It’s as though they still can’t quite believe we’ve had a change of government.

It’s basically weak, spineless crap from an organisation that used to lead – effortlessly.

For example, John Pilger whose work is regularly published overseas recently won the Sydney Peace Prize, but listeners to the ABC would have been blissfully unaware of that, while being regularly treated to the rantings of Andrew Bolt and his ilk.
The commercial media cam publish what they like, but we are entitled to expect better from the ABC for obvious reasons. So call it censorship, bias, or whatever you like, but something is rotten in the ABC at the moment.

Hint – editorial decisions to focus news and current affairs on certain major players are not it.

We should bear in mind that the ABC has largely become and extension of News Limited with so many current employese of News Limited working for the ABC. Some of this has been documented on stopmurdoch.blogspot.com in the articles “Concern growing over Murdoch infiltration of ABC” of 25 Oct 09,“ABC answers a question with a question” of 4 Nov 09,“Riddle Me This …” of 6 Nov 09.

If Uncle Rupert had decided that his Federal Labor glove puppets had exceeded their usefulness to him, it should not be altogether unexpected for the ABC to turn on the Government.

Nevertheless, if true, this would have to be amongst the least of their crimes. As I have written elsewhere, the Brisbane local ABC radio almost completely censored both the Greens and Independents during the most recetn Queensland state elections. They blatently promoted the two major parties in spite of the fact that 59% of the electorate was respectively opposed to each of the two major parties. This was explicitly stated in am e-mail to me from Kirsten McLeod of Audience & Consumer Affairs on 10 Jun 09:

The ABC’s approach to election coverage focuses on the Government and official Opposition on the basis that one of the two major parties will ultimately form government and thus represent the principal points of view.

In fact, there was a realistic chance that the Independents and Greens could have formed the blanace of power, but by blatantly censoring views of independents like myself, even when my views such as my opposition to privatisation represented the overwhelming views of the Queensland public, the ABC changed the outcome of the election. We can largely thank the ABC for the appalling state of governance in Queensland today.

—

One policy I will be standing on will be to massively increase the funds available to the ABC and to remove from the ABC any influence by media monopolies. No employee of any of the private media corporations should be allowed to sit on the ABC board. I will challenge all the candidates I am standing against to at least match this policy.

James Sinnamon
Brisbane Independent for
Truth Democrac, and Economic Justice
Australian Federal Elections, 2010

Just my luck.

And bugger me, by midday today, Chrissie Pyne had popped up to say, on the ABC, that it is certainly not as “black and white” as Mr Rudd claims, etc. Well done ABC, inventing those effective little phrases that cut through for the Opposition in the media cycle…

Incidentally, who is actually running this country? Just thought I would ask, while listening to the Opposition telling us how their legislative amendments must be accepted in their entirety before the country is allowed to function. And even then, they might not pass them, just to be spiteful, or something..I thought they lost the last election?

Where do I get a gig as a sybarite, just out of curiosity?

But who is Marni Cordell, and why is she writing crap such as this:

“The ABC news rooms across the country do a great job of providing fair and balanced daily news. No serious commentator could question their commitment to this or the fact that they do it, in the most part, very well.”

Really it is not so much the inaccuracy of this statement that is quite breathtaking, but the ‘No serious commentator…’ line, that I thought was the preserve of people like Miranda Devine. Why doens’t she just come out and say anybody who disagrees with my assessment is not a serious commentator!
Such specious arguments!!

And the ABC does NOT provide fair and balanced news. Everyday as I walk to work, I listen to Sydney local radio 9.00am news, and virtually every day it leads its political coverage with a sound bite from an opposition spokesperson, and for the last 4 weeks it has been one topic and one topic only. The government barely gets a look in. Today they even trotted out the ghost of Phillip Ruddock for heaven’s sake! I guess Turnball and Stone were unavailable.

This is consistent, deliberate and unacceptably partial news reporting and if replicated in their other news outlets (it certainly is on-line) grounds for serious action from the government.

I know Mark Scott is an ex-Liberal Party member and the board is stacked to the hilt with hard right idealogues, but really this is getting beyond a joke.

And I think we all need to know a lot more about how Aunty is making appointments and that they be made, at least, fairly and transparently.