Monday, August 23, 2010

Our Media

It's not only the political parties that need to rethink their approach after Saturday.

Our media has become a serious impediment to our democracy. And of course it has become fashionable to point our fingers at the Murdoch and Fairfax newspapers and commercial television and to highlight their inadequacies - which I think are both large and serious.

But let’s not ignore the ABC in all of this. I was *very* unimpressed by the quality of their coverage of the actual count on Saturday and the fact that they insist on deferring to people like Nick Minchin. Minchin is a cultural warrior hell bent on pushing a conservative and right wing agenda. He believes that Climate Change is a plot to de-industrialise the West! What on earth is the ABC doing by giving him a platform?

And similarly tonight we find the usual suspects on the Q&A panel. It's almost as if Mark Scott lives in awe of the Liberal party and News Limited staffers? Insiders and Q&A are usually full of these people. If these are the folks that he worships then perhaps he should consider a change of employer?

It just becomes very tiresome to keep finding the collection of right wing *numbnuts* from Rupert's stable making commentary on behalf of my ABC. Actually, it's more than tiresome and it's wrong.

If I wanted to hear these ratbag opinions then I would tune into Fox News and read The Australian. I have made a conscious decision not to go there and I don't want my news feeds polluted by these turkeys.

Is anyone at the ABC actually doing any listening to its audience?

PS - Don't want to be rude but "Ratings" and "Listening to your audience" are two completely different things.

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