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.