Fox, "John Howard in 2010 solicited a video question from former Guantanamo Bay detainee, David Hicks"

Howard didn't 'solicit' that question and you know it.

<Speaking at the Brisbane Writers Festival in 2011, former prime minister Paul Keating declared that he wouldn't be caught dead on the [Q&A] show.

Keating would never have allowed his ministers to go on the program at all. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, Keating said, "If I was the Prime Minister I would not let federal ministers go on that program. You just wash the government through mud every time you turn up."

As former ABC managing director Jonathan Shier said last week, the show is also plagued by "sensationalist stunts".

Granting Zaky Mallah a platform was merely the latest attempt at a style of "gotcha" journalism that is unbefitting of Australia's national broadcaster. Q&A's producers have a long track record of outsourcing provocative questions to audience members in an attempt to drum up controversy.

The same stunt was pulled in 2010, when the show hosted former prime minister John Howard and solicited a question from former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks. And again in 2011, when a video question from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was shown to Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

These may be legitimate questions that Australian politicians ought to answer. But they are presented in a manner designed to elicit controversy, rather than illuminate important issues. This may elicit applause from the live studio audience, it may create news headlines that increase ratings, but it does not create an environment of serious political discussion.

Q&A is a show that favours demagoguery and gotcha journalism. A hostile environment for any government interested in serious policy discussion. And Tony Abbott is right to declare a boycott.>
http://tinyurl.com/ogatalj

I recall a survey some years back where 60% of Coalition voters thought that the ABC was bias in favour of the Labor Party, but interestingly at the same time 60% of Labor voters thought it was bias the other way. Particularly during the Gillard years I thought the ABC was hard on her government, just as I think it is hard on the Abbott government today. If you are of the extreme right, like some on this forum, you will see the ABC as left bias, and also believe Ronald Reagan was a communists. The bias will always be there in their minds no matter what.

A report on the ABC coverage of the 2013 election. with both major parties receiving about 40% of the coverage.

http://about.abc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ABC2013FedElectionReportChairECRC.pdf

There is definitely the dead hand of the leftist 'Progressives', more like Green Left at work, where Q&A is concerned.

The most recent Q&A provides examples, with the most obvious being the host's, panel's (including the nominal 'conservatives', but 'Progressive' to the core) and audience's rejection of the simple truths, facts, that dispel the most recent confected 'shock, horror' story directed against enemy Tony Abbott, which is the 'impromptu' but highly organised letter of complaint by some health workers.

Shadow immigration spokesman Marles, had the character that others lacked to dispel the complaints as unfounded (and vexatious), which seemed to miff the Q&A Host, who was looking to some easy faux indignation and the usual ritual burning of Abbott at the stake. It wasn't acceptable to the Q&A Host to live up to the 'fact finding' pose of the ABC and settle the issue. Instead and predictably the Host did the 'chase the interviewee up the road' thing, metaphorically speaking. Shabby and false. Shame ABC, shame.

This is Q&A when it is under scrutiny!

This forum is such an excellent example of
the problems of objectivity,

As I have stated in the past - we've seen
from the posts on various discussions that
people in different walks of life may
interpret the same phenomenon - whether it
is a TV program, a Prime Minister's policies,
a religious doctrine, or political parties -
in very different ways.

In other words, people tend to see the world
from a viewpoint of subjectivity - an interpretation
based on personal values and experience. We all
can adopt varying perspectives on the same problem
and can come to different and even contradictory
conclusions as a result.

If the world consisted simply of some self-evident
reality that everyone perceived in exactly the same
way, there might be no disagreement among observers.
But the truth of the matter is that what we see in the
world is not determined by what exists "out there."

It is shaped by what our past experience has prepared us
to see and by what we consciously or unconsciously want to
see.

Inevitably, then, we will all be guilty of some measure
of bias - the tendency, often unconscious, to interpret
facts according to one's own values.

That is why it is important that a public broadcaster
like the ABC remain independent and not be silenced by
any government, Prime-Minister, or Member of Parliament.

The reality is that this affair has less to do with Q and A and more to do with Joyce being stomped on by blithering Abbott in an effort to attack the independence of the ABC.

Barnaby must be getting used to being stomped on. Greggy Hunt gave the go ahead yesterday for the monster Shenhau coal mine on the Liverpool plains - top class prime agricultural land - some of the best in the world....just ripe for decimation, it seems

Vote National and get a coal mine dumped in yer vegie patch.

Although I suspect Barnaby's tears are of the crocodile variety, as he was quite keen in 2006 to mine the bejesus out of Antarctica.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/NATIONAL/Mine-Antarctica-says-Barnaby-Joyce/2006/05/01/1146335640427.html

One good thing to come of this travesty is the Tony Windsor is now contemplating a comeback.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-09/tony-windsor-considers-political-comeback-in-light-of-mine/6606022

Dear Poirot,

Ray Martin had a valid point when he remarked
that boycotting the ABC was "silly." As in immature,
and childish.
And Martin - added that Barnaby Joyce is a member of the
National Party not the Liberal Party. So he could
simply have ignored the Prime Minister's orders.