ABC bias, again

Gavin Atkins on the everyday bias of the ABC. Is the Coalition still out to lunch?

Aunty makes no secret of prejudice

Think of just about any other issue that divides the Right and Left – say, David Hicks, nuclear energy or the National Broadband Network – and you will find reams of left-leaning group-think at The Drum. Thanks to its regular writers, this bias is structural and predictable. But it doesn’t stop there. The Drum has started up a Twitter round-up on ABC online while question time is on in the House of Representatives. These efforts by a clubby group of left-leaning journalists, have been dominated by Green’s former workmates at the Crikey website, including Green himself and Crikey contributors.

While the ABC’s internet sites attract more than 25 million hits a month, a big concern is all of this frivolous online activity appears to be distracting our public broadcaster from giving us the news. The ABC is coy about exactly how much we are paying contributors to The Drum, saying only that the innovations division of which it is a part cost taxpayers nearly $10 million last financial year.

In the meantime, significant problems with the ABC’s news have been exposed. ABC News 24 missed most of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami on the day it occurred and ABC1 failed to cut into regular programming as the news broke about bin Laden.

Now here’s a radical idea: if the ABC concentrated on giving us the news instead of this online puffery, it could help solve two problems at once.

Source: The Australian

See also: "Bias at The Drum? Prove me wrong" here…