Foxy - Sorry the burst your thinking but they are so biased on many issues is that really being informed or being manipulated?

Quote "over 84% of Australians believe that the national broadcaster provides a valuable service to the community." How did they arrive at that statistic? I was never asked.
Questions can be asked so as to give any desired answer surveys can be manipulated easily. Who did the survey, how many people did they ask, where was it done all these things and more greatly sway how the questions will be answered.

Dear Philip S.,

The survey was done by Newspoll.

Newspoll is an Australian opinion polling brand published
by The Australian and administered by Galaxy Research. It
has a long tradition of accuracy.

You can Google it for yourself on the web.

"over 84% of Australians believe that the national broadcaster provides a valuable service to the community"

Should that be Labor voters and should it be made plain that roughly half of that percentage responded 'somewhat good', which is open to interpretation? For some it could mean average or lower, 'somewhat' meaning: a little, a bit, a little bit, to a limited extent/degree, to a certain degree, to some extent, to some degree, (up) to a point, in some measure, rather, quite, within limits.

Frankly, no-one would be signing up for a marriage with a partner they only 'somewhat' cared for.

Next, when was that poll conducted? It was years ago, wasn't it? 2001?

So the poll isn't necessarily such a good result at all and nor is it recent and indicative of feeling now, but it is being represented as such.

In any event it is no measure at all of value for money but again, there are those who pretend that it does.

Where the outgoing CEO of the ABC states in an address to the Press Club that the ABC duplicates the SBS and there are substantial savings that could be made, that should have occasioned a full comprehensive audit of both bodies by the Australian National Audit Office.

If that survey was 2001 it is useless at this time as virtually all MSM outlets have lost a lot of there audience and there credibility.

Simply put they have been proven over and over again to be biased, peddling some fake news, subject to the meddling of politicians and big businesses

Foxy,

I read all available news sources, and the sum of the existing independent news sources provide a depth and breadth of news that service the public far better than the ABC without being a drain on the public purse.

As for bias the ABC stands well left of even Fairfax and its investigative journalism seems focused almost exclusively on subjects close to the hearts of left whingers, and runs silent on topics that are against the interests of left whingers.

For the few areas that the independent media fail to serve the public such as the rural areas, the ABC is withdrawing funding to service the inner cities.

If the ABC was flogged off, the public would not notice the difference and the new owners would actually pay tax instead of consuming it.

//I read all available news sources, and the sum of the existing independent news sources provide a depth and breadth of news that service the public far better than the ABC//

But the ABC do a lot more than news, SM. I usually get my news from newspapers rather than television or radio broadcasts, but I still quite like watching the ABC. Their programming is remarkably different to free-to-air commercial networks - I don't know if you've noticed, but about all that is available on commercial networks is wall-to-wall 'reality' crap, because it is cheap to produce.

Which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but some of us prefer quality comedy, drama and documentaries - all of which are noticeably absent from channels 7, 9, and 10 and fairly infrequent on SBS. The ABC are also widely recognised as having the best children's programming on Australian television, although I don't watch that. Also the ABC (and the BBC services I can access) are the only way to avoid ads during programs, which really get up my nose. Even if you buy pay TV the buggers put them in. For far less cost to the average taxpayer than a pay TV subscription, you get no ads in programs and quality shows. Sounds like good value to me, even if you get your news elsewhere.