This letter to the editor of The Australian pretty much sums up the unbridled and outrageous bias of the ABC, below the letter is a cut and paste of some choice pars from Janet Albrechtsen’s column in The Australian on a similar theme.
“….When the ABC examines the topic of its bias, it attempts to reframe the debate to be more generally about media bias; this is nonsense. Only the ABC is required to be unbiased and show a multiplicity of views.
The ABC pretends to be representative of a variety of views but uses fake morality to censor views with which it disagrees.
The Left’s general approach is to frame disagreement as moral failure. This allows “immoral” positions to be ignored or presented as morally questionable and gives license to those who wish to persuade and influence, rather than simply inform.
J Waugh
Mountain Creek, Qld
THE ALBRECHTSEN COLUMN BELOW
“…..The Left’s latest descent into cluelessness, sanctimony and hypocrisy unfolded like a tedious but impeccably timed bit of synchronised swimming.
Barely a month ago, the ABC was keen to air Amnesty International’s latest report into the island of Nauru. But Aunty’s go-to-group and its latest report into another island, Cuba, was not mentioned when Castro died.
Had Kelly used the ABC’s premier news and current affairs radio platform to speak with someone from Amnesty International about its latest annual report into Cuba, her audience could have learned the totalitarian state established by Castro continues today with brutal restrictions on freedoms of expression, association and movement.
Listeners would have been informed about the thousands of reported cases of harassment of government critics and arbitrary arrests and detentions.
Alternatively, had Kelly interviewed someone from Human Rights Watch, another ABC favourite in any other circumstances, the radio host might have explored HRW’s statement following Castro’s death that “Castro built a repressive system that punished virtually all forms of dissent, a dark legacy that lives on even after his death”.
We might have been informed by the taxpayer funded broadcaster that Castro’s repression was “codified by law and enforced by security forces, groups of civilian sympathisers tied to the state and a judiciary that lacked independence”.
We could have learned that “many of the abusive tactics developed during (Castro’s) time in power — including surveillance, beatings, arbitrary detention, and public acts of repudiation — are still used by the Cuban government”. Kelly might have delved into the 2009 HRW report after Castro handed power to his brother Raul, New Castro, Same Cuba: Political Prisoners in the Post-Fidel Era.
The next time a taxpayer-funded snob at the ABC talks about the dumbing down of commercial news, remember that listeners looking to learn about Castro from the ABC’s premier news and current affairs radio timeslot on Monday were treated to Kelly’s fondness for assassination myths and Get Smart.
In the Left’s own post-truth world, inconvenient facts that challenge their penchant for socialism are simply ignored. This, despite legislative duties under the ABC Act that require the national broadcaster to gather and present “news and information (that) is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism”. Taxpayers demand more than the ABC’s perverted balance sheet of human rights that romanticises a murderous communist dictator as a “revolutionary leader” but harangues a democratically elected Australian prime minister for the offshore processing of asylum-seekers.
Indeed, Castro’s death has laid bare the moral bankruptcy of the broader Left. You don’t have to watch Hollywood’s latest instalment of dystopian fiction. Just read the dystopian eulogising of Castro by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said he was saddened by the death of Cuba’s longest serving president. Serving the longest is a cinch when you control the military and the judiciary and there are no elections. Trudeau embarrassed himself further, describing Castro as “a revolutionary leader and orator (who) made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island”. Yes, and under Mussolini the trains ran on time and Stalin granted divorce rights to women.
Next time post-truth pontificators remonstrate about voters doing an end run around their kind of media, remember it was Trump who, in a statement on Sunday, pointed out that Castro oppressed his people for more than five decades. “Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights,” he said.
Alas, there’s nothing very original about the Left’s “post-truth” postulations. A decade ago, Merriam-Webster dictionary chose “truthiness” as its word of the year. It means the same, making a decision on a gut feeling rather than on facts. Back then, the Left described those they disagreed with as suffering from “truthiness”. Now the Left uses “post-truth” to denigrate those who dare to differ with the mainstream media. Different catchwords that keep catching out the deluded Left…” Fidel Castro’s legacy of murder and repression whitewashed by the Left