Oh! Cranky: You must be winding us up surely? Personalities do matter. I mean flint talking about bias. If howard spoke about honesty and decency that also would colour the argument.

"even an idiot" thanks for that, I hope I am a nice idiot. Are all who disagree with your well thought out and wonderfully completely totally unbiased views also idiots? "arrogant(bias) obvious to whom" To you maybe but you are so modest and so far ahead of us idiots so please be courteous,nice and gentle to us as we can't help it - being the idiots we are. Yet who knows one day we may reach your exalted level then and only then will the horrible left wing bias on the ABC be visible to us. Have patience Cranky. Regards, numbat

What was the point I missed, Cranky? As far as I could tell - and it really is a very bad piece of writing - I was hearing a familiar rant by a well-known conservative talking head, with little of substance, and definitely nothing original, to say.

You are right though, I would be very disappointed if the ABC suddenly turned into a version of Fox News. A situation, I have to observe, that has become far more of a possibility with the recent appointment to the ABC Board of a columnist who already takes Rupert's shilling. As for the phrase "fair and accurate", if you believe that Flint represents those qualities to "all Australians", then you don't get out much.

"If the ABC ever make a swing to the right I'm sure we could rely on Numbat & Pericles to fight the good fight."

Do you know, I'm not at all sure you are correct on this. You see, I don't actually think that any one presentation is irreplaceable these days. Thanks to the Internet there are literally hundreds of sources that one can interrogate, and arrive at an approximation of reality. For example, I always cross-check CNN's take on events in the middle east with Aljazeera and the Jerusalem Post. All of which, you understand, present the news in a "fair and accurate" manner.

If it is important, rather than merely someone's flaccid opinion piece on a tired and irrelevant topic, I will make the effort. But because we all contribute to its upkeep, the ABC will always be a political football. Cope with it.

The ABC has always been, and will always be whipped by the Government of the day. Grow up David!

Thanks David. I gave up watching Media Watch some time ago because of it's lack of balance.

The media offers little in the way fair debate and that includes such 'soft-left' institutions as the ABC

numbat, rossco, Pericles - you’ve missed the point again! It’s not about personalities, it’s not about finding other points of view in the media, and it’s not about coping with it.

The ABC is the people’s broadcaster, paid for by taxpayer money. It is obliged by it’s charter to provide non-biased services and it fails to do this. It might be numbat’s, rossco’s & Pericles’ ABC but it’s not mine and it’s not most other Australians. Australians don’t want the ABC being a political football or a whipping boy for the government of the day.

What’s CNN, The Jerusalem Post or bloody Alan Jones got to do with the ABC? Last time I looked those three were all commercial concerns primarily occupied with generating profit. They can all be as biased or unbalanced as they like. The ABC is supposed to be the national news provider for the people, generally people who don’t have the time or the resources to gaily flit from Aljazeera, to The National Review, to the Outer Hebrides Daily Bugle. The ABC has no business being biased one way or the other.

If you don’t care, don’t comment, and don’t whine if, (hopefully not), the shoe’s ever on the other foot.

I am disappointed, but not surprised, no-one has taken up the invitation to nominate an alternative fair and balanced unbiased alternative to the ABC.
Come on David, Cranky and Hazza, tell us where we should go to get our unbiased news, current affairs and commentary. Either put up or shut up. Don't just keep bashing the ABC if you are not prepared to be honest about where your own bias leans.

Cranky, you are wrong about "most Australians". Most Australians like, even love, the ABC just the way it is and don't consider it biased. It is just a vocal minority, of which you are part, who can't accept that the full spectrum of opinions, including left wing, are, and should be, presented on "our" ABC.