisfactorily reflective of her views.
I don’t think you will get any traction against those who believe that the ABC has an instinctive and pervasive left-wing bias with arguments like this one. Quite the reverse.
Helen then has hysterics about culture wars, the ghost of John Howard, and the ABC bowing to wingnuts from the right.
Don’t expect to make stupid arguments like this one without being called on it. The existence of a “culture war” in the tiny Australian intellectual stewpot is well documented. The fact that JH’s influence lingers in the ABC is a fact, as he also stacked the ABC Board – of course, that’s another story in itself. Hence the “bowing to wingnuts from the Right”. If you have a more cogent explanation for this bizarre audience-stacking action, have at it, but do not refer to people as “hysterical” in a feeble attempt to impugn them and make them out to be irrational somehow. It’s the tiredest epithet in the book.
adrian included ” It makes for tedious viewing though”
Others have pointed this out before, but I believe what makes for much tedium are the apparent premises of Q&A: that the discussion must be confrontational, that such confrontation must be framed through the opposition of ALP and Coalition MPs, that fluff must be provided by well-known public “commentators” such as Editor/columnist/author/lawyer.
The generally absent include: topic experts, lesser-known credible public speakers, non-party political actors, the wise, the shrewd, the witty, the creative.
But if Q&A faithfully represents the national political life – does it? – then perhaps my lament is directed more at that life, broadly; not personally at Qanda.
Wozza,
It would appear that there are simply not enough folk from your side of politics motivated or interested enough to turn up at Gore Hill for the show. Otherwise, if rightwingers such as yourself were flocking to the studio in the same numbers as the lefties there’d be no grounds for complaint for Erica and there’d be no need for the ABC to actively recruit an audience.
What about Chris Uhlmann – ABC ‘political editor’?
@18
Too bloody right, it’s a tired format. They should replace Tony Jones with Bottletop Bill.
True Ambigulous. But don’t we live in a world where confrontation passes for rational debate, so that it’s the interaction that is seen as important, rather than the exchange of ideas?
We don’t value ideas so much, it’s so much easier to get people to disagree along tired political lines.
And Wozza, you’re the only one getting hysterical, you poor dear. Please tell us what’s wrong with a randomly composed audience of people, who for some reason want to attend?
Maybe they should get the Chaser audience to reflect their political convictions, after all they seem a bit lefty to me. Or what about an audience for The Insiders. If it reflected political preference, you’d get at least half the audience booing all the time. A great way to improve the show.
I’ve detected a left wing bias on Spicks n Specks, so some balance is clearly called for there as well.
adrian: “I’ve detected a left wing bias on Spicks n Specks”
Damn right!! Last night there was a question asking who wrote The Well-tempered Clavier and the Trostyite contestant got the correct answer. Layers of bias there…..
But Senator Abetz: is his Bach worse than his byte?
Nice to see Senator Abetz supporting Affirmative Action – for the poitically ignorant.
This is a good thing.
Hey – a few of them might learn something.
*TrotsKyite*
apologies to Leon
Trotsyites are featured on the Racing Channel, the only home now for effective, influential and well-funded trots. ;-)
Ambigulous #25, I am reminded of a fundraising event for Federal Labor candidate Kathleen Brooks prior to the 2001 Federal election. It was the Saturday Rocklea Trots (as in harness racing) meeting and everyone present apart from State Attorney-General Matt Foley was a mamber of the ALP Left. I made sure I deployed the revolutionary language of my youth when I RSVPed to the event organiser.
Thanks for the anecdote Paul Norton, so the “entrism” that day involved paying the entry fee? :-)
By the way, when a Melbourne Trot explained to me in the mid-70s their policy of “entrism” into the ALP, I couldn’t understand why the Labor Party didn’t try expulsion as an antidote. Or maybe it did, but cases never made the news.
There were periods, I think, when CPA membership was proscribed within the ALP; and any detected double-membership comrades were shown the door. Probably you know lots of that history.
Ah, Chris Uhlman. I’ve been highly critical of him in the past but last week’s Media Watch showed me the rubbish he has to deal with (along with the rest of the pack.) Sure, journos got lazy from the Howard era but some of the stunts Rudd seems to be pulling just isn’t cricket. And as a leftie I’ll say it again. I’d LOVE to see Andrew Bolt do a stint on Media Watch.
Ambigulous #27, I’m not aware of any specific cases where expulsions of entrist Trots occurred – not even in a case when a leading member of the forerunner to Resistance was Robert Ray’s prime antagonist in Victorian Young Labor.
I think in order for it to occur, those requesting the expelling would need to (a) show that the Trot group in question was a proscribed organisation and (b) prove that the ALP member(s) in questions were members of that organisation. There are other factors to consider as well: the numbers of Trots “entered” into the ALP may have been too small to be worth the trouble and unpleasantness of expelling; the Trots may have been useful for certain factions to have in the Labor Party; the Trots may have had their counterparts in Grouper-aligned entrists in other parts of the party and nobody wanted to bring on a free for all. Also, the one Trot group I had personal experience of which engaged in ALP entrism “went native” and liquidated their group in order to participate legitimately in the ALP Left.
In Queensland, prospective ALP members are required to declare that they are not a member of a “communist or fascist organisation” which is broader than a specific proscription of the CPA and could be used against entrists.
From my time in the CPA I can affirm that there were dual ticket holders, with one rumoured to have been a Minister in the Hawke Government, although I subsequently learned that this was a case of mistaken identity! The member in question (who was a member of a branch in Sydney) had the same family name and the same first initial as the Minister (who was in the NSW Left). It was only in 2003, and very, very serendipitously, that I learned that the CPA member in Sydney was not the same person as the Minister.
Don’t make me laugh tssk, Uhlman was rabidly anti-Labor when Rudd was opposition leader, and not in the position to pull any ‘stunts’.
And it’s strange how we never heard much about Howard’s micro-management of the media agenda. Maybe he wasn’t a control freak after all!
Why, as a ‘lefty’ you’d like to see Bolt do anything other than disappear, is beyond me.
I’m getting more than a bit sick and tired of the ABC blindly following the News Ltd political agenda. The last two mornings Michael Brissenden has made much of a story sourced from The Opposition Oracle that Rudd vetoed the appointment of a diplomat to Germany. So what!
tssk @ 28 – the PM might as well just record his own press conferences (with questions chosen by him of course) and just send them to the tv stations to show on the nightly news.
Not much pushback from the Keyboard Kommandoes here.
Surely the Usual Wingnuts haven’t been humiliated into silence by these audience-stacking revelations?
It’s quiet out there. Too quiet.
Adrian @ 30, I’d love for Bolt to try his hand at MW because he might gain a greater apprecition of the show. As for Uhlman and other possible Howard huggers…it’s a worry when they are cosying up to those in power…I see no problem now with the way things stand.
Besides, it says a lot for the ALP that they aren’t going in all guns blazing complaining that the ABC has some right leaning elements. Kerry O’Brien copped innumerable complaints from Howard and his supporters. Apart from some scoffing from blogs noone is seriously suggesting that Uhlman as critical as he is of Rudd should be removed.
That says an awful lot about the Rudd government.
Wozza @ 16, you missed the point of the post.
The point has been made and, I think made well, that when “lefties” try to get committees/audiences/MPs or whatever crowd to more truly reflect the proportions of persons in the community, the right call it “kowtowing to special interests” or “political correctness” or “affirmative action” or “artificial quotas” or more crudely, “stacking”.
So where is the condemnation from the right of this blatent kowtowing to special interests, political correctness, affirmative action, artificial quotas and stacking of the Q&A audience? ;)
I’d have thought righties would be more comfortable with a free-market approach to Q&A audiences. Shouldn’t it just be made up of whoever has the time and inclination to attend? What’s that? It doesn’t suit your schedule? You have too many other things to do? Quit whingeing, it’s a free-market and you shouldn’t be asking for assistance to push your own barrow on the taxpayer dime ;)
/snark
Michael Costa claims to have been expelled from Young Labor in the 1970s. It’s unclear, though, whether he was kicked out of either the Labor branch on Wollongong campus, or the Labor students faction of AUS—both of which were officially unconnected with the actual Party, and which according to legend looked on expulsion of rogue members as a leisure activity to be indulged in on slow days—or from the ALP proper, a much more serious matter.
The state of affairs in NSW is that technically, both local branches and Head Office have “credentials committees”, meant to check that applicants for membership aren’t also members of other proscribed Parties (in NSW it’s “any other Party or its affiliated organisations”), although in practice they either don’t check, or limit their checking to asking the person “so are you a member of any other Party”?
Questions of membership these days are usually of the much more critical sort ie. “does this person actually exist, alive, at the address they claim”?
I tried, Katz, back there a way, drawing only some peripheral quibbling about the language and no engagement at all with the actual argument that the post merely proves the Abetz point. Odd that, what with commenters here usually being so rigorously logical and factually driven.
I think you can regard the lack of “pushback” as merely another case of posts of this sort being all about the usual suspects furiously agreeing with themselves and making no external ripples. I should apologise for even attempting to disturb the love-in – really, it was only a drive-by on a slow day. It won’t happen again.
Interesting Liam. In Victoria the question “which faction is paying your membership?” is asked of the bemused, bussed-in, possibly apolitical new member.
The capitalist press calls it “ethnic branch stacking”. They have no shame.
Is it fair to say the Senator aids and abetz?
Paul Norton, thanks for filling in the details. Some Trots went native?
I think it was Ian Turner who claimed in memoirs that when CPA members worked with social democrats and left liberals in “front organisations” and had occasionally to modify their political messages to “fit in”, it sometimes led a CPA member to modify & moderate her/his views. The argument was that “front” organisations didn’t always pull moderates to the left, they sometimes pulled communists towards the centre.
(This ludicrously simplistic geometric analogy has the CPA always to the left of ALP, Democrat etc.)
The fact that the Q&A audience is stacked with Young Libs and other RWDB cretins is so bloody obvious to anybody who has a brain. My problem with it is not the Liberal knuckleheads in the audience, but the way Lib pollies use it to push the party line. And that’s bloody obvious too. Given the overall asinine performance of the Libs, it might even persude more people not to vote for them, so, apart from being frequently bored shitless when I watch the program because the Libs destroy its entertainment value, I don’t really mind. The presence of Bolt and Ackerman on Insiders is what I find really problematic.
Liam #36, in my experience members of student and youth ALP groups tend to be very trigger-happy about expelling other members who they disagree with or disapprove of. Lacking the experience to know better, they (a) overestimate the power which the threat or actuality of expulsion gives them over the expellee and (b) underestimate, or simply don’t recognise, the harm which willy-nilly expulsions and the associated unpleasantness can do to the group.
The most spectacular example in my experience was the Griffith University Labor Club AGM of May 1992 at which the AWU kids moved for the expulsion en masse of the Left on the grounds of collusion with members of the Liberal Party, National Party, National Civic Council, New Left Party, International Socialists, Resistance, Greens and Democrats, and which subsequently degenerated into an all-in physical brawl with two very large males from the AWU being bailed up, terrified, against walls by two women from the Left. The upshot of it all was the disaffiliation of the Labor Club for about 19 months.
NB: I wasn’t at the meeting – I was one of the people the Left were being accused of collaborating with.
Wozza, you’re very good at making meaningless accusations regarding the ‘usual suspects’, but not very good at answering specific questions, or engaging with the points raised.
For example, what’s wrong with a free market in Q&A audiences? Why should the ABC intervene to distort this market?
“Wozza” is pretty much trying it on. He thinks he’s just going to insult me until I crack and wtite something rude so he can say “Hysterical! Hurh, hurh, fnarf fnarf.”
Not playing. Mercurius has explained the original post to you AGAIN, @34. I don’t really see how much more clearly this point can be made.
That was probably a major factor in the political trajectory of the grouping around Bernie and Mark Taft which split from the CPA in Victoria and Queensland in 1984 and subsequently joined the ALP. Certainly by the early 1980s individuals in this tendency were supporting quite moderate positions (more centrist than those of the established ALP Left) in the unions and social movements in which they were active. Another factor at work would have been the moderate example of the Italian Communist Party from which the Taft group took their bearings, which having come to fill the space in Italian politics which was occupied by social democratc elsewhere, became a social democratic party in all but name.
The other fascinating example of communists engaged in broad front work being drawn to the centre is afforded by those trade union officials who were part of the pro-Soviet split from the CPA over the invasion of Czechoslovakia and related matters. These people generally did not have heroic expectations of the potential of Australian trade unionists for militant or radical action, and accordingly adopted relatively moderate positions in their union capacities, and so one of their points of grievance with the Eurocommunist majority in 1970 was the latter’s support for “ultra-leftist” industrial campaigns such as the Green Bans and the Workers’ Control movement.
If there’s anything more boring than internal Labor politics, it’s people talking about it (OT) on an otherwise interesting thread!
My experience too, Paul, especially around “membership drives” leading up to elections. After the binge, comes the Purge.
The classic question of every entrist. And don’t forget who’s taking you home, and in who’s arms you’re gonna be, etc.
Paul Burns @ 39: I second that, and go on to say that these are the exact reasons why I haven’t watched a full episode of Q&A or Insiders since 2007.
It all sure begs the question why should Mark Scott give a stuff what Abetz wants?
Is it because he himself has a possible Liberal bias given that he was once a NSW state party staffer?
Here’s an interesting post be Barista about the post-Budget state of public broadcasting and who got what and why.
http://barista.media2.org/?p=3727
Excellent article from one of the country’s best bloggers.
The ABC must have received the extra money because of all teh lefty bias on display 24 hours a day.
Two points:
a) who watches Q&A anyway?
b) as already said above, if that’s what’s keeping Abetz busy, then good work, excellent diversionary tactic ABC!
So the ABC has 1/3 Tory right-wingers, 1/4 Labor right-wingers, 10% Greens’ voters and a few voters for batshit parties and about 1/5 sensible people who said “fuck off it’s not your business”.
.
So what?
Thanks again, Paul Norton; y muchas gracias Se~or Liam.
Completely agree…rather than reflect voting patterns, the audience of Q&A should reflect ABC viewing patterns -
52% kumbaya urban greenies
15% whatever-kevvie-said Laborites
6% Stalin-was-misunderstood Marxists
11% “let’s see what rubbish they’re talking about tonight” Libs
12% “is Landline on after this?” Nats
4% “I need to find something to write about tomorrow” bloggers
And to be truly reflective, 80% of the seats should be empty.
And to be truly reflective, 80% of the seats should be empty.
.
Absolutely.
.
80% of the seats should be empty and we should cross live to those people who could be sitting in them. They’d be the ones in line to audition for Big Brother: Dignity for Fame Exchange where they’d be saying roolly roolly smart things like: Where was the Berlin Wall?
Helen’s point is that the audience was stacked
.
But was it stacked?
Presumably it was in the interests of balance that the 7pm ABC news last night here in Adelaide made no mention of Turnbell’s entry into the BRW top 200 list despite Allan Kohler reporting on it and commenting on the top half dozen. No such reticence about reporting on our leading candidates wealth from Barry Cassidy when he ‘broke’ the story of the Rudd’s new multimillion dollar house purchase, complete with picture and location, during the last election on Insiders.
Presumably it was also in the interests of balance last week when after running ‘hard’ with the Nielson poll and the loss of support for Rudd and Labor and again with the drop in personal support for Rudd in the next days Newspoll ( shhh don’t mention the rise in primary and 2PP!!! ) by that night the poll recieved NO MENTION by either Oilyman or Brissenden in their nightly summaries. Given the poll was not only important as it appeared to contradict the trend and narrative of the previous days poll it also stood in isolation in its importance as the first Newspoll after the budget and the lack of any mention is astounding (… perhaps even sinister!!).
You’ve got it confused, Adrien. It’s the Young Liberal women who are stacked, just ask this guy
*runs away*
You are right fat freddy. ABC News and current affairs are shockers at the moment.
To say that this is good for democracy as concern trolls like tssk would argue, is to misunderstand the nature of democracy, and the importance of at least one major relatively impartial news outlet.
Very naughty Mercurius. Sad thing is, the same thing went through my mind when I saw that comment by Adrien. I’m thinking he has a theory and I just can’t wait for him to lay it down.
Geez, I’d be more concerned with the book she’s reading.
“For I am a man of authority, with soldiers under me, and I say to one “Go” and he goes, and to another “Comes” and he comes, and to my slave “Do this” and he does it”
Matthew 8.9
Young Liberals at a demo:
What do we want?
Balance!!!!
When do we want it?
NOW!!!
Merc – Oh yuk yuk yuk.
.
There’s a representation of 60% confirmed Lib/ALP voters. 12% Greens, 16% I won’t tell yous. What stacking? I think the Culture War thing is a bunch of bullshit but calling this stacking seems to feed it.
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As a public broadcaster however the ABC is liable to this stuff. I tend to think the talk of balance is a subterfuge for ‘we don’t want any deviation from neo-con agit-prop’. But because the ABC is taxpayer funded it’s liable for it. In that situation I would, if an ABC staffer, want to acquire ‘balance’.
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As a politician however I’d be torn. On the one hand nixing the ABC would be one more step toward Idiotopia, on the other who else would let ‘em crap on for half an hour. Oh the dilemna!
Concern troll? Moi? I’ll say it again slower. This pattern of slamming Rudd and letting the opposition off easy is proof that the Rudd government isn’t censoring the ABC for ‘balance’ like the Coalition did.
One of my favourite political moments on TV was on Good News Week after it had moved to commercial TV. Amanda Vanstone was one and after a joke Paul McDermott gave knocking the Libs she retorted ‘That’s not very balanced is it.”
He fixed her with a gave and with a very wide smile said,”Yes. You’re right. But this is commercial TV. I don’t have to be balanced.”
:)
Urg. That was meant to be gaze. Word to the wise though. I stopped watching the Insiders a year ago and my blood pressure has improved quite a bit!
Balance is essential.
In the words of ex-Ku Klux Clan member CP Ellis:
Happy Happy
ahh, Paul McDermott and his evil grin (sigh) … Umm where were we?
The Q&A stacking had successfully taken place by February. The audience breakdowns were much the same then, but with more coalition supporters.
Abetz’s only gripes with Q&A since February have been that:
1) the ABC had told him “the producers of Q&A have contacted the following in order to recruit more coalition supporters.”, but the words “in order to recruit more coalition supporters” didn’t appear in the emails to the organisations.
2) some of the organisations contacted didn’t exclusively consist of coalition supporters – and therefore might have been offended(?!)
So Abetz was not content that the ABC had stacked the audience at his behest. They were supposed to have made it super-clear to those contacted that what they were doing was, in fact, stacking an audience…and to have only contacted exclusively coalition groups to achieve more coalition supporters on Q&A.
All this nonsense just so that Abetz could give ‘the ABC is/was biased’ an extra spin through the media.
Due to the Great Abetz Crusade, the ABC had to go out into the highways and byways to compel the Liberal voters to come in, while not having to do this for any other political group.
And now everyone knows that Liberal voters are so apathetic they have to be coaxed, begged or dragged to discuss political matters. And that a lot of them look like nongs when they do it.
Maybe if I stopped sniggering, I’d work out what the Problem is with this…
It’s obvious that a whole section of the audience is Liberal rent-a-crowd – bussed in a plonked down in a group.
Has it reached the stage that Q&A is going to have to have audiences that exactly match the primary of vote of each party?
I get smirks when I say this, but there is actually a bit of right-wing bias at the ABC – Chris Uhlmann ain’t no lefty. On economic matters – the really important stuff of politics – ABC journos are influenced by their upper-middle class backgrounds and usually lean to the right.
Taxpayers fund Quadrant and Counterpoint – could you imagine the outcry if the left demanded something similar? So Libs have had successes with their relentless whingeing about bias.
Why on earth do Libs think they’re hard done by? Murdoch owns 70% of the newspapers in this country (often the monopoly paper in town) and commercial talkback is almost eclusively, rabidly right-wing.
Could you imagine if trade unions demanded a program to discuss the issues and problems of workers – a Workersline instead of Landline? The National Party would go mental, but there are about 2 million trade unionists and how many farmers? How much of the ABC is devoted to business and the share market?
There is media bias in this country – massive bias against the left.
audience maasaging?
branch stacking in the Victorian ALP?
It sounds as if Premier Brumby is planning to clean up some of the excrement that Bracksy wouldn’t deal with.
…exclusively, sorry.
This is a great post. Thanks Helen.
I thought I was going nuts a few weeks ago when the audience were laughing with Hot-Air-Hockey, even though he was embarrassingly incoherent most of the time.
I naively thought the Libs had got there act together and were persistently stacking the audience, it never occurred to me that it was a tax-payer funded bias! Un-friggin-believable.
Shaun, thanks. That’s what I assumed, too.
I learnt something tonight! According to “please people, please!” Brendon Spannerhead we reduced our carbon emissions by 14% under JWH.
Amazing! Not only can I have my cake and eat it, I can have yours too!
It was near the top of the ABC bulletin in Darwin and Perth.
My favourite was the very valid point CHris Uhlman made about Rudd wasting money in the budget. How much spent on plaques installed in schools! Outragous!
Good thing us lefties are too stupid to remember the most excellent plan to invest money in a flagpole for every school!
tssk,
and the provision of religious instruction in secular schools.
Thank you Saun Wiliams for describing Mr Hockey as near-incoherent. He was, also in a radio interview with Jon Faine (ABC 774 Melb) a few days after the budget. Spluttering about “Treeasury assumptions”. The Clarke & Dawe (comic) interview was almost a direct transcription of his silliness.
I can’t understand why he seems to be getting away with this weak travesty. Julie Bishop would have been laughed off the stage. Is it due to boys’ club matiness? Apparently he was exposed by Red Kezza on 7.30 Report, but I missed that. Perhaps he’ll be a big contributor rto the Liberals’ languishing at poor poll figures?
tssk@77 the Howard mob did plaques AND poles.
I just wonder when the conservatives inevitably return to power, from among other things, almost constant misinformation fed to the public from all sections of the media, how your plan @64 works?
My supposition is that when this happens and the ABC moves effortlessly from leading with opposition talking points to the wisdom contained in the new government press release it will be proof for you that the Costello government is still censoring the ABC for ‘balance’ like they did before. This nice little conservative model will have worked brilliantly for one side only.
Exactly, joe2.
Teh evil plaque story made to AM of course, lead by opposition rantings. Anyone remember the days when a plaque was not an item of controversy? Or AM was a serious news programme?
Further to the breaking plaquegate scandal Christopher Pine just clarified, on A.M., that the difference between plaques provided by the last government and the Rudd government is that they were not provided with borrowed money.
Moreover, Pyne neglected to note that Ratty’s flagpole extortion threatened to deny federal funding to any school that decided to forgo Ratty’s conscription of cheap patriotism.
Isn’t it amazing that these events were current only three years ago? It’s like recalling a distant fever dream.
“Or AM was a serious news programme?”
Yes, vale AM. Where is Hugh Whats-his-name?
Yay for Christopher Pine in finding a way to say “Yeah we did that too but it woz different.”
Oh and Joe2, what do I think the Libs will do to the ABC when they get back in?
Continue to go on a leftist witch hunt if not sell it off. Why wouldn’t they want ot finish the job they started?
Q&A really gave me the shits last night in its climate change debate. What is it the Libs don’t understand about not being able to grow food because of extended drought and water drying up causing huge economic problems? What is it they don’t understand about the likely mass economic and social dislocation caused by rising sea levels? What is it they don’t understand about the planet turning into a place where it will be too hot for life to survive? What is it about them that they don’t understand that if we don’t act now, right now, this will happen? There’s a point where human, animal and plat adatability just stops.
Meme to stupid Liberals/Nats and their supporters : You can’t eat plastic money and metal coins.
Last night’s Q&A demonstrated perfectly the basic flaws in the show. Why would anyone, apart from young libs want to hear Berendan Nelson’s opinion on anything, let alone climate change? Yet he managed to dominate most of the program.
I wanted to hear from Myriam Lyons and William McInnes, who had interesting and thought provoking things to say, not from a failed opposition leader who is a ponderous bore with nothing to contribute.
Absolutely,adrian. But if you sent them a question pointing this out I bet it wouldn’t get asked. Of course, the show could be immeasurably improved by having no politicians at all.
To answer your questions Paul Burns.
What is it the Libs don’t understand about not being able to grow food because of extended drought and water drying up? This creates massive economic and business oppotunities in the areas of new food and water capture tech as well as short term business opportunities in the food import sphere.
What is it they don’t understand about the likely mass economic and social dislocation caused by rising sea levels? Think of the massive real estate opportunies.
What is it they don’t understand about the planet turning into a place where it will be too hot for life to survive? Economic opportunities for cooling technologies.
Essentially the invisible hand will find a way for profit while swatting those of us not ‘economically agile’ enough to death.
I just put a discussion topic suggestion on Q&A suggesting they discuss kicking politicians off the panel for good, or words to that effect.
Yes Paul, having no politicians at all would help, but at least the Labor ones haven’t done the Howard Inc foundation course: How to Talk For As Long as Possible Without Saying Anything and Blaming It All On The ALP 101.
Most coalition politicaians have also done the follow up: Use of Key Words and The Beauty of Repetition 201.
In Brendan’s case he gained 1st class honours in Sincerity for Liars 702.
Adrian @ 90.
Well, they could just kick off the Liberal politicians (since we already know what they’re going to say, anyway) but I don’t think the ABC would come at that. :)
Paul, why don’t they outsource the Lib poli gig to a parrot saying “jobs jobs jobs.”
Still repetition works. All I know about that shooting in the Cross last week was a ‘wog’ was shot and a ‘wog’ was the perp.
tssk @ 92,
I thought JWH was already doing that.
You think its bad here? Look what’s happening in theatre in the UK.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/engl-m29.shtml
The World Socialist Web Site occasionally has some very good articles on the yartz, and this is one of them.
The mantra at the moment is “debt, debt, debt” Itz scary stuff alright. Me very fritened.
Me so scared I’ve taken to hiding under the bed every time a Liberal comes on TV.
De big Joe Hockey man, hez scary man alrite.
tssk @ 92,
The skinny wog got shot by the fat wog.
[Runs away.]
If Ulman was sacked and all coalition supporters and MPs were removed from Q&A, Counterpoint cancelled and Landline scotched would that make you all happpy and be meeting the ABC Charter?
My opinion is that it should be sold as it no longer has a relevant place in a modern society (why don’t we have a government newspaper, too if it is so important?) but I’m not in the majority, yet.
Or, make it and SBS voluntarily funded through donations – that would save about a billion a year.
Razor, you don’t see the difference between television/radio/online networks, and a ‘newspaper’? That’s a bogus comparison.
A more apt question would be – why don’t we have a ‘government print publishing network’? – and we did, of course, until it was closed in 2003.
It had no relevant place in a modern society, not television/radio/online networks.
Qanda have effectively shut down their forum.
Did anyone else notice that Tony rather disingenuously referred to William Mc’s promo for his wife’s film as “the first ad on qanda” – he can’t have forgotten Rebecca Weisser’s three or more ads for the Australian, surely?
Sally R – of course I see the difference – that is why I wonder why, if it is so important for the Government to have TV, Radio and On-line broadcasters – why not print also? or do the SMH and Age provide enough lefty coverage already? why isn’t a newspaper as important as the others?
Want to answer my first question @ 99. . . crickets. . .
The ABC had a place in broadcasting when there wasn’t the freely available commercial coverage available. Just as the Governemnt no longer owns airlines, shipping companies, telephone companies etc etc – the Government no longer needs to be in broadcasting. If it needs to get information out write a press release or buy time. Alternatively, if the ABC is so relaven why does the Governemnt need to write press releases and buy time on commercial stations if the ABC is so relevant?
Don’t speak too soon, Razor. As newspapers go broke like falling dominoes all over the world, that option is being seriously discussed.
“If Ulman was sacked and all coalition supporters and MPs were removed from Q&A, Counterpoint cancelled and Landline scotched would that make you all happpy and be meeting the ABC Charter?”
All Aunty needs to do is stop confusing personal political commentary with the news.
joe2 – if they did that most of the ABC would be out of work – from Red Kerry to Margaret and David.
“The ABC had a place in broadcasting when there wasn’t the freely available commercial coverage available”
Coverage of what exactly. The latest trivia/gossip/bullshit/propaganda/pr release guff.
Well maybe you have a point after all. I can see the duplication.
“Did anyone else notice that Tony rather disingenuously referred to William Mc’s promo for his wife’s film as “the first ad on qanda” – he can’t have forgotten Rebecca Weisser’s three or more ads for the Australian, surely?”
Since the ABC gets much of its news via a direct line from The Australian and other News Ltd publications, he probably saw it as advertising an ABC service, so not counted as ‘advertising’.
Well, you did say you were in the minority…
The government’s print network closed without the general public batting an eyelid, whereas any party that went to an election on a platform of privatising even an arm of (say radio perhaps?) the ABC would be guaranteed to lose that election.
That’s one definition of relevance to a modern society for you.
“joe2 – if they did that most of the ABC would be out of work – from Red Kerry to Margaret and David.”
I doubt it Razor. If your area of employment is giving an opinion and you are up front and clear about making that known, there is no prob. It is when you blur the distinction between what has become a kind of editorialising and the facts that you deserve the sack.
Presently that is even happening in the news gathering department.
Razor @99, in rebuttal of your comment, have you watched any commercial television? It’s like watching the ghastly gossip and trivia mags at the hairdresser’s.
See I think we have to give Chris Uhlman the benefit of the doubt. I don’t see any large body of complaints against his style. And since he does it day after day the public has to assume that he isn’t editorialising. It must be fact.
As for the ABC, I love the Chaser, Dr Who and Media Watch. However, why should the rest of the Australian public (some of whom probably earn less than me) subsidise my taste in entertainment?
Tssk @ 112, what a ridiculous argument. I have a soft-spot for driving on the southern expressway at night…chances are other Australians subsidised this road, and will never, ever drive on it. Even people that visit from interstate can’t make any sense of it’s changing directions, so they stay right away. Locals only! mwahahaha! Thank you taxpayers all.
I had to turn the tv off when Joe hockey was on Q and A, what a bombastic fool…I think at some point he actually said out loud, “hang on, hang on, I’ve got one”…i don’t recall if the ‘one’ he was referring to was an idea or a comeback, but whatever followed was daft. The guy is embarrassing.
In reality, the ABC has been well to the right of most public opinion for decades, certainly in regards to questions of privatisation, and economic deregulation.
What has concealed this and allowed some to depict the ABC as being biased to the left is that state and federal labor governments have adopted whole scale the economic neo-liberal dogma (which is, in reality, a justification for the looting of our economies by corporate thieves).
From the 1980′s until about 1996, Pru Goward blatantly abused her position as journalist including on the “The 7.30 Report” to peddle her extreme economic neo-liberal anti-union views and to promote the career of John Howard.
In the early noughties the ABC blatantly pushed privatisation. As an example, in 2003 the ABC Radio National’s Morning Show presenter Vivian Schenker, even as the Estens Review was supposedly considering the overwhelmingly anti-privatisation submissions and, form that supposedly, deciding the fate of Telstra, told her audience that the only think left to decide was haw the proceeds of privatisation were to be divided up.
For years, the ABC has abysmally failed to hold either Labor or Liberal Governments to account. Kerry O’Brien left Howard almost completely off the hook in one critical interview with him prior to the start of the Invasion of Iraq in 2003 and idiotically referred to the war as ‘ethical’ whilst assuring John Howard that no irony was intended. I complained of this in a letter that was published in the Canberra Times.
More recently, Brisbane’s ABC has given Premier Anna Bligh an astonishingly easy ride during the course of the recent rigged state elections and since then when she has attempted to foist the policy of “Shock Doctrine” style privatisation and public sector cutbacks on the Queensland public.
I have written of this in the articles “Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties” of 30 Apr 09 and “Brisbane’s local ABC radio fails to hold Anna Bligh to account over privatisation” of 28 May 09. I have invited ABC journalists to comment on my articles, but none have taken up my offer. Anyone who wants to defend the ABC, here or there, is most welcome to do so.
Christopher Pearson has a fairly rubbish article in The Australia (what’s new) accusing Kerry O’Brien of partisan hackery based on some comments he allegedly made to Liberal staffers in a bar and the fact that he was press secretary to Whitlam. The allegations were made public by Gerard Henderson, who for some reason, Pearson doesn’t accuse of bias even though he was Howard’s Chief of Staff. Pearson himself was a speech writer for Howard so the hypocrisy is pretty blatant.
Pearson also takes a shot at Larvatus Prodeo, deriding it for declaring the culture wars are dead when, as the discussion about phonics apparently demonstrates, they clearly aren’t.
And germaine Greer has suggested some-one make a bumper sticker that reminds people Malcolm Turnbull was a banker. And that if we’re not careful we might end up with him as PM. Just sayin’.
Not just a banker, Paul, a merchant banker
(I know I’ve made the joke before, but it bears repeating. Often.)
.
Maybe he means a brain, furious balancing, although the evidence for this is rather scant.
Oz @115, I started to read Pearson’s article, but as I can’t stomach him, I couldn’t get past the first paragraph. Another merchant banker, methinks.