Hi YEBIGA,

Those “self lobotomized bogans” you so eloquently vilify have something you will never have and don’t subscribe to. The right to free choice and the right to make those choices without being verbally abused by a patronizing progressive.

Why should you care what choices of viewing and entertainment Australians make? Why is it any of your business? What gives you the right to pontificate on what is right for them and abuse them for making “their” free choices?

You don’t have that right of course but you have taken it anyway. You did this because you want to defend your own rights to enjoy what you like on ABC and make a case that others should pay for that privilege. The problem with that is there are many who object being taxed to fund a business to which they might not be customers.

Interestingly the right to the free choices you criticize and vilify, are synonymous with critical thinking and decision making.

Those who present as intellectuals and elites have no such freedom, not because it is not available, but because they are bound by dogma. This naturally manifests as antagonism against those who make free choices.

They end up, as in the case of the ABC, by vilifying the free choices of others at the same time as demanding that others pay for what the progressives want.

It’s all part of the hypocrisy of progressives who can offer no logical reason for retaining the ABC in its current form. It is really all about the potential to lose a national voice that reinforces progressive dogma, the ABC. This how we can identify the ABC for what it really represents.

Capital funding has been withdrawn from the Global Mail, the Guardian is going deeper into debt, Fairfax circulation is heading South along with their stock value and public funding via universities for such as the Conversation seems likely to evaporate.

That leaves what? Ah yes, the ABC.

That YEBIGA, is where you are coming from.

"Should climate skeptics have equal time to counter the case put by the large majority of the world's climate scientists?"

The author shows her ignorance of the scientific method. Sceptics are essential to the process of critically appraising and substantiating scientific hypotheses. The plain fact of the matter is that climate science is not settled, as many unquestionably assert. No one has tabled empirical scientific evidence to substantiate the hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous global warming.

Thanks to the environmental campaign waged in the media -- particularly the biased ABC -- it came to be believed by many of the public, and indeed by many of the scientists themselves, that climate researchers were the equivalent of knights on white steeds fighting a great battle against the forces of evil. Slowly, the average man (and woman) in the street is beginning to realise that it is politics rather than science which is driving the issue.

" A news service in the public interest should be based on seeking and telling the truth."

Sadly, the ABC no longer chooses to behave in this way. For example, the ABC is blatantly biased , unbalanced and downright unprofessional in its handling of the global warming debate. It has taken a political position on anthropogenic global warming(AGW), and goes out of its way to censor out any view of so-called climate sceptics. Far from equal time, the climate sceptics are not given any time. The ABC's supposedly impartial science presenter Robyn Williams went as far as to link AGW denial to advocacy of paedophilia. ABC management refused to apologise for such appalling premeditated comment. This typifies the Green left groupthink entrenched in the ABC.

Does anyone need the ABC? Of course not.

Sensible people can see through the dreadful job the fools they mostly employ do of the propaganda they try to push, & become annoyed that we pay these twits with our taxes.

The left may like them, but would be better off without them. Again the dreadful job they do, being so over the top & so far left, simply shows people the left don't have a legitimate case to put, so must resort to the garbage they do.

ABC will be around for a long time yet, but may be under a different funding model where it has to raise own revenue.

Personally, I have been watching sky news lately, far superior to the ABC in terms of news and debates. Sort of got me thinking more about it.

Still like the ABC (including radio) for many of its shows, including Landline and some documentaries.

I agree that some of those on ABC, supposed balanced commentators, are not that good

Now now Spindoc,
sneaky, "lobotomised minds" not bogans. I fear you have slandered me
It is interesting that all sides wish to don the cloak of the common man. Oh well, I and they will survive.

As for the exercise of choice - you can't be serious. What choice do the networks offer? If we are for choice we would demand the break up of Murdochs media empire across 10 different owners. Then we are in agreement and the ABC as it stands becomes redundant. But whilst we have this Berlusconi dominance not a chance.

In my last post I also detailed the ABCs unique role as a community service provider. Do you imagine one of the network radio stations Interrupting programs to warn of fire threat in some remote town, relaying academic lectures, producing children shows, transmitting parliament. None of this will pay for itself.

So tell me we don't need any of this - at least have the decency to think thru the consequences of your proposals.

lets be frank, the vast majority of those who would eviscerate the ABC are no longer self governing individuals. Their critical faculties either never developed or were simply abandoned in frustration at a world of increasing complexity. Rather then trying to penetrate the intricate web of interests and develop their own understanding, they decided life was far easier if they just believed what they were told. So as long as the person telling the story is a regular kind of person, who looks like them, shares like values, they can spout any crap and the majority will believe it. And lets be honest life is easier this way.

But slowly and inexorably unpleasant seeds are planted by these oligarchical forces which in time have changed the very character of Australia. A once honest, irreverent, happy go lucky, confident nation turns into a fearful cowering, greedy, unprincipled and weak herd. A herd easily led into wars it never cares to understand, to relinquish its foreign policy, its economy, its entire culture to this oligopoly, to in effect surrender our sovereignty.

This is a complex matter but Ms Edgar makes the same mistake that she accuses others of doing - namely skating over the issues in a cavalier manner. The ABC has no political journalists that I know of who own to being anything but seriously left wing - there should be at least a few Andrew Bolt types. The evidence from the time of the Rudd/Gillard governments is simply one of steady insistent anti-coalition sentiment culminating in the recent outright assaults on the present Government. Australia may need an ABC, but certainly not the present ABC, and certainly not funded by taxpayers. A radical rethink is needed.