If this had happened in industry, or heaven forbid, the Banking sector, the ABC and other media would be screaming for heads, demanding resignations ..

Oh, but it's the ABC, oh well that's all right then ..

No it is not, it is Corruption and the people from the ABC who have been acting outside tendering rules, even after they were warned off several times should be charged and if it fits, jailed.

Why is the business community held to one standard, and government departments, or semi-government like the ABC held to another.

This is Tax Payer finds after all and the cavalier manner that the ABC management have treated contract law in Australia demands someone should be held accountable.

Oh, and the ABC should be barred for 10 years from bidding on or holding any licenses for broadcast of any type, they are a corrupt organization.

Break them up and sell it of, or just shut it down, do us all a favor.

.@Amicus, Friday, 11 November 2011 9:11:22 AM

In general agree with you , the ABC is all about Politics at every level within and without the Organization.

It needs a new broom through it , from the very top to close to the bottom.

Close it down, but leave Macca with a Nationwide Radio Network, at least, he doesn’t annoy me.

The "new " ABC that emerges from the Ashes should never.. never.. involve its self again in Current Affairs ,7.30 , Q&A , and others like Australian Story which they have managed to politize

It is NOT the job of the ABC to "balance " the opinion of other media in the outside world.

In many ways , the present ABC reminds me of the Unions in the bad old days , when one HAD to be a Member.

Then the slugged you a lot of money, for a once a year visit and promptly gave a fair slice of that money to a Political Party , whom a majority or vast minority of the Unions Members didn’t support.

The ABC is taking our money and sprouting a brand of Politics that the vast majority of us do NOT support.

It has been a long time since the ABC has been OUR ABC

C'mon, Bruce! If Murdoch put out a tender and then behaved the way Conroy has (meeting privately with one of the tendering parties, twice rejecting without explanation the decision of the tender panel he appointed, etc.) you'd be screeching about how Rupert wasn't 'a fit and proper person' to manage News Limited. I'm sure you'd demand his head on a platter. Sky News didn't 'corrupt' the tender process: Mark Scott and his mates did, plain as day, and with plenty of help from the Minister. Any 'leaks' came from Conroy's office, not Murdoch, not Fairfax. If you can dismiss all that with a wave of your hand, you're just not serious.

I'm confident that Sky could manage the Australia Network just fine, thanks. That's what the 'impartial experts' have concluded. What does it say about the journalistic integrity of the ABC and the Minister for Communications when they're caught red-handed rigging bids? What lesson would the audience for our Australia Network take from that? Or would you expect the matter to be quietly buried? If the tender process is compromised, so is the credibility of the Australia Network. And in passing, why do I suspect that, if Tony Abbott pulled a stunt like this, your righteous anger might point in a different direction?

Oh god yes!

Put the damn thing down, put us out of our misery, & send these no Hoper political hacks to the dole queue.

Sadly, Bruce's opinion piece has become an outlet for the ABC hate campaigners. What they have conveniently ignored is a basic element of Bruce's column:
- Sky News has chosen to self-censor in order to kowtow to the Chinese government. I cannot believe that Amicus condones this approach to information, but there we have it. The ABC haters believe that if Sky does it, then it will be ok, but if the ABC were to self-censor, that is not ok.

Let's no forget either that Sky News is foreign-owned.

Sky is part-owned by Channel Nine (which is owned by the US equity firm, PEP) and by News Limited (which is part of the US-owned News International). China is not silly enough to allow Japan to run its international TV service, but clearly Amicus, Sky and others firmly believe it is fine for foreigners to control Australia's international service.

As a taxpayer funding the Australia Network, I strongly object to foreign companies controlling the service.

Ah, OLO is 'the thinking mans' e-rag eh?

My God, what a tribal assault on the ABC from these 'deep thinkers' we have in this thread.

I wonder if they all watch ACA and confuse that with journalism?

Or the Weather Channel, and regard that as 'investigative journalism'?

Or Sunrise, that parody of parody, the fools paradise of unthinking garbage and nitwits, run for total nitwits?

Mind you, even the ABC runs a similar morning show.

Yes, let's let 'business' run the ABC and then we will get more ACAs.

Perhaps Alan Joyce could run it, he's doing so very well with QANTAS after all?

Arguably Senator Conroy's only worthwhile political move has been to stall any Murdoch involvement.

Of course, this speaks volumes for Rudd's judgement, which is a bigger issue when we consider that there are some who want him back in the PM chair.

Thanks, Paul R., for helping to clarify the issue.

By characterising objections to the way the Australia Network tender has been handled as an 'ABC hate campaign,' you've not just grossly overstated your case, you've poisoned it.

For what it's worth, I'd very much like to see a vibrant, diverse, successful ABC. I'm sorry that they don't present a much broader range of opinion, and wish they'd open up a bit. That's my opinion, and I don't expect (let alone demand) that others agree with it.

Which is irrelevant. The ABC may be God's Gift to Australia, but that doesn't entitle them to the manage the Australia Network. And it certainly doesn't justify collusion with the Minister to thwart the tender process. If it's wrong for Rupert Murdoch to do it, it's worse for Mark Scott, whose responsibility as Managing Director obliges him not only to respect the law, but to demonstrate in word and deed that he is NOT in the government's pocket, or beholden to the Minister for favours. Criticise Sky News if you like, Paul, but if you dismiss what's pretty clearly collusion to pervert the government's own selection process, an impartial observer has to question both your ethics and those of the institution you defend.

Dear donkeygod, if that is your name... the reference to the hate campaign is based on the vitriole against the ABC in the responses to Bruce's article.

You've still failed to address my two points:
1. That Sky News cannot be relied upon to produce independent reports, as it has already compromised itself through its self-censorhip in China - as Bruce pointed out;
2. That Sky is foreigned-owned. Have you no sense of national pride? Do you not think that Australians should control and manage the international TV service?

Clearly not.

With regards the tender process, who published the leaks? The Sky News stablemate, News Corp. If the ABC had corrupted the process, it would be doing the publishing.

Anyway, governments leak all the time and that's a good thing - otherwise we wouldn't be aware, for example, of John Howard's plan to slash the pensions for the famillies of dead servicemen/women nor of the Victorian governments campaign to put our nurses onto a new-form Work Choices. Long live leaks!

One of the greatest furphies attached to the ABC is that it is "our ABC". A prime attribute of ownership is the ability to control. Bearing that in mind I think no media organisation could be less ours. At least with Sky we could buy shares and then have an influence at shareholder meetings albeit however small. Either that or organise campaigns to not buy any of Sky's advertisers' products. Or simply by just not watching Sky.
But Joe Citizen has absolutely no influence over what the ABC broadcasts. The ABC is run by the bureaucrats / pollies and they truly don't give a stuff what the public think. Don't forget: programming at "our ABC" is never driven " by the mindless pursuit of ratings".

So why not literally give the ABC to the Australian people. A share for every Australian tax payer to run it as advertiser supported media outlet. Those taxpayers who don't care about it that much could sell their share on the market.