Belly,

You raised this thread about the ABC and your most recent post with its Sydney Morning Herald link concerns another very serious business.

What immediately stuck me when reading your most recent post is that here again is another private sector media outlet scooping the well-funded public broadcaster, the ABC.

It is impossible not to remember that the ABC has been spending so much time on soft subjects like gay marriage and regurgitating reports on illegal immigrants that it is continually being scooped on hard news, news where guts and research is required by the private sector.

My view is that the ABC is the staff it recruits and the restrictions to achieve 'positive' affirmative action have likely taken a heavy toll on its capacity to do at all what it once did well, which was investigative journalism that really mattered and its subjects were taken from the broad areas of life and business.

By way of example, can anyone ever imagine Virginia Trioli, who did her crazy face after interviewing a senior politician could ever go the hard yards to investigate union corruption?

The ABC seems to have so many lightweights. Nice I suppose but not really tough, skilled, experienced and with contacts. The ABC Board and management are probably doing their best with what they are required to recruit and put on programs.

Honestly, the ABC isn't a shadow of what it was years ago. The main difference may be attributable to changed priorities in recruitment, political correctness at work.

Foxy remember.
My pledge to my self?
Your good advice?
Give it some thought it helps to read the first line only.
By then you understand we ,miss nothing of worth by skipping the rest.
This last few days much has been said that every Australian should be concerned about.
Some times good some times bad for both sides.
But for sure and certain if Rupert the puppet master gets his way we will see and hear only one sides view and trash talk about the other.

Dear Belly,

Good advice. Thank You.

The following link you might find interesting:

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/what-is-the-real-reason-for-cutting-the-abc-20140130-31plr.html

It's an Editorial from The Age newspaper.

Of course it could be that the ABC costs over a $billion a year of taxpayers' money to run and it shouldn't be excused from accountability. No-one else escapes accountability and demands for efficiency, so why should the ABC be the sacred cow?

Apparently no government including Labor (especially Labor?) can afford to replace some dangerous narrow bridges on the national highway, Highway 1. There are other priorities that wait forever. Mental health services delivery is in a parlous state - no money. But there are those here who would excuse the ABC from even putting up a business case for what it is receiving.

Just a snippet to show some of the ABC's more ridiculous far left outrages.

"On the eve of the first Gulf War in December 1990, the ABC’s international service, Radio Australia, stopped its two-hour daily service of messages to Australian sailors in the Gulf. Radio Australia’s acting general manager, Geoff Heriot, said to do so would be tantamount to offering “overt support for a government military/political endeavour”.

When military action began a month later, The 7.30 Report chose as its regular expert commentator Macquarie University’s Robert Springborg, who was an outspoken opponent of military action. Prime minister Bob Hawke attacked the corporation as “loaded, biased and disgraceful”.

Throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, it became clear that the ABC could not be trusted to provide a balanced picture of a modern military campaign. Setbacks and suffering were played up; successes were played down. When the murderous Saddam Hussein was captured and later sentenced to death, the ABC’s presenters and reporters agonised about the lack of judicial process.

The extra-judicial killing of Osama bin Laden was greeted with hand-wringing about the denial of civil rights. David Hicks was a hero; George W. Bush a dangerous fool. The illegitimacy of the wars was assumed from the start and the script was utterly predictable.

Many at the ABC see nothing wrong in reporting unfounded allegations of brutality by naval personnel towards asylum-seekers. If it wasn’t true, it is the kind of thing that ought to be true.

Is it reasonably likely that trained military personnel would act in such a brutal fashion? In the mindset of the anti-military camp at the ABC, the answer is plainly yes. Naturally there is no such thing as “groupthink” at the ABC - heavens no! - but the military must change its ways to deal with its “institutional culture”."

Thanks Foxy, while I knew about the link contents it is the best one seen in this debate.
The horrible truth is every word is true!
Recently Murdock,s group failed in its effort to win the right to run Radio Australia.
*Just consider a fox like network broadcasting to the world in our name!*

In the end this is true while I spoke of 32 percent voting first preference ALP in truth at worst, very nearly 50 percent of us do not, now or ever, support this government.
The righteous beatings of the extremes who support this government would have us think they talk for us all.
ABC vs Murdock/Abbott?
I vote ABC