Imrah
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This is my first real post here, since the 'Welcome'. Excuse me if I am unfamiliar with the overall forum style yet. Politics is a vast subject, but this thread looks like a good place to begin, as the changes that have taken place at the ABC over the past decade are partly the reason I ran a search for 'Australian Politics Forum', found this one and joined today.
I was a loyal listener to ABC local radio from 2001 when I first moved to rural Australia and ABC was about all there was to tune to for the weather. I have followed the tv news since then, and joined their 'The Drum' web forum in 2009, and have maintained a close observation of the ABCNews24 tv station since 2013, including The Drum afternoon programme. There has been a major change of policy at the ABC over these years, and I think I have a rough idea about what might have led to this change.
There was an article on ABC's The Drum forum a few years ago, not long before they closed the comments section and sold out to facebook in 2016. I do not remember the author's name, or that of the article, but I remember what the subject was and I strongly disagreed then and still do now.
The article was concerned with journalists reporting, not just the news in an objective manner, but adding their own opinions on that news, for the sakes of readers who were unable to make their own decisions.
Perhaps this is allowable for an editorial piece in a magazine, if it is privately owned. I do not think that it is the role of a taxpayer-funded public-broadcaster to broadcast their own opinions under the cloak of objective news.
I believe that this is where the ABC has been mistaken recently. Maybe I was just not aware of the personal bias of their reporters until the past decade? So many people I know still seem blind to it even today.
It is only this last decade that I have had the time and inclination to study the ABC carefully and observe the opinions of the reporters every day all day over years, including the political bias - highlighting or twisting the objective facts to suit their agenda, and downplaying mention or omitting facts which are against their own opinions.
This is not what Australians want from a government-funded public-broadcaster. What is required is simply objective reporting, without any subjective personal opinions to cloud the facts. If a reader or viewer doesn't understand the objective facts, then let them ask someone they know and trust about things, and that does not include strangers on the television.
If the ABC journos can learn to keep their personal opinions to themselves during working hours, when I am paying them, then they should not be sacked, and maybe after a probationary period, they might not need to be privatised.
It is time for the ABC fake news to stop, whatever it takes.
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