What happened to their hands do you think?

[donnashuggy]

http://www.news.com.au/national/indonesia-gears-up-its-military-as-senior-politician-labels-australi...

It looks a bit worrying doesn't it?

[freakiness]

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@donnashuggy wrote:

He's very quick to accuse though.

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Yep, he would have blamed the females. Accused them of being in the wrong place and doing the wrong thing.

[lakeedge]

The ABC emphasised the unsubstantiated accusations of disgruntled illegal immigrants to the detriment of proper investigative journalism. They got a  forceful rebuttal from the navy re the torture claims, an emphatic denial, but still they ran dead on any rebuttal.

The groupthink of the ABC is so that it pushes all the failed Labor policies, pushes anything that is detrimental to the government & it was out there for everybody to make that judgement.

They have sat in their smug positions for as long as I can remember & it's about time something was done about it but nobody has the intestinal fortitude to take them on.

[freakiness]

Which smug positions would they be?

And exactly who is it you accuse of sitting in such a position?

The people I see on ABC mostly argue and put forward opposing views.

A good proportion of them are ex Libs or IPA reps.  They never argue for the ALP, independents or Greens.

[freakiness]

http://www.theguardian.com/media/datablog/2014/feb/06/australian-broadcasting-corporation-australia

Following the ABC's coverage of asylum-seeker claims of mistreatment by the navy, accusations of bias have been levelled at the broadcaster, and an efficiency review announced to assess its operations.

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, said the ABC took "everyone's side but Australia's" and should show "some basic affection for the home team". He also criticised the ABC for collaborating with Guardian Australia on reporting that Australian spy agencies had targeted the Indonesian president.

Conservative commentators have gone further, accusing it of being biased towards the left side of politics.

So, is the ABC biased?

Studies on bias are very thin on the ground, because measuring supposed bias is a very difficult business. To empirically determine what is factual, slanted, and misleading is challenging so we must look at a range of indicators.

Firstly, we can check if the ABC gives significantly more time to one side of politics during elections. Here's the time spent covering different political parties in the 2013 election:

2013 federal election coverage: cumulative share-of-voice, all platforms combinedRadioTVInternetTotal

	Hrs:Min:Sec	%	Hrs:Min:Sec	%	Words	%	%
Coalition	2.31	37	1.55	43.4	27,588	39.7	39.4
ALP	2.16	34.7	1.75	48.9	29,079	41.9	40
Greens	0.62	9.9	0.17	4.6	6,069	8.7	8.1
Other	0.43	6.9	0.05	1.3	2,651	3.8	4.8
PUP	0.3	4.7	0.04	1	1,543	2.2	3.3
Independents	0.23	3.8	0.01	0.3	1,373	2	2.5
KAP	0.19	3	0.01	0.4	1,127	1.6	2
Total	6.24	100	3.57	100	69,430	100	100

Source: ABC, 2013 federal election. Report of chairman, election committee review panel

Coverage was pretty even between the two main parties, with Labor receiving 40% of coverage, and the Coalition 39.4%. In 2010, the split was similar:

2010 federal election coverage: cumulative share-of-voice, all platforms combinedRadioTVInternetTotal

	Hrs:Min:Sec	%	Hrs:Min:Sec	%	Words	%	%
ALP	2.4	39.4	1.09	47.8	35,458	4.21	41.8
Coalition	2.4	39.5	1	43.9	37,917	45	41.2
Greens	0.68	11.2	0.14	6	7,217	8.6	9.6
Independent	0.31	5.1	0.04	1.8	2,175	2.6	4
Others	0.16	2.7	0.01	0.3	476	0.6	1.9
Family First	0.08	1.4	0.01	0.2	722	0.9	1
Democrats	0.04	0.7	0	0.1	215	0.3	0.5
Total	6.08	100	2.28	100	84,180	100	100

Source: ABC, 2010 federal election. Report of chairman, election committee review panel

Another way to approach the question of bias is by using public trust as a proxy. Newspoll conducts a survey commissioned by the ABC every year to gauge various aspects of audience satisfaction.

In the 2012-13 financial year, the "percentage of people who believe the ABC is balanced and even-handed when reporting news and cu.... While this is down slightly from early years (it was 83% in 2008-09), this is still an overwhelming majority. 

A 2013 Essential poll on trust in different media organisations has ABC TV news and current affairs as the most trusted, with 70% saying they had total, a lot, or some trust in the ABC. Again, there was a small decline from the last poll, but almost all media organisations on the list had seen similar declines in trust.

Complaints are another measure of dissatisfaction with the ABC.

The famous 7:30 interview with Abbott by Leigh Sales accrued 523 complaintsof anti-opposition bias. There were 2139 political bias complaints in 2012-13, meaning this one interview accounted for a quarter of all accusations of political bias.

However, Sales was cleared of political bias by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) and the ABC's audience and consumer affairs section.

Complaints have historically been split evenly between right and left viewer who feel their team is hard done by Aunty. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq there were 147 complaints of pro-US coverage and 144 complaints of .... On this Wayne Errington and Narelle Miragliotta wrote in 2011, "there appears not to be any factual evidence to back the claim of left-wing bias" at the ABC.

[boris1gary]

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@micasheen wrote:

The ABC emphasised the unsubstantiated accusations of disgruntled illegal immigrants to the detriment of proper investigative journalism. They got a  forceful rebuttal from the navy re the torture claims, an emphatic denial, but still they ran dead on any rebuttal.

The groupthink of the ABC is so that it pushes all the failed Labor policies, pushes anything that is detrimental to the government & it was out there for everybody to make that judgement.

They have sat in their smug positions for as long as I can remember & it's about time something was done about it but nobody has the intestinal fortitude to take them on.

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Hardly what you mistakenly claim in your post - smug......something about a pot

from ABC

ABC managing director Mark Scott and director of news Kate Torney released a statement yesterday conceding that the phrasing of the ABC's stories on the asylum seeker claims "needed to be more precise".

The statement says the ABC makes no apologies for covering the story, but the two senior ABC managers say they regret if the ABC's reporting led anyone to mistakenly assume that the ABC supported the asylum seekers' claims.

[boris1gary]

freaki, probably too many words..................and numbers.............

[i-need-a-martini]

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@micasheen wrote:

The ABC emphasised the unsubstantiated accusations of disgruntled illegal immigrants to the detriment of proper investigative journalism. They got a  forceful rebuttal from the navy re the torture claims, an emphatic denial, but still they ran dead on any rebuttal.

The groupthink of the ABC is so that it pushes all the failed Labor policies, pushes anything that is detrimental to the government & it was out there for everybody to make that judgement.

They have sat in their smug positions for as long as I can remember & it's about time something was done about it but nobody has the intestinal fortitude to take them on.

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Proper investigative journalism?? IT. WAS. THE. NEWS. Since when does the news have to do a special investigation into any breaking story? Their job is simply to present happenings. Investigative journalism is not what the purpose of the news is. That is for the likes of the 7.30 Report or A Current Affair.

And as if no-one has had the "intestinal fortitude" to take them on. EVERY Liberal government decides to take them on and the results are always the same - a board OVERLOADED with people linked to the Liberal Party, Managing Directors and senior managers who are strongly Liberal sympathetic all going in gung-ho saying they are going to change the rules and break the left wing stronghold. Gees, Howard even installed his best friend MacDonald as Chairman as soon as he came into power.

And the result is ALWAYS the same - these people find that there is no left wing bias. NONE! MacDonald became (and still is) one of the ABCs strongest supporters.

Quite frankly (my theory is that) it is simply that the less intelligent you are the more likely you are to have this misguided perception (and chip on your shoulder) that the ABC is left wing without ever giving that reasoning any sensible analysis. In a nutshell, it is those in our society who don't like the ABC showing the truth who yell the loudest about the ABC.

And that about delivers Abbott on a plate.

[donnashuggy]

Are they seriously only allowed to go to the loo once a day? That is incredible if it is true.

[boris1gary]

Donna - Today SMH

The ''torture at sea'' affair now has some of the troubling hallmarks of the ''children overboard'' episode of 2001, with a twist.

Back then, a form of Chinese whispers prompted the Howard government to accuse desperate asylum seekers of threatening to throw their children into the sea.

It saw the then prime minister declare that he didn't want ''people like that'' in Australia, and propelled the demonisation of those seeking to come to Australia by boat.

Advertisement

Problem was, it wasn't true.

This time, equally shocking accusations are coming from the other side, with asylum seekers accusing the navy of brutality while forcing their boat to turn back to Indonesia.

The initial reaction from the government and some commentators has been one of outrage that the ABC would give the claims oxygen - and so be complicit in the ''sledging'' of those who do brave, demanding and ethical work under extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

The claims were denied outright and those making them were depicted as less credible because they had a vested interest in not being truthful - they were attempting to come to this country ''illegally''. They would say that, wouldn't they?

Now, those claims have been repeated in more detail in a face-to-face interview with Fairfax Media's Indonesia correspondent, Michael Bachelard.

The common denominator is the lack of transparency and refusal to get to the bottom of serious allegations when they are made.

One troubling aspect of this saga, revealed by Bachelard, is that there appears to have been no attempt by Australian officials to interview those making claims.

Another is the refusal to reveal precisely what did happen when the asylum seekers' boat was turned back under a policy opposed by Indonesia, and how some asylum seekers came to suffer burns.

The danger of blanket denials in the face of accusations and total secrecy is that, inadvertently, it encourages less than best practice by those on ''the front line'' because they do not appear to be held accountable.

If the operational imperative of secrecy concerning ''on water'' matters is considered paramount, there should be a mechanism to investigate claims promptly by a third, independent party, with the findings then made public.

One result of such an approach would be a more informed debate about who is owed an apology.

[donnashuggy]

I've been speaking to someone in the Navy tonight who has seen a lot over the last few months, the boats are in terrible condition that the poor sods come on, don't think they have the luxury of toilets 🙂