The ABC is taxpayer funded, and has a charter to which it should be kept, so that there is value for the taxpayer in accordance with the terms of the constitution of the service.

It should act like a contractor, and produce the value it is obliged to deliver, or be brought to account, or terminated.

We have enough shelters for subversives, in our community, and some of them should be converted to a useful, or at least less damaging existence, particularly the ABC.

One of the worst aspects of it, is its training of staff to be left wing grubs, to then go off and infect the commercial channels, who in many respects do the same damage as the ABC, because they employ people with that background.

The drivel about global warming on the commercial channels could have been written at the ABC, as it consists of the same baseless lies.

The continual wrongheaded, dishonest thrust of the ABC spoils the flow of interesting material that is worthwhile, and which should not have to be accessed by stomaching distasteful rubbish, the flow of which is never interrupted for long.

Fair cop. All media outlets deserve this kind of fact checking. Ben has chosen the ABC. Every dog can choose the tree up which it will bark. Others can do commercial TV.

Ken, to a point I agree with you. It's important to keep media organisations on their toes and I think it's an important job.

What I don't like, is the way Terpstra implies that the ABC is totally unreliable. The goal of this piece is to destroy the credibility of the network.

I view all things as being relative. Given that the other networks are the commercial ones, it seems self evident to me that aside from SBS, the ABC is by far the most reliable and accurate news provider.

Something Terpstra appears to try quite hard to avoid mentioning. Of course, were he to actually make some kind of objective comparison he'd have to, well, be objective, which I suspect would leave his argument looking rather weak.

The BBC has acknowledged and justified its censorship and delays in its coverage of Climategate on ideological grounds. Robert Black of he BBC has also confirmed that he received the “hacked” files from the CRU five weeks before they were made public. That makes the BBC actively complicit. Their credibility in the UK has gone through the floor.

Our own ABC has not fared much better, it took Kerry O’Brien ten days to touch just the emails. I like much about the ABC but as a public broadcaster in news and C/A, they should be slammed for censorship.

Our media screams loud enough about freedom of the press, yet can abuse that privilege

The bias of the ABC is over-rated. Indeed, any media bias isn't as influential as many fear. Way back in the 1970s, I lived in a rural area where the ABC was our only source of news. No commercial TV back then and the commercial radio stations just plagiarised the ABC's news headlines. It was the time when the ABC was fawning over Gough Whitlam, even more than they do currently with Kevin Rudd. Yet, come the election, the local Labor candidate lost his deposit, he polled so badly. Clearly, the then extreme bias of the ABC had no effect on the actual poll. I think many of those concerned about ABC bias overestimate the ABC and underestimate the punters. Australians are better than most at recognising bulldust. We are quite capable of watching or listening to ABC News and seeing through the bias. Don't worry, folks. Aussiers have a strong sense of fair play. When Kerry O'Brien harasses a coalition spokesperson in a way he wouldn't dare with a Labor person, the coalition vote is more likely to go up than down. Virginia Trioli's "incident" with Barnaby Joyce didn't do him any harm - he's been going gangbusters ever since.

I'm really pleased for Ben that he has never ever made any errors in what he has said or written.