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)

The ABC is not 'left' enough in my opinion. Any more "balance" and I will be down to one tv station which I can stomach, SBS, which is also not really 'left' enough.

What all of this rubbish means, is that "your" ABC will become "their" ABC (which, when you think about it, is all it ever was anyway).

That the ABC has bias is quite clear to anyone who listens between the lines so to speak.
I have a relative who works for the ABC.
He is one of the few closet liberals in the organisation.
He knows some of the others but they do not admit to other than labour or green politics
if they want to continue working or get on in the place. He refers to the ABC as the Media Branch of the Labour Party.

Sad isn't it ?

Kalin has a good point. If the ABC did change significantly it would just drive its audience elsewhere for a version of events that suits their worldview.

That being the case, perhaps the longer term purpose of these changes is to reduce the audience to such a small trickle that closing it down altogether can be justified.

I disagree that the new rules threaten OLO in any way. The media and OLO are chalk and cheese. How's it going anyway? Is it about time for another OLO community survey Graham?

All media production contains bias, this is just a thinly veiled attempt to protect the Federal Government and those who sponsor it from investigative reporting. Investigative reporting no longer exists in the commercial media save a few independent rural newspapers which local rumour has it the predators are circling in on. The Howard government has survived solely on the propaganda the commercial media has generously provided them as it is possibly the most incompetent and anti democratic government in Australian history. But that’s ok that’s business and we Australians have to and have learned how to exist despite our Government and our media.

The commercial press, commercial television and commercial radio is at best garbage, that is not a bad thing - it has to be garbage, it has to appeal to the lowest common denominator. That is not a bad thing; the material they offer is accessible and understandable to people of extraordinarily low intelligence. Why should people without their complete faculties be excluded from entertainment?

I do not consume commercial media. I myself, friends, family and associates are consumers of the ABC many of us have discussed this and if the ABC changes to suite the Howard agenda, simply we will have no media. Its back to books until big brother censors them too. We will write our own books until big brother censors us.

So, the ABC has to be 50% in favour of the govt, and 50% against in all its programming? Or is the ABC's charter to even out the imbalance we see in all the other media? In which case it should be about 3,000% against the right wing interests and the current Federal government.

I think the ABC's job is to *PROVIDE* balance, not to be *IN* balance within its own programming. If all the commercial networks take one approach to a story, the ABC should be free to take an alternative view, without having to restate the commercial network's stories as well.

Left and right are concepts of the immature. I am not reflecting upon you Indulis I am not saying you are immature but the media and Australian Government shows immaturity for clinging onto to those old out dated Marxist concepts. To humour the issue what is “left” and “Right” on the ABC? News and Current affairs on the ABC are restrained compared with the commercial media. It is just Trash TV and Radio, the Alan Jones’s, John Laws, A Current Affair, Today Tonight, and Sunday, Meet the press and Sixty Minutes. I won’t call the last 5 gutter journalism because it is just not journalism. Commercial TV caters entirely for the lowest socio-economic groups in Australian society, those who make watching TV a career. That is why the game shows, Big Brother , Australian Idol ect and American rehash dramas such as Greys Anatomy, CSI ect , use the exact same inanely simplistic formula and regurgitated story lines and read board acting across production because the target audience is in virtual and perpetual intellectual hibernation. Its not right wing, it is just the visual version of junk food. The same thing applies to commercial FM radio breakfast shows. The only consciously ‘right’ wing media would have to be Christian radio which if you have ever heard it has a definite party specific political agenda. It appears to be a command post for followers, broadcasting orders to listeners to what to think and do.
Australian Comedy on the ABC such as the glass house could be classified as left leaning but compare it the pointless wet grey sock that is Rove.
Two things come to the fore that seems to be the motivation for this push for politicisation of the ABC. It appears obvious that the Government has a problem with Lateline allowing guests giving two sides of a story. A Tampa Government cannot afford to have an informed public. The other Media watch which has not been biased just embarrasses the worst of the Liberal Parties sponsors. I think it’s sad because the Government has once again vilified itself

This might be a good time to ask "why do we need a public broadcaster, and if we do, what should it provide?" The present process of death by a thousand cuts creates a vicious circle that only reinforces the belief that it has no value.

Wherever that discussion leads, the concept of a government-funded "broadcaster of record" seems to gave gone the way of other public assets - roads, schools, telecommunications, transport, health system etc. - all measured against some imaginary standard of commercial viability.

I say imaginary standard because, as we have seen with the recent private investment in Sydney's various tollroads and tunnels, the public has to be largely forced to use the new privatized facilities, through road closures and other flow restrictions. If the justification were "the public good", they would surely elect to use the commercial option without the coercion of withdrawal of existing facilities.

The problem is, of course, that the public broadcaster is essentially at the mercy of the government of the day. And governments are motivated to suppress any and every dissenting voice from their current orthodoxy. It's called "staying on message", and the message is whatever the political party in power wants it to be.

But frankly, we don't deserve to keep something that we don't value. Until and unless we realise that it is important to elect a government, whether Federal, State or Local, that puts the interests of the general public before the interests of both itself and private enterprise, the destruction of all our "commonly held" assets will continue.

And regrettably, we have bred a political class that is itself corporatized, and that exercises its power principally to keep itself in office, and therefore in salary, expenses and superannuation.

Ave atque vale, ABC.

I agree with tao(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=160#2923).

In case it may be of interest, I have resurrected something I wrote in December last year(http://www.candobetter.org/node/17):

The ABC is only '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.

I happen to agree with David Marr when he said once in a talk(http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigidea/stories/s1204871.htm)talk in 2004 that good journalists had to be naturally suspicious of established powers the status quo, and therefore, by definition, left wing. He went on to say, "If you aren't left wing, then get another job!"

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.

ABC Radio journalist Catherine 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. She 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 Government than any perceivable timid pro-Labor bias in any of today's crop of ABC journalists.

Given the appalling record of this Government, that would have been previously unimaginable, since the day it came to office, the ABC has been derelict in its duty in not having been a little more 'left wing biased' when dealing with this atrocious 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 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.

Petition to save The GlassHouse
---

I received this e-mail from someone in the Illawarra region on the NSW coast south of Sydney:

"Following the standing down of a senior ABC Illawarra Radio presenter and producer as a result of a complaint from Sen Fierravanti-Wells and the axing of the Glasshouse TV show, 10/10 letters to the editor in today's Illawarra Mercury are about the ABC. Only one supports the demise of the Glasshouse, the other nine support the Friends of the ABC position on these issues.

"In addition, the paper's prime opinion piece features details contained in a media release from the FABC Illawarra Branch about the very local (but with national implications) issue of the suspension from air of an ABC presenter as a direct result of a complaint from the biased Senator.

"We need to keep up this pressure Australia wide."

The petition is at: www.ipetitions.com/petition/savetheglasshouse

The signatures are at: www.ipetitions.com/petition/savetheglasshouse/signatures.html

For further information, see The Shallow End (http://www.abc.net.au/news/arts/theshallowend/200611/s1779426.htm) and http://saveourglasshouse.wordpress.com.

The issue of whether the ABC is too left is actually a relative one - the complaint is that it is not biased ENOUGH toward the right wing for the ring wing's taste.

Look at Australia today, is Marxism overrunning the nation? There is no communist party, there is no socialist party, we have a 'choice' of 2 right-wing parties controlled by the big business of big media and if any part of Aunty ever sticks out of the left hand side of the vehicle there is a hue and cry - I rarely hear criticism of the ABC's 'ring-wing bias'.

Editorializing in the ABC has been bending more and more to the right with time - Janine Cohen's propaganda piece on Marijuana for 4 Corners was an absolute low point.