What the writer really means is that the ABC does not lie down dead like News Ltd and blithely reflect the perspective of an aggressive and self-interested Zionist lobby.

The ABC is not seeking to be a counter-weight to anything. It is just telling the story at it is. If Kirsner can't deal with that, he should switch over to watch The Greatest Loser on the Ten Network.
It might suit him better.

There is no point to discussing the ABC in its present form.

ABC television should be sold off. Radio National should be abandoned, leaving News Radio and local ABC stations to ensure regional broadcasting.

Rather than being an unbiased supporter of the truth the ABC and Latline in particular has become the tool of the Howard agenda. Now that hes has gone its high time all of Howards boys and girls were given the flick starting with Tony whats his face from Lateline.

This post has been adapted from a post (http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/12/19/monday-message-board-8/#comment-39315) to John Quiggin's web-site of 20 Dec 2005:

The ABC may be 'left wing' in a sense compared to the other newsmedia, but in absolute terms it sits far to the right of what was once considered the middle ground.

...

However, ABC journalists should not be concerned about accusations of left wing bias, or even right wing bias, for that matter. They should just get on with the job of properly scrutinising all public figures be they of the right, left, centre, extreme centre, or wherever.

ABC Radio journalist Catherine (spelling?) Jobe did this brilliantly prior to the elections of 1996, where she, in turn, savagely tore to shreds both the Labor Government Health Minister and the Shadow Health Minister. She brilliantly exposed, one after the other, their hypocrisy and self contradiction. ... Jobe could not possibly have been accused of unfair bias, although I suspect her style of journalism would have been seen as a far greater threat to this (Howard) Government than any perceivable timid pro-Labor bias in most of today's crop of ABC journalists.

In any case, given the appalling record of this Government, which would have been previously unimaginable, since the day it came to office, the ABC has been derelict in its duty in not having been more 'left wing biased' when dealing with this Government and its ministers.

Had they done so, more people would have seen right through the Government by the 1998 elections at the very latest, and its reign would have been no more than a bad memory from the distant past by now.

Rather than the the ABC's 'left wing' bias being the subject of controversy, it would have been the right wing extremism of most of the commercial newsmedia which would have been put under the public spotlight.

The problem with the ABC is not that it's left or right wing - old style leftists wouldn't recognise its relentless pursuit of middle class welfare and environmental findamentalism. The real problems are two fold: its current affairs programs invariably adopt the "Why won't you admit you're an idiot?" style of interviewing popularised by Kerry O'Brien; and its general demeanour is one of cultural superiority, especially to the Australians it is supposed to serve. Apart from Landline and some classical music programs, I gave up watching and listening to it years ago.

Not bad when you compare it to other such attacks on the state funded constitutional broadcaster model. It mostly avoids the kind of mindless hyperbole, triumphalism-cum-conservative persecution complex that plagues other writers in this genre.

I particularly like how Kirsner addresses the refrain that the ABC exists to balance commercial outlets, and seeks to define the alleged bias, as Gerard Henderson has done in the past, not by party political allegiance, but by culture. Of course, I’m not at all convinced that this culture has always been inimical to the fair discharge of its charter obligations, and nor can I agree with Kirsner that just because some changes to the ABC’s current affairs lineup have been successful, that all of Howard’s cavalier appointments of his friends and spear-carriers to the board have been vindicated. Fact is, they haven’t, and their frequent lack of journalistic experience has harmed the ABC, and interfered with commercial logic, such as with the Alan Jones bio.

So, I think we need to be careful. Those sympathetic to the ABC may be grateful it doesn’t operate under distorting commercial imperatives, but them valuing that effect is not a reason to conflate that with proper governance. By the same token, I see no reason to set up this construct of “Middle Australia” which supposedly requires the ABC to air the latest movement conservative talking points, against whatever politically correct orthodoxy - and call that accuracy through balance. This is a muddled approach which needlessly invites politicisation of everything, and ignores the role for robust journalism in transcending the political. Also, some issues defy such a dual schema – where there is no roughly equivalent other side to speak of – such as evolution versus id - where there is no respectable case to speak of for putting an unfalsifiable religious doctrine in science class. To create a debates out of air, in such cases, under the mantra fairness, is just to show a different kind of partisanship through the fallacy of the middle.