Bruwheresmycar
Nicholas Shehadie (39)
Why is a claim of lack of bias any more objective than a claim of bias?
You'll never know anything for certain IS, but the ABC has been trying to eliminate bias for decades (same with the BBC, both are interesting projects). The only way they know how is to set out protocols outlining what constitutes reasonable journalism and to tightly abide by it.
From there you just compare how they are going to other companies with the opposite strategy to see if there is a different level of bias between them. And of course when you have several newscorp publications who put themselves before the press guidelines, and you see them actively campaigning for political parties while the ABC is not. It does appear their stratergy is somewhat working.
Obviously there will be those who say "but that isn't what I'm taking about", "that's not what bias is", "you can't prove this for sure". Personally I believe those who are most likely to raise those objections are doing so not because they are just normally critical people, but because it's simply the only argument they have left.
and if this is the true measure of news what is one to make of the absence of follow up stories relating to the UNHCR's efforts to obtain corroboration of the stories told? That the absence of corroboration conforms to conventional wisdom? Just as it did back in 2002?
Have any of you actually considered the several different version of how these refugees claimed to have sustained their burns? Did the ABC explore these inconsistencies? No they buried them in a sound bite 2 weeks ago on radio national of which nothing more has been heard.
Now, why on earth would they do that? Because inconsistencies conform to the conventional wisdom?
Pointing out a single case of the ABC failing to abide by it's own standards doesn't discount what I'm saying. I'm talking about the wider and long term trends of their reporting and I most certainly don't think they'll get it right every time. Of course that was a case of lazy journalism. Surely foreign corespondents know better than to use the words of Indonesian police as their definitive confirmation of a source's claims? I mean, what % of the Australian population do you think has bribed an Indonesian policeman in their time? Who's going to trust that!