RSS Feed
How are you finding your local ABC’s coverage of local news and issues of late?
Here on the Gold Coast, we wonder who is running our local ABC station – Coast FM – given nearly every day, precious airtime is devoted to parroting propaganda and PR from either the ‘Gold Coast Bulletin’, the ‘Courier-Mail’, or any other News Ltd. outlet.
For instance, the lead segment on the “Drive” program today [16/6/10] was about a nominee for the Pride of Australia™ Medal. – the ‘Courier-Mail’s cover story.
Pride of Australia™ is a commercial venture owned by News Ltd. (who own the vast majority of Australia’s so called newspapers), yet the announcer failed to disclose this fact.
This is blatant promotion of a Murdoch corporate PR vehicle, and is surely against the ABC’s editorial guidelines?
We also heard about the Dreamworld Bengal Tiger’s dental work [page 3 ‘Courier-Mail’] and Vu Vu horns [page 27 ‘Courier-Mail’].
Since the disappearance of popular and community-minded announcer Trevor Jackson at the end of last year, it’s been getting dumb and dumber at Coast FM.
A woeful state of affairs considering the Gold Coast is a one-paper town.
How hard would it be for a Coast FM reporter to file a weekly Council, Courthouse, police roundup, or actually do some simple community journalism?
Is there a journalist at the station following the current NSW Supreme Court Inquiry into the collapse of Gold Coast financial company Octaviar/MFS?
Now that’s an interesting story with local relevance to Gold Coast residents.
If you’re getting as sick of the Murdoch Press’ constant infiltration of the ABC at all levels as we are, contact your Federal MP, and demand that they do something to wrestle back the ABC’s independence and strengthen their local, non-Murdoch content.
It’s really worrying to hear that the ABC is pandering to corporate interests to that extent. Aren’t there any guidelines against such conflicts of interest? Have you tried calling in to raise this issue with the hosts?
If u write to their ABC Peter,they just ignore it.Scott’s (Howard crony)contract is up in 2011.Bet his contract won’t be renewed again.
It’s an unfortunate state of affairs Peter, but it’s part of the legacy of the Howard years. The ABC board is still controlled by a majority of Howard appointees, with the MD himself being one. I put together an analysis on the ABC board here, if you’re interested: http://dailybludge.com.au/2010/06/wheres-my-abc/
I wouldn’t count on this outcome Eddie. Scott appears to have done a useful job on a number of counts and seems to be in credit with Labor. Sadly, ABC Radio, over the past decade, has been both modeled on the emotive engagement of commercial talk stations and starved of funds, in favour of an expanding online presence. The consequence is inconsequential and ill informed banter, on both media and the outcome is likely to be broad acceptance (promoted by Murdoch media) that there is no continuing value in public broadcasting.
ABC local radio in Sydney has been dumbed down, so that it’s little more than an imitation of the commercial stations without the ads and a home for ex-triple J announcers/dud comedians. Forget 702 ABC Sydney providing any analysis of current affairs or politics – you get instead Richard Glover plugging his latest book and promoting his mates in the music industry.
Those tired of the endless Labor bashing from the Liberal hack shock jocks on commercial AM radio are crying out for a progressive alternative, but you won’t get it from Aunty.
Looks for opt out paying ABC tax box at next election.
Hah :tongue:
It’s a real shame. Hopefully Rudd’s second term will see a revamping of the ABC’s offerings. Until then, we can only hope. If Abbott wins, it’s going to take a very very long time to undo his this mess.
Expecting the ABC to behave any differently to any other part of the commercial media is to continue to invest in the ABC a probity and public interest, not to mention community commitment it no longer even pretends to.
That Mark Scott has his own agenda is as plain as his regular pronouncements on the future of the ABC; a future he sees as being increasingly simialr to his modern media hero Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd.; for that is what Mark Scott wants from the ABC. He wants to fill his CV with runs running a large multifaceted media and commercial sales operation and there just aren’t that many opportunities around. He can’t believe his luck, plucked from obscurity in Fairfax because of his ideological fit to the crypto-fascist Howard years, he’s managed to hang on into the Rudd ascendancy when in fact he should have been sacked the moment Rudd was elected on the grounds of profoundly and prominently proven bias. Lets not forget that he once worked for Greiner and the corrupt Metherill in Greiner’s morally compromised NSW government.
Make no mistake; Mark Scott’s ABC is “Murdoch Lite”, the Mini Moloch. It has an axe to grind, an agenda, on the Gold Coast and indeed everywhere else, and in all things. It has careers to make, and break, beyond and after the ABC. In many ways, for some of it’s senior management, it’s been turned into a stepping stone for those looking to “get a little in” before transferring to some more personally lucrative or better connected, commercial area of the media. And all this at a time when the number of broadcast hours, channels and platforms has proliferated. No wonder it’s dumber than rocks on your ABC these days. It would cost a fortune to create high quality content for all of the ABC slots.
This is not the ABC older Australians grew up with. Since Howard stacked the board with ideological dross and proven culture warriors for the right like Scott, Winschuttle and Albrechtsen it hasn’t really been worth spit. The end result is that these days its commitment to “balance” is a lifestyle program about skateboarding, “equity”, just another short colour item about home ownership on the news, and “access” you can forget! Just try complaining to your ABC. It’s the bum’s rush these days, weasel speak that almost invariably seeks to cast your complaint in some compromising shadow suggesting your failure to understand how good the new ABC is for you! “Shut up and just watch, listen, log on or what ever.
Talbot Duckmanton is just a memory with a funny name these days.
I no longer watch ABC news and current affairs all that much, it’s too infuriatingly stupid, insipid and abounds with obvious bias and ill considered opinion masquerading as thoughtful and considered news, usually presnted by people who seem more interested in grooming their future media profile that contributing the the probity and accuracy of comment in the ongoing political, social and cultural debate.
Excepting the occasional doco, drama or comedy series most of their current programming is barely watchable, filled as it is with asinine lifestyle programs with no other purpose that titillation and distraction between advertising for ABC Enterprises and when the ABC too start advertising within their programs, as they will if Scott gets his tiny minded but implacably ambitious way, I’ll probably stop watching entirely.
The point is; if the ABC is just News Lite then maybe Rupert is right. What is the point of a public broadcaster anymore?
Eight cents, though an entirely insignificant sum, looks increasingly like a rip off these days, but I do miss the old ABC and would pay a significant sum to see it back.
Its so obvious the ABC is pandering to corporate interests. It has set up its entire programming schedule times for ads, exactly like the commercials stations. Its no different except the ABC doesnt have ads YET….but the timing of programs has been set up to accommodate future ads. Five minutes after and before a program now we get ads but they are advertisments of ABC forthcoming shows.
But its the timing that is crucial here. Its being set up to take private sector ads later. programs are being designed to run to fit commercial ads in. The breaks are being designed now to slot in easy downloaded digital programming which has been designed to slot commercial advertisments in.
Unless someone stops the board and executives at the ABC, the writing is on the wall….but who needs reality anymore. We can just learn what diet Lindsay Lohan is on for the news. Thats what Murdoch delivers and thats why he is a total lower on the net. Murdoch cant chase his dwindling readership and TV viewers fast enough because they are leaving him in droves. He is an old man, drunk with his own world view and he is losing it, because people just dont swallow his tight conservative views anymore…especially the young (the most net savvy gen that every existed).
Murdoch is old and thats a good thing. He has been too conservatively biased and has had too much power over the media for far too long.
the 7.30 report last night not interested in policy only some trivia about a ball who cares about their ball, we the people pay the abc. journalists through our taxes
What a waste of our time and Mr, Rudds at least kevin did get out some policy by talking over obrien great job Prime Minister keep it up
really the abe is now a policy free zone with very little content.
O and has any one told or have they looked there are other polls besides the one published in the australian newspaper its called morgan and essential which show a differnt number. obrien seems to take a big intersest in the polls in the australian news paper why not others
let have balance. of course its their abc now but then we pay them??? with out taxes. I WONDER WHEN THEY WILL GET BACK TO DISCUSSING POLICY FROM BOTH SIDES yes both sides it may be because tony just doesnt have any
Spot on, JJ. I’ve bee whining about how totally shithouse the ABC has become in the last couple of years. For me, the toss up for most totally crapulous event was either Jonathan Green (Unleashed and the Drum) editor crawling up Apple’s arse over the iPad and later finding out the ABC was hand-in-gloving an app for it – OR Helen Razer’s pieces where the ABC apparently thinks it’s OK for a “social commentator” to rehash Twits or comment on vacuous celebrity pieces in the trash magazines. Maybe a photocopy of a photocopy would be preferable.
Not worth any airtime.
Not worth a pinch of shit.
Sorry, my reference, although inadvertent, to the 7.30 Report and Q&A, is accurate.
And the vomitous rubbish Juanita Phillips reads to us each night betrays over 50 years of quality news coverage.
I’m a) writing to my MP – as you suggest, and b) taking the last resort – SBS.
Then what have we left ? I’m fearful of what the BBC will become under the Tories ?
sun rise this morning where great no trivia i think that we should all congratuate them we leared more about policy with there comment re ppl and other things from the prime minister than you would ever learn from obrien and the abc
we should all make sure we thank them and watch that segment every week may be they will expand it,
thanks where thanks is due just google sunrise and the contact spot comes up
Thanks, but don’t credit me with the article – it’s by the Stop Murdoch collective.
I’ll be adding mini user bio’s shortly, so the author will be clearer in future! And yes, it’s a great write-up!
Anyone read this in ‘Pollytics’ this morn.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2010/06/17/public-perceptions-of-media-bias-and-accuracy/
“Murdoch Lite” :ninja:
Nothing lite about the drum or unleashed these days.
:blink: All agenda no solutions.
This is just an extension of party politics having far to much influence over sectors of society that otherwise would be independent. Another good reason to have all government appointed heads of QUANGO’s and other heads of government only having a contract that lasts for the term of the emcumbency. Simple. There is no such thing as administrative independence and once we all accept this fact we can ask for truth in policy outcomes – failures or successes. They do it stateside and we should be brave enough to embrace political reality when it comes to supposed independence of the PS and other institutions knowing the government of the day can appoint on a whim. Case in point the reappointment of the Police Commissioner in QLD.
As far as the ABC goes it has far to many nitwit current affair articles on it (both radio and television) to be taken seriously. Drive time in the afternoons here in Brissy includes such dubious content as gossip on what’s happening in hollywood instead of SE QLD council political and news content.
What’s more we even have some assinine junked up helicopter reporter who speaks at the speed of light, representing commercial interests “informing the motorist” with traffic reports….. Couple that with repeated commercial AD backdrops in all news coverage eg Business Lateline with backdrops of COMSEC and others, sporting interviews that include sponsor backdrops, taglines of and website addresses of commercial operators who give “Free online advise” covering issues as diverse as pricing of secondhand cars for sale, how to clean with household products, interviews with “experts” that include more common than not what business they work for rather than the qualifications they hold – the list goes on and on, so it’s really only a matter of time before some smartarse comes up with the rationale the ABC may as well go commercial as it’s pandering to commercial interests now so they may as well make the income from it………
I was a regular respondent from the very earliest days of Unleashed back in 2007 but I gave up as the site descended into a pointless fluffing and pandering. As EmmJay says somewhere here; the recent piece on the iPad was possibly the most shameless and shallow piece of cross promotion masquerading as considered comment ever seen on any ABC platform. The rot is now mortal.
But back then, in those earliest days when the articles occasionally had a bit of meat to them, there was a respondent on Unleashed who went under the name Mulga Mumblebrain.
Mumbles dropped off too, predictably, probably just couldn’t be bothered as the site deteriorated to the kind tabloid pablum it foists on its readers today.
But if you get a chance it’s worth going back into the ABC archives and reading some of Mumbles’ responses on climate change; the fall of Howard and Mumbles’ disbelief that Rudd would ever amount to anything; the Murdoch Moloch; Zionism and modern Israel; the failure of America and market capitalism. This was considered comment, hard core left critique. It was wonderful stuff. I can’t say I agreed with every word. Some of it was very confronting.
None the less Mumbles became a sort of old school hero to many of us that dropped in regularly in those days and I have to say I miss the language and cadence of a good Mulga Mumblebrain spit.
Here’s some I’ve cut and pasted just to give you a taste. It deals with Australia’s failure to provide an adequate safety net for the marginalised, the disenfranchised and was in response to a blog by Elaine Henry from The Smith family on The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) Report Card which found that when compared with other OECD countries, in several crucial measures Australia was mediocre at best.
This was Mulga Mumblebrain’s response :
Surely none of this can come as any surprise. Social indicators are similarly deplorable in all the Anglosphere countries that have inflicted Market Fundamentalist capitalism most ruthlessly on their populations over the last thirty years.
Rightwing bullyboys and girls in the media have lied for years that our system is the envy of the world, the most efficient, the most productive system ever ordained by God, and that any who argue otherwise are Godless Communists, ‘nanny-state do-gooders’, ‘morally vain bleeding-hearts’ or ‘latte-sipping, chardonnay drinking elites’. The usual course of events is that reports such as this are suppressed by being ignored, or are abused. Meanwhile inequality rises, working hours lengthen, indebtedness grows, and anomie and depression flourish in a society where greedy self-interest is the only motivation acknowledged. The moral and spiritual desert of the Howard decade has not been repudiated as one might fervently have wished. Under the sanctimonious Rudd and his rabble of nincompoops, every Howardite travesty is alive and well. The abominable ‘intervention’ born of hatred and contempt for the indigenous grinds on, we continue our grotesque support for the neo-colonial war of mass murder in Afghanistan, climate change action is all pretense, useless self-delusion like ‘carbon capture and storage’, market mechanisms like emissions trading schemes that will achieve nothing but windfall gains for speculators and empty gestures. Serf Choices lives on, education is going down the wretched dead-end of constant testing and denigration and scape-goating of ‘non-performing’ schools, teachers and pupils and the invidious school-funding formula that rewards the richest schools is sacrosanct. As I said then, November 24 changed nothing. In ten years, as well as being deep in the grip of runaway climate change, we will be even further down the path to a deeply unjust and unequal, neo-feudal society, the end towards which all market capitalist societies inevitably gravitate.
“Alert moderator” indeed.
Come and be a Bludger with us “Mumbles”. It may not change anything but at least here you’ll be appreciated.
This Mumble Mumbrain sounds like quite a character. Do you have any contact details Warrigal? It’d be great if we could track him down and invite him to join us
Well I managed to find him on another blog somewhere and invited him to join us here. Which I believe he’s done, so your wish is granted Warrigal!
While I’ve no time for Murdoch or his ways, I think the example given in this article may be more a case of “Never attribute to malice, what could adequately be explained as stupidity.”
Media is self-feeding. Pretty much all morning radio is based on what’s in the papers, the evening tv news is about what’s been in the papers and on the radio that day, and then they next day, they’re all talking about what was on tv last night.
I think the writer hit upon the real problem in saying the Gold Coast is a one-paper town. If the station has got a host who gets all his ideas from the morning paper, and there’s only one of them, then there’s the problem. I can’t stand Murdoch, but you can’t blame him for that. Perhaps the ABC needs a bit better employee induction, taking care to remind them that they have a charter of public service.