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.