If the ABC sorts its institutional bias out it could make things more difficult for On Line Opinion. Yesterday's Australian carried a front page report on new Managing Director, Mark Scott's plan to free the ABC from bias http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20594326-2702,00.html.

While I dearly love the ABC and listen to it incessantly, she is a bit like a dotty old Aunt who grew up next door to Gough Whitlam and never really outgrew the comfortable 70s hippy cocoon. So she's tone deaf to some of the legitimate opinion and thought available. Which has been an opportunity for our journal.

Not only do we print material that's too left even for Auntie, but we print material that's too far on the other end of the spectrum. A good example is the role we've played in the climate change debate where legitimate opinion from knowledgeable commentators has been ignored by the mainstream.

Fortunately for us, I don't think you solve the sort of problem Auntie has by laying down rules. All the inmates will just ignore them. You solve the problems via staff management and programming. Here's one way of fixing one of Auntie's blind spots - put Philip Adams and Michael Duffy in the same studio and let them run Late Night Live together - point and counterpoint.

Interesting how the ABC gets sorted out for bias in a way that the commercial stations don't. Anyone who watches ABC tv must realise that the content over the last few years has markedly shifted back to World War Two stories, the monarchy, British history etc.

Dotty old Aunt that grew up next to Gough? Ha. These people are much older than that. They want 'their' dotty old aunt back! You know the one married to the beefy guy who went red in the face slagging off at the dem wogs what, up the empire and only gets up from his gin and tonic at the club to sing God save our gracious Queen.

We are entering an era where the previous free media ethos is a real threat to the established order. Certain phenomena (i.e. the ecological manure hitting the fan) bode not well for the oily money makers. Fortunately for them they own or control most of the media and can feed us manure as long as the weather literally permits. But the ABC and such. That takes direct intervention. And this is what they've done: directly intervene.

And what've we done: yak yak yak.

PS When you put Philip Adams and Michael Duffy in a studio don't broadcast. Just lock the doors and fill it with water.

My problem is personal I acknowledge. But I have difficulty in detecting this so-called bias in the ABC. Mind you, I don't listen to Phillip Adams on radio, and I generally skip his column in The Australian after the first sentence or two because it is often so outrageously predictable. But I think Kerry O'Brien is equally tough on all his interviewees, left or right. I would really like to hear more intelligent right-wing comment though - if this not be an oxymoron.

Fencepost,

If you cannot sense the bias in the ABC then it probably means you have a very similar bias yourself.

It's the nature of man that he cannot perceive his own prejudices as prejudices, to him they are not prejudices, they are truth.

I love the ABC, but it clearly does program and present issues with a certain ideological slant. If you share their ideological slant, then it will no doubt seem to you that it simply presents the truth as perceived by that slightly socialist/green ideology, but to those with a different view, it seems to misrepresent and distort.

You can't ever remove such bias, however, since what we observe is invariably coloured by our belief system. The only way to address bias in the media is to ensure media diversity.

Is this just getting a little too Orwellian for anyone else? They are censoring a television station because the government is scared that people credulously absorb everything - accept its populist simple policies. There is no such thing as a completely objective perspective, every opinion from a white Australian will have significant western, judeo-christian, male, ethnocentric undertones and biases. A standard such as a 'non-bias' is an impossible to attain, nor is this the actual goal sought by the government.

This is plainly censorship, the attempt to diminish any left perspectives in news at all - censoring actual two sided stories in the first place. This action is censorship of the intelligent incisive journalistic potential of the ABC. This is censorship of objectivity to reprogramme the 'right' kind of bias and the ABC has been great to survive and resist for so long. The allegation that a bias is exists that is pervasive and conspirative against the government is ludicrous. The Fed Gov assuming itself the unbiased authority to balance the ABC's programming is frightening. This station is being censored to avert the opposing ideology to the Fed Gov, and this matter seems to be undetectable for other media sources. This is just a bit too Ministry of Truth for my liking.

- Nadia Montague

The ABC has bias - so does Channel 9, TEN & Seven.

Actually I think Arnty does a very good job balancing the other networks.

(Pssst! Does all this talk of adding bias include Classic FM going with Hip Hop)