Quick roundup

Some articles of interest this week...

Aunty’s Special Friend From The BBC
Mark Scott must step up and rid ABC of its green hue

Media Watch Dog: Lee Rhiannon fesses up

Appointing a BBC figure to judge the ABC's bias is beyond parody

ABC in the news round up 6

In this week's brief edition, ABC throw Australia under a bus, and amazing rates of pay....

Part 1. ABC throw Australia under a bus. ABC decide to reveal the contents of illegally obtained secret DSD documents and throw Australia under a bus in the process. If the ABC is more interested in supporting Indonesian interests than those of the Australian tax payer  perhaps it is time they sought their funding from Jakarta rather than Canberra. The IBC has a certain ring to it. Perhaps Tony Abbot can gift it to Indonesia. 

Astonishing Mark Scott said this: And I am confident that the job of advancing Australia’s international interests is in not just the most efficient and effective, but the safest possible hands.

Part 2. Your taxes at work. The Australian reported on leaked documents that reveal the salaries of notable ABC presenters. No doubt this will now cause considerable internal disruption as the trough feeders find out others have been scoffing up more than their fair share. 

The leaked documents which ABC Chief Mark Scott formerly denied access reveal former Media Watch Presenter Johnathan Holmes was paid an amazing $187380 for 2011-2012. Assuming this covers the 39 15 minute episodes for the 2011-12 financial year. This works out to be about $320 per minute. Not bad money. 

Andrew Bolt has more under the headline: Bloody, bloody ABC hypocrites

No Round up

Still too much on...

But Media Watch Dog will fill the gap.

No round up this week

Too busy with other things at present. Make sure you check out Gerard Henderson's latest Media Watch Dog. He does this so much better than anyone else!

MEDIA WATCH DOG

No round up this week

No round up this week!

ABC in the news round up 5

In this week's edition, more churnalism from activist reporters, copper scare continues, ABC your local movie reviewer, and more.....

Part 1. The uncritical reporter. ABC's Environmental reporter Sarah Clarke, already the recipient of one GULLBUL, pushes hard for second gong with her uncritical report about the Klimate Kommissar's latest piece of Lysenkoist propaganda. Might as well publish the press release. Not one critical question posed, but then that's Sarah's standard approach. In ABC's report the Kommissar's enlist the help of a former defence chief to add authority(???). Perhaps next time ABC should think to ask a climate expert, hmmm, Richard Lindzen comes to mind.
ABC so blind to the alarm they let Retired admiral Chris Barrie 's crazy comments go unquestioned: 
There’s a one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet. The planet will exist, but it’s just that my granddaughter won’t be part of it. And I think that’s a pretty alarming statistic, probability, one in two chance if we don’t correct out behaviours. Andrew Bolt digs further.

ABC broadcast this howler from via ABC RURAL.
Professor Lesley Hughes, a climate commissioner, says it's not the job of the commission to reconcile science with policy and politics.
"What the report is, it's about science. We're putting out the scientific facts as we best understand them at the moment and those are the facts that we would hope that governments, policy makers and investors use in making their decisions.

The Klimate Kommission is pure politics - no science there, just flaky beliefs, inflated egos and experts in Penis Gourds.

Here's what Dr Prof. Hughes stated in ABC's earlier report:

"In order to achieve that goal of stabilising the climate at 2 degrees or less, we simply have to leave about 80 per cent of the world's fossil fuel reserves in the ground. We cannot afford to burn them and still have a stable and safe climate," she said.

Seems like someone is pushing hard on policy there. In regard to "safe climate", what a ridiculous statement, there is no such thing. Perhaps Prof. Hughes would prefer the safe climate faced by our early settlers when all that coal was still in the ground?

The Klimate Kommissars put a lot of faith in climate models. Here's a quick reminder of how those models are tracking...

Climate models versus observations, the disparity truly a Feynman moment. But don't expect the Klimate Kommissars or the ABC to mention it.

Part 2. Your taxes at work. ABC seems to have an over supply of movie reviewers. Your taxes recently paid for at least 10 reviews of the Great Gatsby  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7(music), 8, 9,10 (1974 version), at least 4 reviews of The Hobbit 1, 2, 3, 4, at least 9 reviews of Skyfall 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and at least 8 reviews of Star Trek Into Darkness 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.  (ed. the later easily the best of that bunch, but hey I'm a fan from the Will Shatner days). 

Suggest that some rationalisation take place before someone elects to use the Greek Option. 

Part 3 Environmental beat ups of the week. Well last week. We fact check The Climate Institute's "fragile world" photos because ABC's fact checker didn't bother. Not surprisingly the propaganda outweighs the science.

Also...

Former High court judge Michael Kirby calls for a return to meat being a luxury item. On his pension he'll be one of the few remaining able to suck the fat off a sweet pork chop. Spam for the rest of us.

And...

ABC staffers reveal a reckless indifference to development in northern Australia claiming "There's never been much support for a food bowl in northern Australia; perhaps just a fruit platter. " This sort of thinking is typical of ABC's anti-development, anti-industry, anti-progress mindset that would damn billions to poverty. In the meantime some visionary thinking from some real leaders goes unreported:

Food Bowl within reach: Andrew Robb

NATIONAL leadership is about having the courage to lay out a vision for Australia's future, to inspire optimism and hope with big ideas.
Under Tony Abbott's leadership the Coalition has taken the bold step of putting the development of northern Australia high on the agenda, aiming to:
• Develop a food bowl that could double Australia's agricultural output.
• Expand the tourist economy in the north to two million tourists annually.
• Build an energy export industry worth $150 billion and see major increases to resource exports.
• Establish world-class medical centres of excellence.
• Create an education hub with world-class vocational and higher education campuses.
• Expand Australia's export of technical skills related to resources and agriculture.

ABC's reaction....

Part 4: Spot the conservative presenter. No change from last week.

1. Amanda Vanstone on Counterpoint

Part 5: Copper scare. 

Malcolm Turnbull: do you really work for the ABC or is it the NBN Co?

ABCTech: I work for the australian public.

Malcolm Turnbull: ... Your relentless NBN propaganda is an embarrassment to the ABC

Malcolm Turnbull: Well here is a challenge to you – set out ... the facts upon which you rely.

Twitter, 23rd July, 2012

ABC continue to play politics with the NBN with this report that suggests Telstra's copper network is not up the job in providing high speed broadband. (ed funny that's what we're on and we don't have any probs). ABC has already been caught cheer leading for the government on the NBN (see above), but continues to misrepresent the issues with this piece that includes totally misleading figures about NBN costings. After recent asbestos problems were revealed with the NBN runout is there anyone left who believes the government's figures outside the ABC?

It seems the issue reported on is about maintenance. Copper will perform very well if repairs are performed correctly. How will the optic fibre cables of the NBN cope with similar lax maintenance practices? The optical fibre corporation have the following to say about the effect of moisture on optic fibre cables. If Telstra's repair standards were applied to future Optic fibre repairs how would they perform? Perhaps someone can put the question to Sen. Conroy. What would be the comparative repair costs for copper?

The basic mechanical failure mechanism for optical fibers is the slow to rapid growth of any glass imperfections in the fiber caused by the fiber being under stress. This "fatigue" phenomenon can be accelerated with the presence of moisture (H20) molecules at the glass surface of the fiber. The greater the concentration of the water molecules (OH - ions) at the glass surface, and the greater the stress applied to the glass, the more rapidly the surface imperfections will grow. This accelerated fatigue in the presence of OH- ions is similar to "stress corrosion".
Part 6: Sucker of the week. This week awarded to Ian Allen Executive Producer, Content, ABC Innovation who was gullible enough to believe The Climate Institute would provide unbiased information. Congrats Ian you win this week's Gullibull.

Ian's photo from his Claxton Speakers profile page. Green in heart s well as sleeve, but one wonders how much power that CRT monitor is emitting! Perhaps the ABC will provide him a new PC.

ABC in the News Round up 4

This week ABC provides adoration to Tm Flannery rather than tough questions, Greece throws its ABC under a bus-why can't we follow suit, there's still no one yet to accompany Amanda, and more...

Part 1: Journalism 101 - Asking the difficult questions.
Australia's expert on Tree-Kangaroos, Possums, and Penis Gourds Tim Flannery (who also doubles as a self proclaimed climate guru) has been telling us for a quite some time that we are all going to dry up and fry. ABC even paid for a woeful TV series featuring Tim and fellow alarmist John Doyle taking their Tinnie down the Murray Darling to promote flights of fancy. This week ABC's World today interviewed Tinnie Tim who said: "We'll see an increase in flooding frequency, we'll see the number of people exposed to flooding go up somewhere between four-fold and 17-fold. So there's just a lot more people are going to be exposed to the dangers of flooding." Of course a few years back Tim was heard to expose a different opinion to Maxine McKew:

TIM FLANNERY: Well, you can't predict the future; that's one of the things that you learn fairly early on, but if I could just say, the general patterns that we're seeing in the global circulation models - and these are very sophisticated computer tools, really, for looking at climate shift - are saying the same sort of thing that we're actually seeing on the ground. So when the models start confirming what you're observing on the ground, then there's some fairly strong basis for believing that we're understanding what's causing these weather shifts and these rainfall declines, and they do seem to be of a permanent nature. I don't think it's just a cycle. I'd love to be wrong, but I think the science is pointing in the other direction.

MAXINE McKEW: So does that mean, really, we're faced with - if that's right - back-to-back droughts and continuing thirsty cities? 

TIM FLANNERY: That's right. That looks to be the case. We'll know probably within two or three years, I suppose, how this is going to play out, particularly for Sydney, because its water supply is limited to that sort of scale, but it is my fear that the new weather regime is going to be a much drier one, and while we may get the odd good rainfall event, they're going to be much less frequent than in the past, and we'll just be in a different climatic regime.

Tim would love to be wrong and based on these very sophisticated computer tools. Well he is!Tim lives up to his trademark line. Let's review...Hurricanes can be tied to climate change

TONY JONES: Now, with America still reeling from these hurricanes, Rita and Katrina, to what extent do you believe these extreme events could be linked to global warming? 

DR TIM FLANNERY: Look, I think that there is a clear link.

Well the IPCC says there ain't: from Chapter 4 of IPCC Special Report on Extremes

• "There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change"
• "The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados"
• "The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses"

When will a journalist (ed-what they have them?) at the ABC think to look over Flannery's record and ask some tough questions?

Part 2: Spot the conservative presenter. No change from last week.
1. Amanda Vanstone on Counterpoint

Part 3: Environmental beat ups for the week. No beat ups just excessive cheer leading. Seems ABC has got the hots for US environmental activist and alarmist preacher Bill McKibben. Here are just a few of the ABC's articles Bill appeared on or garnered a mention, all at your expense and without critical comment (and some of these people consider themselves journalist, others are activists-yes that's you Fran and Sara):

ABC Environment Blog 1: Profiting from the wreckage of our planetl

ABC Environment Blog 2: How climate campaigners are protecting the economy

ABC Environment Blog 3: Preventing a carbon bubble crash
ABC Environment Blog 4!!!: Who is the ugliest in the beauty contest?

RN Breakfast

PM

Radio National

Lateline1

Lateline 2

Lateline 3

The World Today

Q and A

National Press Club Broadcast

That's just recently. A search of Google for "Bill McKibben" at site  www.abc.net.au yields 85,900 results. By comparison a search for a real expert an the ABC, let's say "Richard Lindzen" yields 35,500 items and most of these ain't long winded cheer leading posts. Seems ABC has some catch up to do. Does the word diversity appear in that charter?

Part 4: What to do with your National broadcaster?

Greece leads the way!  Greek government to close ‘wasteful’ state broadcaster to save money, axing 2,500 jobs. We could axe 5000!

Part 5: Missing News: Some good news for corals published in a recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences missed by ABC Science. I guess a science journalist would have covered these interesting results. Global warming activists on the other hand...well you know the story.

Part 6: Sucker of the week. See Part 1. For reporting that should make them blush with embarrassment this week's Gullibull goes to The World Todays' ELEANOR HALL and ALISON CALDWELL. Congrats ladies.

Eleanor with friend. 

Apologies - no photo of Alison as all the photos we could find on the net are just too boring.

ABC in the News Round up 3

This week ABC provide a case study in biased reporting, provide free publicity to activists, provide no one to join Amanda, and more...

Part 1. Case study in biased reporting.
An Op Ed in The Australian compares reporting of stories pro and against the climate consensus with predictable results. The elevator version: if you are pro - "here are the keys to Ultimo". If you are against - "there's the cross we will nail you to and no wishy washy ed policy will spare you, you denier scum bag". Seems the limp wristed management style of MD Mark Scott has done nothing in the last 3 years to balance the bias of his staff. 0/10 Mr Scott.

Part 2: Environmental beat ups for the week
This photo essay and free add and promotion for The Climate Institute (now that would seem to be a problem for the ABC's Editorial Policies-see section 11!) is replete with factual errors and misrepresentations. It's this weeks winner! The photo's by climate change activist Michael Hall.
We have provided some alternate captions to a few of them:

Another lame attempt to link extreme weather to CO2.

Bird coleslaw anyone?

Part 2a. A close second was this report by ABC's Caddie Brain. Caddie left her brain at home when she wrote it. It covered a recent report that based health projections on "CSIRO climate models that indicate that remote parts of Australia could be up to 7 degrees hotter by 2100."
7 degrees! a little alarmist perhaps? And how reliable are those models? Let's see Caddie...Hint note the difference between the models and observations. Now view this Feynman video. "If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong; that's all there is to it!"

Part 3: Spot the conservative presenter. No change from last week.
1. Amanda Vanstone on Counterpoint

Part 4: Some bananas stay forever. 
Seems B1 and B2 will get the axe a month short of 21 years. In the meantime those other ABC fruits: Clarke and Dawe plod through year 25. What colour tie will Brian wear this week?

Part 5: Your taxes at work. See Part 2a. Your taxes paid for crap models, crap analysis and crap reporting. That's one big load of crap.

Part 6: Missing News:
Some local science goes unreported:
New research suggests seaweed species may adapt to higher temperatures

The ability of Hormosira banksii, commonly known as Neptune’s necklace, to tolerate higher temperatures suggests that this habitat-forming alga has an intrinsic capacity to cope with climate change.

Part 7: Moth balled
ABC's web pages are a hive of broken links and lost information, like the "earth" page which provides Google Earth links to news from July 2011. Now that's innovation for you!


Part 8: Sucker of the week. SARAH CLARKE for not asking a single question of activist Bill McKibben that would suggest she had completed a degree or cadetship in journalism. Well done Sarah you win this weeks GULLIBUL.

That's Sarah on the Left (of course)

ABC in the News Round Up 2

This week brings further questions regarding ABC's new fact checker, more environmental alarm, a further spot check for conservative presenters, a 25 year old fresh perspective, and more!

Part 1 Bias. The Australian checks some facts about the fact checker. Seems someone has a diversity problem.
Skelton tweets his objective opinion of broadcaster Alan Jones and The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Sheehan, October 31: SHEEHAN in praise of Jones. The biggest blow hard of all and lowest common denominator broadcasting.
Skelton's objectivity on display in another tweet, November 11: MAYHEM as Tony Abbott plan for Alison Anderson backfires.
Skelton tweets, December 11, on a fellow media watcher: GERARD Henderson would do well to follow his advice. Not one to care about the feelings of others he disagrees with.

Click the link above for more unbiased commentary from the ABC head fact checker.

On the topic Media Watch Dog (No.184) takes ABC head Mark Scott to task over his bias denial problem. We had a go of our own earlier in the week. In the meantime Mark Scott's deep bias denial revealed in senate estimates, for transcripts see Quadrant and Andrew Bolt's Blog.
The problem so clear even SMH can see it:"Skelton, the ABC's fact-checker-in-chief, did not check the lie. He just passed it on, and let it stand, unchecked, uncorrected and unpleasant."

Catallaxy Survey finds ABC's fact checker ain't credible. Click the link to add your voice.
Do you think the appointment of Russell Skelton as Head of Fact Checking at the ABC is sound?

An excellent appointment - the ABC should be applauded for such a fine appointment	1	1%
A good appointment - Mr Skelton should perform well in the job	3	2%
A poor appointment - Mr Skelton is likely to be biased against the Coalition	21	15%
A very poor appointment - Mr Skelton is likely to be heavily biased against the Coalition	116	82%

Part 2: Environmental beat ups for the week-Spot the reality gap. Couldn't go past this one for unchecked alarm:

Report says hundreds of buildings vulnerable to flooding from rising sea levels at Port Fairy

The consultants found if the sea level rises 80 centimetres by 2080, up to 390 buildings could be vulnerable to flooding.

Realism interlude: Tide Gauge data from nearby Portland from 1992 shows an average annual rise in sea level of about 3.3mm /year. That's quite dramatic! However if it continues at this rate in 2080 we could expect sea level to have risen by a fairly non dramatic 23.5cm, or just 29%  of that dramatic forecast. Are ABC reporters capable of simple mathematics? Here a graph to show the size of the reality gap ABC failed to report.

 

Though this one came close: 

Rogue strain of genetically modified Monsanto wheat found in US field 'poses no risk to Australia'

Authorities say a rogue strain of genetically modified wheat causing alarm in the United States poses little risk in Australia.

Little risk, LOL try boom for Australian Wheat exporters.

Part 3: Spot the conservative presenter. No change from last week.
1. Amanda Vanstone on Counterpoint

Part 4: A fresh perspective?
ABC advertise Clarke and Dawe: A Fresh Perspective.These two have been riding the same Shtick for 25 years. Good grief, it's as fresh as a month old bottle of milk left out in the sun with the lid on. Yogurt anyone-it's as fresh as Clark and Dawe.

Part 5: Your taxes at work
My life so much richer now that ABC has used our collective funds to brings us: Plant thinking
"Michael Marder is working on a philosophy of vegetal life."
No better place to look for vegetables than ABC's Ultimo head quarters.

Part 6: Missing News
These stories failed to penetrate ABC's Groupthink Barrier:
CFCs 'are the real culprit in global warming'

BANNED aerosols that caused the ozone hole - not carbon dioxide - were responsible for global warming since the 1970s, according to published research from one of Canada's leading universities.

No Fukushima radiation problems: report

Radiation leaked after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 is unlikely to cause any ill health effects in the future, says a UN scientific committee drawing up a major new report.
Part 7: Moth balled
ABC's web pages are a hive of broken links and lost information, like the "water" page, "your No.1 online water resource". According to the hype it's an "ever-growing resource for water-related issues". The site was last updated....Tuesday, October 28, 2008 4:55pm AEST. Slight contradiction in terms, I'm sure ABC's fact police will be on to it. Here's the most recent story:

Recent stories

• NSW Premier Keneally visits historic Darling river flows

Part 8: ABC provide the facts they want, not those available.
This short piece with a very long headline (11 Attacked after 20 men break into share house in St Albans in north-west Melbourne) about gang violence in Melbourne's north west was not only very late, the incident occurred on Friday but was not reported by the ABC until Sunday, but its missing some vital information. Just as well The Herald Sun thought to add the police statement:
Senior Constable Adam West said: ''Investigators have been told that the offenders are perceived to be of African appearance and wish to speak to anyone who may have more information about the incident.''

Part 9: Sucker of the week. An occasional award for one of Aunties gullible reporters. This week awarded to: ABC Head Mark Scott who is in denial about bias under his nose. 

Hands up if you don't have a clue. Mark Scott, winner of this week's "Gullibull". 

According to this ABC report Mr Scott: Scott says the fact-checking unit will be transparent and the evidence behind its judgments will be made public.
He told the hearing that the ABC has rigorous accountability standards that all journalists are held to.

LOL!

That's one deluded individual. Challenge for Mr Scott: remove the FOI exemption from ABC programming so the public can see just how transparent the ABC is.

Until next week...

ABC in the News Round Up 1

Introducing a new weekly (well occasional probably more like it) round up of critiques of ABC's news service from across the web (catchy graphics to follow). Perhaps one day it will look like THIS.

Part 1: Nepotism of the week.
Our Nepotism of the week award goes to Russell Skelton who is the inaugural head of the ABC Fact Check Unit and married to ABC Breakfast's Virginia Trioli. Good to see that the Groupthink is not being spread outside that inner city circle. More at Media Watch Dog (No.183) and Andrew Bolt's blog.

Part 2: Environmental beat ups for the week.
Oh the Irony! According to an opinion piece on ABC's environment blog, run at your expense by activist Sarah Phillips: IRONY DOESN'T GET ANY better than this. Environmentalists and farmers fighting the expansion of coal mining and coal seam gas across Australia are protecting the economy. Apparently People protesting CSG may help soften the landing when the carbon bubble bursts.  ABC currently costs us over $1,000,000,000.00 per annum and a large chunk of that is contributed indirectly by taxes from coal companies (who like many of us would probably prefer it go somewhere useful).  The irony does get better, for without those billions in coal taxes the government would have less funds to land softly in those gold plated Ultimo toilets.

Rising Seas
In other news ABC reports that Keen photographers urged to snap tidal changes. Green Cross Australia said people in coastal areas of South Australia had been urged to snap and submit photos of the latest king tides. Here's my submission taken at Port Pirie:

Part 3. Fact checker.
Tim Blair receives some interesting advice regarding the M word.
Gerard Henderson (Media Watch Dog No.183) finds some drammatic license has been applied to the facts in Paul Clarke’s documentary Whitlam: The Power and the Passion on Gough Whitlam which commenced on ABC 1 on Sunday.

Part 4: Spot the conservative presenter.
1. Amanda Vanstone on Counterpoint

Part 5: Sucker of the week. An occasional award for one of Aunties gullible reporters. This week awarded to: Simon Cullen for this piece: PM's office says Julia Gillard plans to serve full term if re-elected at federal election. I think I burst a blood vessel.

Simon Cullen, winner of this week's "Gullibull".

until next time...