When you get down to it, the Liberal Partys problem with the ABC is that they are the only decently resourced real news and current affairs organisation in the country. You arent going to see Today Tonight and A Current Affair doing stories about asylum seeker boat arrivals, or investigating Australian spying on Indonesia. Not when the majority of their stories are paid advertising, and there are plenty of dodgy landlords and dole bludgers and miracle diets to report on. So, even though the ABC has the most rigorous and monitored system for being unbiased and balanced, they get accused of bias by the conservative right, simply because they are the only people reporting on the stories that they dont like. During election campaigns, ABC radio presenters and producers have to record and report, to the minute, how much airtime was devoted to each side of politics. This stuff gets monitored, trust me. Commercial media, on the other hand, is entitled to reflect the views of its owner. See Fox News in America as an example. And, not surprisingly, commercial media tends towards the right wing. I mean, profit is key, and greed is good. The point is that the ABC is institutionally incapable of being biased. Their charter prevents it, and as Mark Scott and others have stated, the ABC itself does not form opinions about issues. Certain investigations or stories may shed a poor light on one side of politics or another (asylum seekers, construction industry corruption), but the Corporation itself does not have a position either way. Commercial media is not so constrained. In the end, the Liberal Party hate the ABC because they are required to report the news without bias, and everybody else reports the new with some sort of bias. And that bias is, more often than not, leaning towards conservative politics. Just think - why are there no left-wing shock jocks? Because it doesnt play well with the people who own the media... Liberal Governments have always gone to war with the ABC, and they always will. Its incumbent on us to say no, and argue that there must be at least one media organisation in the country that is not beholden to commercial interests, advertising, or their owners personal opinions (hello Rupert and Gina). - Reddit user everyones_abc
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 04:48:11 +0000
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