Letters Courier Mail political campaigns include:

A sustained attack on the Water Minister Robertson for not reducing dam water levels prior the January flood. In fact water was released to keep water supply at 100% and designed flood mitigation capacity left empty.
Ignores the fact that LNP members Seeney and Springborg both lambasted the Govt. at the time for not allowing the dam level to increase above 100% of the water supply volume.
No letters published pointing out this LNP hypocrisy.
Is published attacking Water Minister/ALP governance.
2010 articles reporting Seeney/Springborg attacks removed from web archive.

Sustained, high profile, editorial attack on Gold Coast armed robbery squad over an alleged list of serious procedural shortfalls and illegalities.
Bullied Govt. and CMC into full investigation.
Senior officers put under huge public pressure. Squad disbanded. Many highly competent officers quit force entirely.
Robbery and associated violence on the Gold Coast escalates.
After two especially vicious robberies, including fatal shooting of officer, C.M. blames Govt. and Force for incompetence in managing GC crime. Demands action! Had the hide to:
- assert lack of designated capacity to deal with violent crime.
- make a huge media feast of the dead officer.
CMC returns findings of only minor improprieties, mostly technical in nature.
CM prints low profile report on CMC outcomes.

Local residents fighting corrupt development process try to get coverage of evidence of connection between planning minister and developer. CM ignores completely.
CM later tries to hit Terry Mackenroth over supposed corrupt land dealings.
Can't get evidence on story.
Runs story on developer/Planning Minister/ labor lobbyists to try to create collateral damage.

Give me the time, and the motivation, and I'll give you an encyclopaedic summary.

Perhaps the reason you perceive CM coverage as reasonable is because you know little about Qld. issues and cannot recognise the vital things C.M. DO NOT print, thereby rendering a grossly imbalanced picture of events and causalities.

That said, if you can't see the imbalance within the CM's reporting on the carbon tax issue then you must be wearing a balaclava on backwards.

Graham
The way I understand it, to reduce bias and increase objectivity, we need to follow the rules of scientific debate. One of which is to use the most ‘value-neutral’ terms one can think of. And ‘not particularly useful, in terms of...’ was my attempt to do this. Was ‘platitudes’ the most value-neutral term you could think of? It certainly raised my hackles and my immediate emotional response was to assume that it wouldn't have anything interesting to say to me.

But that is just my response. Do you find that oppositional argument ever leads to any change in attitude? I am interested in your opinion about this because you have had so much experience with this type of debate. What benefit do you see in this type of interaction? Counterpoint did an interesting piece on the evolutionary significance of argument. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2011/3215253.htm

Re the Greens calling for a media inquiry. I don’t think that there is much use in any of this political manoeuvrings. I believe that it’s over for this civilization and to take much notice of things like this, reminds me of a Johnny Cash song which goes ‘eternity is down the hall and you sit there bending spoons”.

I don’t see evidence that Bob Brown has an agenda to muzzle the press. I think their agenda is to offer something different than is currently on offer by either right or left. And as long as the ABC is available in its current biased form, I’ll not bother thinking about the issue.

But the bias I appreciate on the ABC is their bias toward new and interesting ideas, toward big picture issues, and diversity of opinion, the commitment to scientific knowledge. I do believe that their attempt to be objective and fair politically, despite their personal biases is done better than any other media outlet.

Wallumi, none of what you have given is evidence of ideological bias. If the newspaper is going to uncover a scandal in government, which is what I would hope they would do, then it's the government who is going to be on the other end of the criticism, not the opposition. I'm sure they'll be just as searching on Campbell Newman when he wins. I'd be very critical of a news outlet that wasn't running these sorts of stories.

Molly, I think the use of the word "platitudes" is defensible. The use of the word was "trite" and "prosaic" and as I see it not related to what they actually intend at all, which appears to be a greater role for the public broadcaster and more of their view of the world, rather than less.

I wouldn't agree that we should use the scientific method in debate. Debate is about persuasion. I'm not suggesting that debate should be illogical, but it should resonate. You use the words that are appropriate. It is not inappropriate in an opinion piece to express one's opinion. I'm not writing a scholarly piece it is a piece of communication. Just because I don't cover off every single thing that someone might object to doesn't mean that my piece is deficient. I had 800 words to say what I had to say.

If I wrote as you are suggesting no-one would read it, and people who used more colourful language would be more persuasive. I wouldn't be in public debate at all, but off in some cloistered academic corner of society.

Graeme, the clearly evident ideological bias is toward elite private interests rather than the public interest in, and the basic social need for, factually accurate and objectively balanced reporting of significant events. The arena contest of the pseudo-left and right dialectic that consumes your attention is a secondary, although not insignificant concern.

The salient matter is that the CM's self-serving editorial behavior makes it impossible for the electorate to reasonably understand and decide upon matters of grave public interest. Those few I've noted present the tip of a near endless iceberg of media-managed public mis-information and confusion. The paper fundamentally and persistently skews and limits relevant report content and context without regard for adequate truth or reason. Society will ultimately sink due to the accumulating impact of this iceberg.

There is a place for such nonsense in a 'free' society, and Murdoch arguably has a right to produce it, however not as the monopoly daily publication that dominates public opinion in each major city and town. By convincingly, but falsely, presenting itself as the daily 'news', this masquerade develops a community driven by ignorance, superficiality and fear, and it engenders a political regime observant of the media master's dictum over and above a duly proper concern for evidence-based community interest.

A public enquire should properly investigate how well communities are being served by this current monopolised distortion within daily news reporting. There are many ways to remediate the situation if we genuinely want to be as objectively and reliably informed as we like to suppose we all are in this modern age. If we don't then let's stop pretending that we're any better informed than medieval serfs.

Well said wallumi

Facts are facts.

The above has little to do with left or right political ideologies.

Definition of an oxymoron:

Disputed fact.

We see a lot of that in our media - disputes over facts - almost laughable, if not for the ignorance it spreads.

Many vigorous, autonomous organisations are more likely to present facts rather than a monopoly - which only has to serve itself (and the biggest shareholder of course, which amounts to same). The ploy of the so-called influence of "mum and dad shareholders" being just another bit of the smokescreen pulled over what passes for choice and individual rights in the 21st century.

Wallumi, your premise falls at the first hurdle. None of the things you evidenced have anything to do with "elite private interest". How are "elite private interests" advantaged by keeping a government under scrutiny on how it handles water supply and the police? Your land corruption story seems to be a complaint that they were too late to the party, rather than what they wanted to cover.

And what do you propose to do to make News not the monopoly print publication in Brisbane? As though that is a particular problem when most people don't read the publication anyway and get their news from other sources.