From Blot on The Landscape’s Blog:
“The ABC would be very, very stupid to take this as a comfort rather than a threat:
‘TONY Abbott has cast doubt on whether an independent inquiry could finish the debate over bias at the ABC, predicting the broadcaster’s “political correctness” would always make him want to occasionally “throw something at the television set”.
Amid debate about the ABC’s reporting of abuse allegations against the navy, the Prime Minister yesterday declined to support Defence Minister David Johnston’s call for an inquiry into editorial standards.’
ABC apologists will say good, no inquiry.
In fact, Abbott has concluded what I reluctantly have, too: that the ABC simply can’t and won’t redress its ingrained Leftist bias. That leaves conservatives with two options: to simply accept that a massive state-funded media will campaign forever for the Left in breach of its charter, or to cut the ABC down to a less threatening size for a healthy democracy.
Guess which of those two alternatives most appeals?”
Less threatening size? For a healthy democracy? Now, I seem to remember reading from Bolt – among many others – that the size of Murdoch’s empire was no problem in today’s age of ready access to a variety of other sources. The fact that Limited News publishes over seventy per cent of newspapers – including the only ones in some cities – was no threat at all to our democratic system.
But then I also remember them arguing that there was no need for an inquiry into Murdoch’s operations in Australia – the goings-on in Britain were, after all, in Britain. There’s no need to think that the way an organisation behaves in one place should make one suspicious of them in another country. That would be like investigating a church because of a few bad apples in the bunch, or launching an inquiry into the whole union movement when corruption was alleged in a couple of unions.
Less threatening size for democracy? Now, I know some of you will think that he really means “less threatening size for Ruper’s intention to hold a monopoly on all newst”. But that’s unfair. There’s no evidence of that.
However, I’m more concerned at our Prime Minister’s desire to “throw something at the set”. (Perhaps, one could suggest that he throw something at the wall – on either side -beside the set.) It does suggest a certain frustration at what he terms “political correctness” – a shame that we weren’t given examples of the sorts of things he’s talking about.
I suppose that we could put criticism of the navy down as a definite. (Peter Reith did have a rather confused column today where he congratulated David Johnston for his passionate attempt to gain acknowledgement that he was in fact our Defence Minister by rushing to the defence of the Navy as soon as Peta had given him permission to speak. Reith then went on to tell us that the whole “children overboard” thing was because the navy had given him the wrong information and then that naughty ABC gave him a hard time when all that had happened was that those navy people had got things wrong.)
Similarly, Mr Abbott probably gets very annoyed when the ABC persists in calling people “asylum seekers” when the official edict is that they should be called “illegals” and the unofficial edict demands they be referred to as “dangerous desperadoes” or simply “those people”.
Then, of course, when the ABC demonstrate their clear bias by referring to the Opposition Leader as Mr Shorten, instead of “Electricity Bill” as the Government has suggested. And again, when they fail to mention that it’s the Carbon Tax that’s led to the car manufactures closing, even though they’re not ceasing production until well after the Carbon Tax is supposed to be abolished.
Yes, I can see that there’s a lot that could get Mr Abbott all worked up. My suggestion is that he should watch another channel or, better yet, not bother with the news at all, including making appearances on it. I know that he did try to make himself as scarce as possible after the election, and that seemed to have a positive effect on his approval rating.
Enough of this. There are more important stories to write about at the moment. For instance, does anyone know where Schapelle spent her first night of freedom and what she ate for breakfast? Let’s face it, now that “Breaking Bad” is over, there’s a large gap in many people’s lives.
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