The Australian Broadcasting Corporation receives over $1 billion a year from taxpayers. I don’t believe we’re getting value for money. It is just being used as a platform for the left to tear down conservatives.
Let me know what you thought of the fact that they covered negative conservative news over 130 times compared to just 20 when it was about the left.
Click Here for Transcript | Part 1
Senator Roberts: I’d like to [inaudible] for a third set of questions that I have, so I’ll do that now rather than wait for it. Thank you for appearing here today. You’re dealing with accusations and a perception of bias from substantial parts of the community. I know you strongly deny any bias and say that the ABC is impartial. One of the claims of bias is that ABC gives leniency to what is commonly termed left-leaning politicians—which, to me, is the control side of politics—and is more critical of conservative politicians. You’d obviously be aware that even Media Watch slammed the ABC’s coverage of an incident involving Senator Thorpe outside of a strip club, calling the ABC’s lack of coverage ‘pathetic’. Are you aware of Media Watch’s own criticism?
Mr Anderson: Yes.
Senator Roberts: I’d like to compare that to some of your other coverage. When there was a story critical of the New South Wales One Nation leader, Mark Latham, over a tweet, ABC mentioned the story 131 times, yet you only mentioned the Senator Thorpe incident 21 times. Just for comparison, the Nine Network covered the same incidents, mentioning Mark Latham’s incident 80 and Senator Thorpe’s incident 90 times. That’s fairly balanced. Here we have a conservative politician and a politician on the left who were, I would argue, involved in incidents of similar significance, yet you’ve mentioned the negative story about the conservative 131 times and the story of the left-leaning politician only 21 times. How can you maintain that there is no bias in the ABC in the face of those statistics?
Mr Anderson: Firstly, I’d say that, in the complaints we receive and in the way they’re investigated, I don’t see evidence of systemic bias, which is what is levelled at us on a regular basis. I’ll defer to Mr Stevens when it comes to the coverage particularly about Lidia Thorpe and that incident.
Mr Stevens: Thanks for the question. I respectfully disagree; we are not biased. We take an impartial approach to any and all stories. But the bar is also high around the outsourcing of journalism and the accuracy of it. On that particular story which you’ve identified, regarding Senator Thorpe—and I note that Senator Thorpe is no longer in the committee room—the ABC did cover it, for starters. Secondly, the vision you refer to was not the ABC’s. Channel 7 had in possession the raw footage of Senator Thorpe, not the ABC. I back the editorial judgement of my editorial leaders to be very careful about not using video that we haven’t sourced ourselves, and we don’t know what comes before and after it, and not rush to report it. The emphasis on rushing to reporting it is because we did report on it during the course of the week. Afternoon Briefing covered it on the Monday after, and on the Wednesday, when the Prime Minister made additional comments. When it went from being something that happened in the private sphere, outside of parliament, outside of the Senator’s time in Canberra, when the Prime Minister elevated it to the discussion being relevant to Canberra, we did cover it.
If there is some implication from the question, and I might be mistaken, that we are not covering Senator Thorpe as forensically as we would others, I’d respectfully point out to Senator Roberts that it was the ABC which broke the story about Senator Thorpe, in October last year, regarding the questions around whether she had a conflict of interest by sitting on a particular committee. It was that story, broken by the ABC, which was referred to the privileges committee. I understand the privileges committee reported back in March, and the committee found that Senator Thorpe did not disclose any sensitive information to Dean Martin, for the record, and we reported that at the time. But it was the ABC that broke that story, in October, which should demonstrate that we do not shy away from investigative journalism regarding any politician of any political affiliation.
Senator Henderson: Chair, I’m sorry to interrupt. In light of these discussions, Senator Thorpe was previously here and I wonder whether someone should alert her to these discussions. She may or may not know, but, out of fairness, could someone let her know this discussion is taking place?
Senator Roberts: This is not about Senator Thorpe, it’s about the way the ABC treats her compared to others. Are we going to invite Mark Latham?
Senator Henderson: There are certain discussions being—I think, to be fair, we need to give her that opportunity, to let her know that this discussion is taking place.
Chair: Thank you, Senator Henderson. Senator Roberts, would you like to continue?
Senator Roberts: This is what Paul Barry from Media Watch said: ‘But it was a proper news story and the ABC should have covered it from the start.’ You said when the Prime Minister got involved it increased the importance of it. So you wouldn’t have covered it if the Prime Minister hadn’t got involved?
Mr Stevens: We covered it before the Prime Minister said anything.
Senator Roberts: In a very subdued way compared to what you did with Mark Latham.
Mr Stevens: I don’t have to hand our coverage of Mark Latham, and the fact that he’s in New South Wales politics these days I’m not sure what the New South Wales newsroom did with that. I’m happy to follow up and look at that.
Senator Roberts: If you live in a bubble, you won’t see what people in Australia are seeing. With topics like climate change the ABC is considered heavily biased. It doesn’t present the data. It doesn’t present the evidence. It just presents opinion. So let’s move on.
Mr Stevens: Sorry, just on that, I would respectfully disagree when it comes to that. We follow the weight of evidence when it comes to our coverage on climate and the weight of scientific evidence that sits with it.
Senator Roberts: Perhaps you could take on notice—
Mr Stevens: I can take it on notice and respond to you.
Senator Roberts: Take it on notice to provide me with the sources of your climate change evidence that—
Mr Stevens: Can you provide some examples, please, as to where we have not done fact-based reporting on climate change?
Senator Roberts: Sure.
Mr Stevens: Right now?
Senator Roberts: I can’t do it right now because I don’t have the data.
Chair: Thank you, Mr Stevens; that can be provided to you later.
Senator Roberts: Let’s go back to last Senate estimates. I asked the ABC about the presence of Bruce Pascoe and Dark Emu related material on the ABC education site and why it was there. We had a conversation about the fact that many of his claims about Indigenous history are highly contested, and some of them have been completely debunked. You answered me then that whatever was on the ABC website would be reflecting the national curriculum. After you told me that, I asked the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority in a subsequent Senate estimates session: ‘What’s in the curriculum about this topic?’ I have to say that ACARA were pretty shocked, to put it mildly, that you had claimed that material was in the curriculum. Specifically, which part of the national curriculum are you claiming that material of Bruce Pascoe’s reflects? Keep in mind that I’m going to be asking ACARA about this too in a few days.
Mr Anderson: I will have to get back to you on notice with regard to that. Did we give you a response to that on notice after my appearance at estimates last time?
Senator Roberts: No.
Mr Anderson: We didn’t? We will as to why, and I apologise if that was the case. My knowledge of what we do for ABC education, the resources sit there. There are state and territory curriculums as well as what we have nationally and we do put assets there that do align to it. That said, I’ll respond to what you’ve just put to me on notice.
Senator Roberts: Can you please take it on notice, as you just agreed, to provide the specific part of the ACARA curriculum you claim to be reflecting.
Mr Anderson: Yes.
Click Here for Transcript | Part 2
Senator Roberts: Before I start my questions, I have an apology. I made an error, Mr Anderson. You did in fact reply to my question on notice last time about the curriculum, but you didn’t state specifically from where you got it in the curriculum. You’ve undertaken to come back with that this time.
Mr Anderson: I have, and I still will.
Senator Roberts: I tabled a screenshot of a tweet from the ABC Media Watch Twitter account. It was in response to a tweet I made about—
Chair: Sorry, just to clarify: that wasn’t tabled; it was circulated—just to be clear.
Senator Roberts: Thank you. It was made about a protest in front of Parliament House, the Let Women Speak movement. Do you know what happened to that tweet and why it was removed?
Mr Anderson: No, I do not.
Senator Roberts: It was deleted about a second after that screenshot was taken. Do you have any information on why it was deleted?
Mr Anderson: No, I don’t.
Senator Roberts: Could we have that information?
Mr Anderson: I will investigate and respond.
Senator Roberts: Do you keep logs of tweets and deleted tweets?
Mr Anderson: We don’t monitor people’s personal use of social media, because we don’t take legal or editorial responsibility for it. That was a change we made some time ago, which I’ve canvassed heavily here. No, we don’t keep a log of it. There are certainly records when things are raised to our attention, we investigate and disciplinary action is taken—yes, that is recorded.
Senator Roberts: This is not a personal account. It looks like it’s the media watch account, @ABCmediawatch.
Mr Anderson: Which, as an official ABC account, I will investigate.
Senator Roberts: Thank you. I’m concerned that the ABC is sending tweets which could be considered antagonistic to a sitting Senator and then deleting them like nothing happened. That doesn’t bode well for accountability. If that screenshot weren’t taken and I couldn’t table it, people would rightly question me for trying to talk about this with you now. Social media seems to be a real, ongoing problem for the ABC, not just from your journalists but even from your official accounts. What are you going to do to get this under control?
Mr Anderson: Again, the vast majority of staff do the right thing. We have been getting it under control. People have been disciplined for this. For those people who have gone against the code and been found to be in breach, they have had disciplinary action against them. We’re now up to individuals that have been terminated from the ABC as a result of their personal use of social media. That is personal use of social media. This appears to be an official ABC social media account, subject to our ABC social media policy with regard to that. If it is, we do take editorial responsibility for it—for which we have very few problems, I will say. I will investigate it and come back to you.
Senator Roberts: It’s just that it’s been raised quite a bit on social media. Moving onto another issue: there have been reports that the ABC has never received more complaints about a show than you did for the King’s coronation coverage. Can you confirm that?
Mr Anderson: That is incorrect. We have received more complaints than that in the past. I wouldn’t hasten to give examples because they’re sometimes not great moments in ABC history as they go back some way. In recent times, it is one of the larger amount of complaints, yes.
Senator Roberts: What is the total number of complaints that you received on that?
Mr Anderson: I believe it’s around 1,800 at the moment, of which, I gave evidence earlier to say approximately 60 are editorial complaints being investigated by the ombudsman, some complaints are categorised in a different way and some of it is outright racism.
Senator Roberts: While I didn’t watch the coronation, I’m wondering why Australians who are interested in the coronation, interested in the pomp and ceremony—if that’s what they want—interested in who’s arriving and all of the proceedings et cetera—what a show it is—and who turned on the ABC to watch the coronation found, inserted into that live coverage, commentaries about Indigenous rights and the proposal for a Voice to parliament for Indigenous people. What was the aim and the thought process in structuring your coverage like that?
Mr Anderson: I’ll defer to Mr Stevens for his response.
Mr Stevens: I note you said that you didn’t see the coverage, so I’m happy to give you a bit more information about what it did cover. It was eight hours of coverage over the course of the evening, from 4 pm onwards. The official ceremony itself started at 8 pm Sydney time. We had four hours of coverage leading into the ceremony proper starting. We used the BBC commentary for the actual formal proceedings of the event itself from 8 pm onwards. That was a concerted decision because we knew that the BBC would have access to information that we weren’t privy to around the order of proceedings and the extra, additional historical details behind the order of proceedings. We obviously had a broad picture of what would happen, however not the level of detail that they had. Obviously, they’ve got knowledge of individuals in the abbey that we didn’t have. For the course of the four hours leading into it commencing, we, from time to time, showed vision of what was unfolding in the lead up. Three to four hours out, can you believe, people were being led into the abbey, in terms of guests. We were showing that visually, and there was music as well. The presenters did a really good job of trying to navigate saying what was unfolding with that vision. That’s a key tenet of good TV—to say what is happening, but then to return to the discussions that we wanted to have three to four hours out of the ceremony starting.
Senator Roberts: I understand what you’re saying, and I thank you for the explanation. It makes perfect sense, and what you’re saying about making good TV makes perfect sense. But still some of the chatter around the presentation was dealing with things like Indigenous rights and the Voice proposal to parliament et cetera. Is that appropriate?
Mr Stevens: For a portion of the coverage, for about 40 minutes, we had a really important discussion about our history. We aired First Nations perspectives of that and colonisation; and their view and experience of the Crown in their lives. That was 40 minutes of eight hours of coverage. Actually, a really important part and remit of the ABC, as you know, is to have discussions which are in the national interest, that reflect on history, that are factually based on history. It’s very important in our coverage of the news and major events that, over the course of that coverage, we have a diversity of perspectives. That was a 40-minute discussion for which there has been a lot of attention; however, we had a multitude of guests over the eight hours and people speaking to the events itself.
Senator Roberts: Do you still think your coverage was impartial, that way?
Mr Stevens: Absolutely.
Senator Roberts: Okay. Before we finish, what was my commitment to you? To get you an understanding of why you’re biased on climate change, for example—is that what I undertook to do?
Mr Stevens: You did. You undertook to provide evidence of non fact-based reporting of climate change.
Senator Roberts: Sure. Thank you very much.
Proper journalism or defund!
The ABC is a voice – a constant and insidious one – for cultural marxism and the advancing of the NWO. Many of us would vote for any party that would abolish it or at very least reform its charter and its production guidelines, sack and replace its board and cut its budget substantially. It is an instrument of extreme leftist manipulation.
A BILLION A YEAR, THAT IS OBSCENE ……DEFUND THIS FRAUDULENT ENTITY OR AT LEAST AUDIT THEM FFS !
Every aspect of weather that supports the global warming fairy tale is heralded by their ABC. This is where the weight of evidence comes from. They simply do not want to see anything that does not align with the “global warming” fairy tale.
Weather events that contradict the fairy tale either are not reported or buried in incidental weather reports.
How many cold weather records were set in Australia in 2022? That is something that will never get reported by their ABC.
The fool Flannery still has credibility at their ABC despite billions being wasted on his fairy tale that the dams would never be filled again in Australia.
Who in Australia knew of the record snowfall across Japan in December 2022. The snowfall was so severe it killed at least 17 people and many more suffered injuries during the Christmas break.
The single place on Earth that exhibits the greatest warming is the Greenland plateau in January. It has gone up almost 10C in the past 70 years from MINUS 30C to MINUS 20C. Those freezing temperatures become “global warming” when only considering the anomaly.
The NH is warming, Most of the SH is cooling. The tropics have next to zero trend.
None of these climate changes have anything to do with CO2. It is a consequence of Earth’s precession cycle. The NH is warming, that is increasing snowfall on land north of 40N. It will eventually accumulate again and the Earth will drift into glaciation as it has done before.
The reason Greenland is warming up in January is simply because it is getting more snow. The summit is gaining elevation at 17mm a year. The entire land surface of Greenland will have permanent ice cover by the end of this century.
Dear Malcolm,
All my family & many friends stopped watching the ABC a while ago, around 2 years. I do tune into watch it every now & again to see what tripe they are peddling to keep myself informed of the radical narratives. I am deeply disappointed in Stan Grant’s attitude in that he has been peddling the colonial narrative for quite awhile but not one can respond with a rational case. My question to Stan is what is it that he wants out of his colonialism debate. He criticizes colonialism & it has its problems, however, he is a beneficiary of the system. I am sure he is paid very well and lives a good life. So what is it he wants? But we are not aloud to ask that question are we?
I was born here in this country, I grew up with aboriginal people and played sport with them. We all got on fabulously well, so what is the problem this time.
This Albanese government, is a joke as was the Ecclesiastical Fraud, Scott Morrison (turnbull’s henchman), they use smokescreens like the voice as a distraction while Rome burns, with a nothing to see here attitude.
Why don’t they fix the housing crisis? Rents are going stupid, up 20% & rising.
Why not grandfather negative gearing on property as at 30 June 2023. take taxpayer funded property off the table, stop making it an investment class, & get back to basics, homes to support base needs as shelter.
1. Remove negative gearing (grandfather the concept for existing property owners)
2. Cut immigration with only those who have a job & accommodation & pre-determined min. money
3. tax the technology companies & stop smashing the mining companies as we are seeing in qld. paying close to 60% tax.!
4. investigation into covid-19 mandates, vaccines, deaths & injuries (see Edward Dowd’s (ex-Blackrock fund manager) on australian excess deaths 18% @ november 2022 & rising (the US at 40% with now 14million jab related injuries.
5. investigation into carbon, what is the net zero agenda really about & who does it serve & for what purpose?
5.1 it takes 10 to 40tonnes MORE of carbon to build an electric car, yet the total carbon on the planet is 0.04% up from 0.03% over the past 4 decades. once carbon gets below 0.02% plant life dies. So how does a net zero agenda help humanity. The Antarctica winters are breaking lower temperatures, this does not appear to be a warming issue. What role do cosmic disturbances play in Earth’s weather patterns (see research by Dr Martin Sweatman & Dr Dimitrios Tsikritsis & Andrew collins; Our planet passes through a 25,800 year cycle & as we pas through the middle of the cycle, this has the greatest impact on our climate.
I’d be interested to know how many people were reprimanded or fired for leftist type Twitter transgressions vs right wing type transgressions.
This fraud broadcast Scourge should be privatised and the funds used to right Our Housing Problems
The ABC are All Biased Content. I would be very happy to see them sold off. For the past 40 years they have been anti Conservative pro Labor/Greens.
Hi RickWill and Others
My apologies for appearing not to reply to your postings.
Unfortunately practically all my replies etc have been deleted.
Apparently some people operating this website are against polite, honest, open and truthful discussion.
Only wishing to promote their own ideas and censor those who oppose.
Cheers,
Col