<rpg said: Polly - yes, I want publicly funded balance, what's your problem with that? Do you think the ABC should be completely conservative? I wouldn't go that far, I'm willing to share how about you? Or is your type of sharing where everything is your way? (were you an only child?)>

Surely we want balance per se in journalism, publicly funded or not? I can't see a problem there, rpg.
However, there is an inherent problem in any funding that is doled out by a government to an institution whose duty is to point out that government's inconsistencies and broken election promises as well as those of the opposition. The ABC has done that so well through many changes of so-called leadership that it has become the government's bete noir. It has to be starved into submission because its nature is to bite the hand that feeds it. That's called independence.

What do you suggest as balanced sharing: sniff out so many hours of Labor corruption this week and hour for hour of Liberal corruption next week? Anything that looks like praise is condemned as spin and PR whitewash, so where do we go from here

(continuedfromabove) ... we shall report it. It is a recurring topic."

Well there is certainly a good deal of new evidence, including "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe" at http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
This is conclusive proof that military grade nano-thermite explosives brought about the
'collapses' of World Trade Center Towers.

In November, one of the authors of the paper Physicist Dr Steven E. Jones will be visiting Australia. Also visiting will be Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (see http://ae911truth.org).

At meetings in Sydney Brisbane and Melbourne, they will present the evidence in this paper and a mountain of other evidence that the 'collapses' on 11 September, were, in fact, controlled demolitions as even the news commentators on the day noted that they appeared to be.

I urge you to take the opportunity to interview these people so that your audiences can learn on that day.

By all means please also interview others who dispute Richard Gage's and Steven Jones' views.

Perhaps even interview Dr Dudarev again, but I think your audiences will thank you if they are made aware of the views of Jones and Gage.

If you contact John Bursill by e-mailing (email address) or phoning (phone number) I am sure he can help you to arrange an interview.

Further information can be found at http://www.thehardevidence.com

Yours sincerely,

James Sinnamon

(The date on which I first sent this letter was 7 Sep and NOT 7 July. May apologies.)
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The letter was ignored as were all attempts by the Australian 9/11 Truth Movement to arouse interest in this critical issue.

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This is by no means the only example of the ABC censoring and manipulating news.

As I will show, the Queensland ABC is culpable for having helped to manipulate the outcome of the 2009 State elections and for having cheated Queenslanders out of any say over the fate of $15 billion assets that the State Labor Government now intends to flog off against the clear wishes of at least 79% of Queenslanders.. (see also http://candobetter.org/node/1159 http://candobetter.org/QldElections http://candobetter.org/taxonomy/term/249)

Have you gone off your medication, James?

Not a good look for an aspiring candidate for election to the Federal Parliament. Do try and restrain yourself, or you might even do more miserably than last time you stood for public office.

Daggett, interesting as your suggestions are, are they not in breach of Forum Rule 6? 'Do not divert article discussions to the general discussion area.'

As you know, there is already a weighty discussion going on elsewhere about the credibility of the US Government's final NIST report on the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers in 2001.

This thread is about the ABC. You could be excused for thinking it was about junk science programs because of the posted extract from Ben-Peter Terpstra's original article in Quadrant, but the mention of the ABC's 'Science Show' is just a minor example of his general spray about what he sees as inaccuracy and imbalance by the ABC. He could be right, so let's discuss that, not whether NIST is a cover-up.

No matter how much some would like to call the tune, each ABC program has its own parameters according to the usual audience market research and the amount of time available to fulfil its brief. You'd have as much chance of winning your argument with Robyn Williams as you would demanding 'balance' in a program like 'Ockham's Razor'.

We are all free to produce our own programs on community radio or YouTube and indulge ourselves with as much balance as we like, as does David Chandler in 'JFK.E Howard Hunt Ex CIA, Accuses LBJ'. But not in this thread, if we're serious about fine tuning the ABC.

Polly Flinders,

How are contributions about how the ABC reports an issue or fails to report an issue not relevant to this forum?

Would you deem contributions about how the ABC reports, as examples, bushfires, floods, abortion, the housing crisis or immigration to be in breach of Forum Rule 6?

Obviously I have raised a question which is being discussed 'elsewhere', but why isn't clearly biased and unprofessional reporting of a scientific controversy by the ABC, a concern for this thread?

The article accuses the ABC of peddling junk science and so I gave an example of junk science peddled by, of all shows, the ABC Science Show, in a very short initial contribution.

Instead of considering my argument, and the supporting documentary evidence contained in that article I linked to, you attempted to dismiss me as a "conspiracy theorist".

Now that I have further substantiated my claim in response that attack, you are effectively demanding that my contributions be censored.

In fact, in the past, I had considered myself a "Friend of the ABC" and my normal response to articles like this would have been to weigh into the debate against the author, who has obviously attacked the ABC for silly minor transgressions instead of its real far more serious transgressions against truth and democracy.

It's long since become evident to me that, far from being to the left of politics, the ABC has been for years a promoter of the predominant political orthodoxies that have guided this country's destiny for the past 30 years.

This includes the adoption of the neo-liberal economic program including privatisation and union-bashing, which Journalist Pru Goward shamelessly touted as the chief political reporter on the 7.30 Report in the 1980's. In 2002, as the Estens Report was considering submissions overwhelmingly opposed to the privatisation of Telstra, Vivienne Schenke pronounced to the ABC's Breakfast Show audience that all that remained to be decided was how the proceeds of the sale would be divided up. Other examples of biased ABC reporting in favour of privatisation in NSW and Queensland can be found at http://candobetter.org/taxonomy/term/249

The ABC are a gutless.They do not have the courage of TVNZ .Richard Gage of http://www.ae911truth.org/ was able to get interviewed in Christchurch on TVNZ,yet out ABC will not even try to bebunk the new findings of 911.

They are running scared as witnessed by the fact when we were last outside their Ultimo building they instructed their staff not to take our literature or CD's.The truth is seems is too powerful and their staff are not allowed to make up their own minds.