ABC bias thread.

[Neferti]

What a shame that Ridd wasn't sacked because of his views on climate change...

RIDD ....

[The Reboot]

The Socialist evil enveloping the ABC knows no limits.


The ABC, ‘Independent’ To A Fault
Chris Berg and Sinclair Davidson 19 June 2018 Originally appeared in Quadrant



It is appalling that a sitting government should have to complain that the ABC is repeating Labor lies as facts. The ABC itself should be ashamed to have received such a complaint. Yet that is precisely why the Labor Party supported the establishment of the ABC – to provide a forum for pro-ALP news and opinion. This points to questioning the precise meaning of what is meant by the ABC being “independent”.

The Charter describes the ABC as an “independent national broadcasting service”, and it is that independence which forms many arguments in favour of public broadcasting. But this notion of independence needs deeper examination. The ABC is a state-owned broadcaster, which is dependent on triennial funding arrangements drawn from the Commonwealth budget, which is set by the political discretion of the government of the day.

ABC supporters refer to the ABC’s independence in two senses.
First, it has editorial independence from the government, insofar as it is a statutory agency that is self-managing and separated from the normal chains of political accountability.
Second, it is independent of the interests of advertisers and private sector media moguls, providing the “independent information” that the commercial media might not.

Public broadcasting has always been defined against the evils of private broadcasting, and the theme of an independent bulwark against the commercial media (the moguls and monopolists) has been integral right from the start. In the early years it was claimed that a purely private media market would be simultaneously disorderly and monopolistic. In the debate over the 1932 bill, the Labor member for Kalgoorlie, Albert Green, warned of the “chains of newspapers … obtaining such a stranglehold over the eastern part of the Victoria, and disseminating its propaganda through the stations that it controls”. The private monopolisation of radio – “one of the most revolutionary additions to the pool of human resources” – was constantly invoked by Labor members throughout the early debates. This concern, they felt, was more than just theoretical. The 1931 election loss showed, they felt, that the private media was systematically biased against the Labor Party, and a public broadcaster would be able to right that wrong.

Control of the wireless was the high ground of the political contest. In New South Wales a few years earlier the Lang government had sought to establish a state government radio that would resist what Labor saw as the Nationalist Party-dominated private media. As Albert Green, the most forthright of the Labor members on this point in the 1932 debate, put it:

Some B class stations are controlled by newspaper combines, which use them to broadcast only one political opinion. I had hoped that the air would be free to all, and that at election time every party would be given an opportunity to express its opinions over the air. Unfortunately that has not been our experience. Certain newspaper combines are endeavouring to obtain a monopoly of B class stations, and I sound the note of warning that sooner or later some government will have to tackle the very difficult, but necessary task of dealing with the problem of metropolitan B class stations. Nothing short of a complete national scheme will do.

In this sense, independence was understood by the Labor Party as being pro-Labor – or, at least, not anti-Labor. The 1942 inquiry into wireless reiterated this concern, arguing that public broadcasting was needed “to prevent the service from being used for improper purposes”.

Similar concerns drove the introduction of television. The overwrought claims about the social and psychological power of television only intensified the concerns about the new technology’s political importance. The public position of the Labor Party and the ACTU emphasised the cultural good that public broadcasting television could bring, rather than its role countering political bias. But there is no doubt that politics was front of mind when the labour movement considered the significance of television.

A public disagreement between Arthur Calwell and H.V. Evatt as to whether Labor would nationalise the commercial television stations if they were returned to government pivoted on their different impressions of how sympathetic the ABC was to the Labor Party. Calwell, who had been Minister for Information during the Second World War, had a hostile relationship to the commercial press. He believed that Keith Murdoch, who controlled the Melbourne Herald and several other papers across the country, was “a fifth columnist”, “megalomanic”, and his network of papers “a law unto itself” and “Public Enemy No. 1 of the liberties of the Australian people”. Murdoch’s pernicious influence could not be let onto television. Evatt felt that if the hybrid system was maintained, at least the Labor Party would be able to buy a commercial station to air its views. For its part, the conservative parties were just as aware of the political significance of television, arguing in response to the Chifley government’s proposal to establish a monopoly broadcaster that Labor was “merely another milestone on the socialised road to serfdom”.

The modern ABC’s independence is often declared but in practice is hard to pin down. Unlike the BBC, the ABC was not established under a royal charter, and the 1948 move away from licence fees to funding through budget appropriations brought it more into the political window.

Yet how independent could the ABC be? Compared to private and non-government organisations, the fortune of any state authority is going to be closely tied to the government of the day. Public broadcasters have their budgets set by the same governments which they purport to keep a check on. Commercial broadcasters might be dependent on the goodwill of advertisers, but the fact that there are many potential advertisers is a protection against excessive advertiser influence. A public broadcaster has only one funder, and it is a funder whose interests are driven by political rather than commercial incentives.

Nor are commercial broadcasters required to constantly justify their activities to professional politicians. Public broadcasters are regularly brought in front of parliamentary committees to answer for editorial decisions, from the trivial to the significant. The Senate estimates committee procedure requires statutory agencies to present themselves in front of a committee of Senators three times a year. At her first Senate estimates hearing in May 2016, Michelle Guthrie was interrogated about the cancellation of livestock market reports on ABC regional stations, the ABC Fact Check program, how unionised the ABC’s workforce was, whether the ABC was too Sydney-centric, how many people it sent to the Cannes film festival and how long they were out of the office, and how much the ABC spent on a custom typeface to use across its brands. This sort of scrutiny is, of course, entirely appropriate for a state instrumentality. But the notion that independence is the ABC’s unique value as a media outlet is difficult to sustain.

It is not obvious that independence from a democratically elected government is desirable. The ABC is a state-owned organisation, and like any state-owned organisation it derives its legitimacy from its relationship to the democratic expression of voter preferences. Public broadcasters join a large number of other regulatory and bureaucratic agencies that have been deliberately separated from the normal lines of democratic accountability: rather than being the “arm of the minister”, in the classical Westminster bureaucracy formulation, they are protected from political interference and given independence. In an open market, private media organisations are subordinate to consumers and advertisers. In government, politicians and bureaucracies are subordinate to voters. Independent statutory agencies are, by intention, subordinate to neither. Even at their most benign, they are highly susceptible to capture by their employees and management.

Indeed, staff capture has been a longstanding concern of critics of public broadcasters. As Michael Warby writes, “‘Independence’ from government interference … comes to mean effective independence from whatever tenuous public controls over the ABC exist in practice—it amounts to independence from the direct legal owner”. One of the consequences of staff capture, of course, is political bias. The historical context shows that this political slant is a deliberate feature of public broadcasting, not a bug.

https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/the ... to-a-fault

Bashing the ABC now, are we? That was a quick turn-around. This must mean you're a lefty greeny! Tsk tsk.

[The Reboot]

More ABC tainted with left-wing identity crap...

Sam Smith announced as special guest at Sydney Mardi Gras 2020

Grammy Award-winning UK artist Sam Smith is set to perform at Sydney's Mardi Gras next month.

"We're feeling the love today, can't wait to see Sam Smith at the #MardiGras2020 Parade and Party!" the event's official Twitter account posted.

Smith said in a video posted to Twitter that it would be "one of the highlights of my career".

The artist is known as one of the music industry's most influential LGBTQI voices who has used his platform to advocate for a broad spectrum of queer issues.

He came out as non-binary in 2019 and has spoken publicly about his experiences to help improve public awareness of what it means to be genderqueer.

Smith has won an array of awards including four Grammy Awards, an Oscar, a Golden Globe and three BRIT Awards.

In 2016, he won Best Music Artist at the British LGBT Awards and a nomination for Outstanding Musical Artist at the 2018 GLAAD Media Awards.

Smith will be joining a line-up of previously announced headliner Dua Lipa, Kesha and Brazillian drag star Pabllo Vittar, as well as a line-up of DJs.

The theme of the 42nd Mardi Gras parade is What Matters.

Grammy Award-winning UK artist Sam Smith is set to perform at Sydney's Mardi Gras next month.

"We're feeling the love today, can't wait to see Sam Smith at the #MardiGras2020 Parade and Party!" the event's official Twitter account posted.

Smith said in a video posted to Twitter that it would be "one of the highlights of my career".

The artist is known as one of the music industry's most influential LGBTQI voices who has used his platform to advocate for a broad spectrum of queer issues.

He came out as non-binary in 2019 and has spoken publicly about his experiences to help improve public awareness of what it means to be genderqueer.

Smith has won an array of awards including four Grammy Awards, an Oscar, a Golden Globe and three BRIT Awards.

In 2016, he won Best Music Artist at the British LGBT Awards and a nomination for Outstanding Musical Artist at the 2018 GLAAD Media Awards.

Smith will be joining a line-up of previously announced headliner Dua Lipa, Kesha and Brazillian drag star Pabllo Vittar, as well as a line-up of DJs.

The theme of the 42nd Mardi Gras parade is What Matters.

"We've come so far, and we know there's so much further to go together," the event's page posted on Twitter.

Last year's parade featured 12,500 people on 200 floats marching, dancing and flaunting colourful costumes.

It was headlined by PNAU and pop singer Kim Petras. Kylie Minogue also made a brief appearance.

The annual parade will take place from 7:30pm on Oxford and Flinders streets in Darlinghurst on February 29.

Sydney will also host WorldPride in 2023 and will become the first city in the southern hemisphere to ever host the major international LGBTQI event.

Source

"Non-binary". "Genderqueer".. what the actual fuck does this even mean? Why is Australian media just accepting this pseudo-science without question?

If this is socially "acceptable", then the hordes of people who gave Master Light shit for his pseudo-science need to apologize. The ABC should give Master Light his own segment.

I jest. It's just ironic how you can be locked up in a mental ward for saying you believe in aliens, or that you're a divine spirit, yet this pseudo-science is peddled without a second thought.

LGBTIQ = straight people that wish they were poofters.

[Juliar]

The reBoot seems to be right up on this queer stuff. Probably votes for the Greenies.

[Juliar]

The ABC shamelessly supported the Global Warming HOAX until the temperature stopped warming and since then they have shamelessy supported the Climate Change SCAM even though there is very little genuine evidence of any unnatural change in the climate.

Things flared up with the bushfires and the ABC blamed the Climate Change SCAM for this when in fact it was the cyclically natural Indian Dipole and the SAM which caused the dryness and heat. The shameful Greenies are responsible for the ferocity of the fires.

ITA still has a bit of contract non-renewal to do to flush out the baddies.



I Dare An ABC Journo To Check Just One Fact Of Global Warming
Jennifer Marohasy 20 February 2018 PUBLICATIONS, Opinion, IPA TODAY Originally appeared in The Spectator Australia



The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (our ABC) – the main source of news and information for Australia’s ruling elite – often begins its broadcasts with the claim it’s free of bias and agenda’. I can’t think of a more inappropriate and untrue description. ABC journalists will justify the claim with reference to sourcing information from only the most trustworthy of institutions and experts. The problem, of course, is that so many of our institutions have lost-their-way, and so many of our experts take a wholly partisan approach to the most controversial of issues – particularly global warming.

As my colleague Scott Hargreaves explained recently, the average Australian, like the average Brit and American, has mostly lost confidence in experts.

This potentially makes the job of the journalist all the more exciting. Rather than just parroting an authority, they have the opportunity to find out why almost half the population has chosen to disregard expert opinion on a range of issues – including global warming.

Global warming is actually not a hard issue to dissect because fundamentally it relies on evidence of there being a general trend of temperature increase – and measuring temperatures is not rocket science.

Of course, there is nowhere on earth where the mean global temperature anomaly can be measured. So, steer-clear when this statistic is mentioned by an expert – you can probably dismiss it as something entirely contrived, like say the virgin birth.

When I suggest journalists dig-around: I mean for the raw temperature measurements from individual weather stations. Most politics is local, and as you will discover along this journey, the global mean temperature as so often reported by experts is actually a contorted amalgamation of thousands of abused local temperature series – unless the expert is referring to the satellite record, which is another story.

Indeed, while the Australian Bureau of Meteorology often refers to ACORN-SAT… SAT in this context is actually an acronym for ‘Surface Air Temperatures’. Not SATellite. (The previous Minister, Greg Hunt, was often muddled on this issue.)

To be clear, the Bureau relies entirely on surface air temperatures for reporting climate variability, and it has very significantly changed the way it measures these temperatures over the last few decades… without showing us that the new method is in any way comparable with the old method.

Meanwhile, the Bureau keeps claiming new record hot days, which are reported by our ABC without any scepticism.

The change-over from mercury thermometers to electronic probes in automatic weather stations has been occurring for more than two decades, but alarm bells only started ringing for me last year when I discovered that rather than averaging one-second readings from the electronic probes over at least one minute as is standard, the Bureau records the highest one-second reading as the maximum temperature for that day. To be clear: when the Bureau reports, for example, that ‘37.7 degrees Celsius is a new record for Mildura’ as they did last September, they are not referring to the daily average, or the temperature after the probe starts beeping to signify it has steadied – they are referring to an instantaneous one-second spot reading.

Because electronic probes are much more sensitive than old-style mercury thermometers to fluctuations in temperature and because temperatures can fluctuate on a hot day by up to two degrees Celsius in less than one minute at places like Mildura, this very dubious method of calibration will likely result in new record hot day – even for the same weather.

Since I raised this issue with Minister Josh Frydenberg last year, the Bureau has not denied that they use this non-standard method for recording temperatures, but they claim it results in the same temperatures as would be recorded from a mercury thermometer because they have ‘custom-made probes’ with a longer than normal time constant.

It would seem reasonable to assume that given the Bureau have been changing-over from mercury thermometers to custom-made probes at its over 600 weather stations for some time now, and because they are relying on a novel method for calibration there would be lots of reports – so many parallel studies – to demonstrate that the new method is above-board. I mean, it would be ridiculous if some of the catastrophic global warming so often reported by experts via our ABC were just a consequence of a new method of recording temperatures! This should be all very easy to check, except that the Bureau has been far from forthcoming with the relevant data, as I detail in a recent blog post.

And I’m more than happy to make all my correspondence with the Bureau available to ABC journalists should they decide to do some research into this issue – should they choose to convert from true believers to genuine truth seekers… free of bias and agenda.

https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/opi ... al-warming

[Nom De Plume]

Are their any other broadcasters complaining about ABC bias?

[The Reboot]

The ABC shamelessly supported the Global Warming HOAX until the temperature stopped warming and since then they have shamelessy supported the Climate Change SCAM even though there is very little genuine evidence of any unnatural change in the climate.

Things flared up with the bushfires and the ABC blamed the Climate Change SCAM for this when in fact it was the cyclically natural Indian Dipole and the SAM which caused the dryness and heat. The shameful Greenies are responsible for the ferocity of the fires.

ITA still has a bit of contract non-renewal to do to flush out the baddies.



I Dare An ABC Journo To Check Just One Fact Of Global Warming
Jennifer Marohasy 20 February 2018 PUBLICATIONS, Opinion, IPA TODAY Originally appeared in The Spectator Australia



The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (our ABC) – the main source of news and information for Australia’s ruling elite – often begins its broadcasts with the claim it’s free of bias and agenda’. I can’t think of a more inappropriate and untrue description. ABC journalists will justify the claim with reference to sourcing information from only the most trustworthy of institutions and experts. The problem, of course, is that so many of our institutions have lost-their-way, and so many of our experts take a wholly partisan approach to the most controversial of issues – particularly global warming.

As my colleague Scott Hargreaves explained recently, the average Australian, like the average Brit and American, has mostly lost confidence in experts.

This potentially makes the job of the journalist all the more exciting. Rather than just parroting an authority, they have the opportunity to find out why almost half the population has chosen to disregard expert opinion on a range of issues – including global warming.

Global warming is actually not a hard issue to dissect because fundamentally it relies on evidence of there being a general trend of temperature increase – and measuring temperatures is not rocket science.

Of course, there is nowhere on earth where the mean global temperature anomaly can be measured. So, steer-clear when this statistic is mentioned by an expert – you can probably dismiss it as something entirely contrived, like say the virgin birth.

When I suggest journalists dig-around: I mean for the raw temperature measurements from individual weather stations. Most politics is local, and as you will discover along this journey, the global mean temperature as so often reported by experts is actually a contorted amalgamation of thousands of abused local temperature series – unless the expert is referring to the satellite record, which is another story.

Indeed, while the Australian Bureau of Meteorology often refers to ACORN-SAT… SAT in this context is actually an acronym for ‘Surface Air Temperatures’. Not SATellite. (The previous Minister, Greg Hunt, was often muddled on this issue.)

To be clear, the Bureau relies entirely on surface air temperatures for reporting climate variability, and it has very significantly changed the way it measures these temperatures over the last few decades… without showing us that the new method is in any way comparable with the old method.

Meanwhile, the Bureau keeps claiming new record hot days, which are reported by our ABC without any scepticism.

The change-over from mercury thermometers to electronic probes in automatic weather stations has been occurring for more than two decades, but alarm bells only started ringing for me last year when I discovered that rather than averaging one-second readings from the electronic probes over at least one minute as is standard, the Bureau records the highest one-second reading as the maximum temperature for that day. To be clear: when the Bureau reports, for example, that ‘37.7 degrees Celsius is a new record for Mildura’ as they did last September, they are not referring to the daily average, or the temperature after the probe starts beeping to signify it has steadied – they are referring to an instantaneous one-second spot reading.

Because electronic probes are much more sensitive than old-style mercury thermometers to fluctuations in temperature and because temperatures can fluctuate on a hot day by up to two degrees Celsius in less than one minute at places like Mildura, this very dubious method of calibration will likely result in new record hot day – even for the same weather.

Since I raised this issue with Minister Josh Frydenberg last year, the Bureau has not denied that they use this non-standard method for recording temperatures, but they claim it results in the same temperatures as would be recorded from a mercury thermometer because they have ‘custom-made probes’ with a longer than normal time constant.

It would seem reasonable to assume that given the Bureau have been changing-over from mercury thermometers to custom-made probes at its over 600 weather stations for some time now, and because they are relying on a novel method for calibration there would be lots of reports – so many parallel studies – to demonstrate that the new method is above-board. I mean, it would be ridiculous if some of the catastrophic global warming so often reported by experts via our ABC were just a consequence of a new method of recording temperatures! This should be all very easy to check, except that the Bureau has been far from forthcoming with the relevant data, as I detail in a recent blog post.

And I’m more than happy to make all my correspondence with the Bureau available to ABC journalists should they decide to do some research into this issue – should they choose to convert from true believers to genuine truth seekers… free of bias and agenda.

https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/opi ... al-warming

So, you're the only person who's allowed to criticize the ABC's bias when it suits you? Everybody else who does so, you call a "greenie".

Tsk tsk. Your 'genderqueer' is showing. Is 'Juliar' your drag queen name?

[Nom De Plume]

Are their any other broadcasters complaining about ABC bias?

You see, I don't hear anything from other broadcasters complaining about ABC bias.

[The Reboot]

Are their any other broadcasters complaining about ABC bias?

You see, I don't hear anything from other broadcasters complaining about ABC bias.

Sky News ripped them a new hole over the Waleed Aly doctored footage.

[Black Orchid]

So did the DT, news.com and other outlets.