ABC gives Bolt a better chair

The ABC's token conservative (that's right, your impartial ABC has a "token" conservative) on the Insiders program, Andrew Bolt, had long been symbolically ostracised by being given a chair on the far right of the screen separated from the "normal" commentariat as if to warn ABC viewers in advance that Bolt's opinions differed from ABC-approved opinions.

The ABC has now decided to give Andrew Bolt a more mainstream chair.

The heads of the ABC must have accidentally fell from their ivory tower and landed on some common people who have dared to question what exactly they are funding. Make no mistake, the ABC is copping heat for their rampant bias (which is getting worse) which is an abuse of taxpayer funds.

This is about the extent that the ABC is willing to compromise. Oh yeah, and this pathetic patch-up attempt from Red Kerry a day after one of THE WORST hatchet jobs the 7:30 report has done:

Revelations of at least one significant error in the most recent report of the IPCC, the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change - the exaggerated claim that the Himalayan glaciers will melt in the next 25 years has caused great embarrassment. The IPCC and its thousands of voluntary scientists are now on the defensive, and climate change sceptics have stepped up their assault on its credibility.

ABC redundant as bloggers do their job

Matt Ridley makes clear in his piece in The Spectator that it was bloggers, not decorated, well-salaried journalists who broke the IPCC Climategate scandal.

Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.

That's right- and the ABC, even after the scandal started gaining traction, gave very little coverage to Climategate. Taxpayer-funded Jon Faine refused to report it because he didn't think it was important.

This is even more of a reason to remove public funding from the ABC. Why should we the public continue to fund a supposed news organisation that refuses to report, or barely reports, one of the largest scientific frauds and swindles in history.

The internet- especially blogs, is starting a Gutenburgian revolution and putting journalism where it should be- in the hands of the people.

For too long we have ceded our responsibility of holding governments and institutions to account to large institutions such as the ABC, CNN, BBC etc. Thanks to the internet these gatekeepers are losing credibility day-by-day. The internet now allows an individual, like Dave Holland to bypass the gatekeepers, become his own journalist and hold the government to account.

Individuals are now waking up and taking responsibility for holding their governments and institutions to account in the spirit of 1774.

The people, not the ABC or The Age; decided they were sick of the rampant corruption, exhaggerations, distortions, lies, hyperbole and bullshit regarding "climate change" (formerly "global warming") and decided to investigate for themselves.

Only when bloggers and the online community blew the whistle on Climategate did the mainstream media belatedly and reluctantly report the facts. Like a dog slinking around with its tail between its legs- knowing full well that it has been sprung and found wanting.

The main question is that, if the public are ivestigating the facts and holding governments to account, WHAT the HELL do we NEED the ABC FOR?!?

No need for taxpayer-funded 24/7 "news" service

Here's a great article from Tim Wilson in The Australian about the ABC. I dunno who Tim Wilson is either but he makes a good point when he says:

Many Australians believe the popular myth that we need ABC television and radio to deliver high-quality news and current affairs because commercial stations will only deliver infomercial-based current affairs and populist news.

A taxpayer-funded ABC doesn't fill a market gap left by commercial networks -- it crowds them out of providing quality news and current affairs.

Commercial stations cannot reasonably compete for the high-quality news and current affairs market because they're playing on an unfair playing field against an ABC that doesn't have to worry about where its next buck is coming from.

The ABC is a tax-financed and tax-exempt organisation occupying the same market space that commercial operators could otherwise occupy if they were able to charge for the services they provide.

The crowding-out potential of the taxpayer-funded ABC is best demonstrated in the one major media market where it is absent -- morning newspapers.

The private sector is completely capable of delivering high-quality state-based and national newspapers at a price the market is prepared to pay.

But if the ABC started giving away high-quality morning newspapers, News Limited, owner of The Australian, and Fairfax would find their newspapers crowded out of the market by a taxpayer-funded alternative.

And by establishing a 24/7 news television station, the ABC is likely to crowd out the current commercial all-news channel, Sky News.

Sky News already provides a high-quality service, so there is no justification for tax dollars to be wasted on a market hole that doesn't need to plugged. In doing so, the ABC will effectively be engaging in government-sponsored predatory pricing.

By now announcing a 24/7 news channel, the ABC looks like it is using taxpayer dollars to seek revenge to crowd out Sky News on their own turf.

That's all it is folks. We don't need a taypayer-funded propaganda- I mean sorry news, organisation.

There would be a fair enough argument for public funding of the ABC if it were truly the beacon of quality journalism its utopian charter suggests it is. Fair enough if the ABC presented the facts and engaged different perspectives- even unconventional perspectives, on issues.


However, it is shown that the ABC is a self-serving bunch of ideologues who routinely abuse taxpayers by taking their money and running "the ABC line", the collective groupthink on most issues.

How the ABC treats dissenters...

We all know ABC stands for A Bunch of Commies. Columnist Andrew Bolt reports on how "our ABC" reports the visit from a foreign dignitary whose opinions they disagree with.

Remember it's not enough that ABC journalists hold these opinions but they must also let us know that such views diverge from the "politically-correct groupthink" by engaging in shameless one-sided barracking.

Newsflash: We pay taxes so that you may inform and report. We don't care what your stupid opinions are. In any case, we could probably guess.

Here are some highlights:

...would host Kerry O’Brien, a warmist, really dare interview Monckton on his own, and let him put his arguments? Would he really give Monckton the same opportunity to speak that O’Brien regularly allows warmists such as...Tim Flannery and Al Gore - none of them climate scientists...and with...exaggeration, grotesque alarmism, statistical trickery, vested interests, untruths, misrepresentations and false predictions that O’Brien let’s go through unchallenged?.

Answer: of course not. Check those links on the warmists’ names to see how O’Brien lets climate alarmists put their case directly, in friendly one-on-one discussions with him . But now see how Monckton, a sceptic, was set up

Monckton was denied a similar in-studio interview, unedited, with O’Brien, presumably because O’Brien would have been hopelessly exposed and outgunned. Instead, he appeared only in an edited report, interspliced with comments from three fervent warmists

Summing up: the ABC finds it almost impossible to hold an honest debate on global warming. Warmists are allowed unchallenged air time, while sceptics are made examples of. Yet even then warmist scientists and activists cannot find an argument to save themselves from the few sceptics who finally get half a hard word in edgewise.

Your (ABC) news is being manipulated, but you can now see the fraud backstage though the gaping cracks.

People are waking up to the agenda set by "our ABC". Here are 3 colourful comments on the 7:30 website:

1>

The section last night on the 7.30 report with Lord Monckton must rate as one of the worst attempts at serious reporting ever done by the ABC. I’m a watcher, I have a brain, I can and want to make up my own mind if the person being interviewed is distorting the facts.
Kerry O’Brien surely would have been capable of handling this as a one on one interview. Instead I was subjected to an avalanche of film footage showing calamities – bush fires etc - which were supposedly the result of global warming. There were constant crosses to others who obviously had views at odds with Monckton, their credentials were never questioned, Monckton was never given the opportunity to debate them.
This is a serious issue treat it as such; we don’t need your bias the be so evident.

2>

As a taxpayer I would like to register my protest at the gutless bias shown by one of the taxpayer funded television networks, in this case your [not my] ABC.
I specifically refer to the hatchet job done on Christopher Monckton by the 7.30 report.
I and others expected to see Monckton interviewed one on one [preferrably live] by Kerry O'Brien, and where Monckton would be allowed to make his points and respond to his interrogator.
We were not led to believe that Monckton would be questioned by a junior, in a pre-recorded interview with a gang of 'Climate Change True Believers' then being allowed to have the final response to anything raised by Monckton.
The whole episode was advocacy, not journalism. I expect more from 'my' ABC to which, via my taxes, I am forced to fund.
The commercial channels may show similar bias but I am not forced to fund them.

3>

Dear Sir

Your heavily edited version of the "interview" with Christopher Monckton on the 7.30 report last night was a disgraceful attempt of the censorship of free speech that is becoming more and more prevalent from the ABC.

As a climate change "agnostic" I expect to see both sides of the debate aired without censorship.

However, the ABC has sought to undermine any opposing view to Kevin Rudd's rhetoric on this subject that you can no longer be trusted as the independent broadcaster for this nation.

But this quote probably best describes the ABC:

Your interview and treatment of Lord Monckton on the 7.30 report hit a new low, even for your mob. So sad to see the way the ABC has deteriorated to near "non relevance" over the years.

Feel free to leave your comments below.

What's the reason I'm keeping this blog

Yes, you read correctly: "keeping this blog" is not some mangled Subcontinental attempt at English but the correct form as a blog is a "web log". So one would keep a log and hence a blog.

Anyway the reason I'm keeping this blog is thus:

We know that the Government cannot create wealth or indeed anything on its own. Indeed we, the Australian people, give authority (authority from the people is what democracy is) for the Government to act as a distributor of some of our money.

The Government thus uses economies of scale by making more effective use of our combined money than we would as individuals. This is a theory of efficiency as to why we need Government.

However, when the Government (be it a monarchy, democracy or republic) imposes onerous taxes, draconian laws and dispenses of these funds in a profligate manner, it then abuses that authority.

We, as Australians, have a duty to hold BOTH the Government and its delegated bodies and institutions to account because it is WE who spend the money to finance their existence.

Thus, when a public organisation like the ABC arrogantly argues that they are above being accountable to the Australian people because they are "independent", they are wrong.

If the ABC is so independent, let it come off the taxpayer teat and survive as a truly independent organisation.

In fact this is what I am arguing for. In 2010, where the internet gives us media diversity of which we could but dream in the 1980s, the ABC becomes an arcane irrelevancy.

We have no need of the ABC. If I want to find out what is going on in the world I just Google the news, search various sources WITHOUT the need of a censorious gatekeeper. Why do we have to spend billions of dollars on a hefty behemoth that pupports to be the gatekeeper of news, culture, sport, politics and music in Australia?

And to my final, and main argument for ridding ourselves of a publicly-funded ABC is political bias. The ABC likes to be disingenous and say "yeah but we give equal time to Dick Bloggs from ALP and John Smith from the Libs". This in NO way precludes political bias. When I turn on the ABC2 Breakfast show and a person from The Age is interviewed, followed by a "Refugee Advocate" then followed by a spokeswoman from the Coalition of Lesbian Disabled Aborigines, it is clear to see that the ABC has a cultural bias and my taxes should not have to pay for such imbalance. The ABC, whether it is the Hindmarsh Island Bridge, Greenpeace activists or the Climate Change hysteria, give unequal time and favourable coverage to those causes that are broadly-speaking on the political "left".

Kerry O'Brien is a tough and skilled interviewer. Yeah right! When he interviews "Conservative" politicians he is rude, aggressive and unfair. When he interviews a "left-leaning" politician he is fair, gentlemanly and well-mannered- always willing to hear what he or she has to say!

I won't go on but you get the picture. The aim of this blog is to be a responsible citizen and (with your help) hold the ABC to account!