Baird's religion report: illogical, unfair and quite possibly inaccurate.

If it was submitted by a trainee journalist Julia Baird's one sided report on domestic violence and the Christian church in Australia would have rated a fail and tought the young scribe some lasting lessons about objectivity, due diligence in research and balance in reporting. Instead the writer is in denial about her piece claiming on twitter:"For the record: there was not a single error in our piece on domestic violence and the church. Am about to publish a guide to the research."

Pieces published in The Australian today (see below) expose Baird's reporting, that resulted from a year of research (at your expense), as lacking balance, lacking inquiry and lacking judgement. The sad thing is that through her poor reporting the focus of the article has shifted to Baird herself and away from the victims of domestic violence.

It seems making themselves NEWS is becoming an increasing feature of reporting at the ABC of late. Take a big bow Chris Uhlmann.

ABC church report ‘misrepresented us’, say experts

Two US experts whose research was relied on by an ABC 7.30 television report claiming “sporadic” Christian church-goers are the worst wife-beaters say they were misrepresented, and the real message is that regular church ­attendance discourages domestic violence.

Phoenix Seminary theology and ethics professor Steven Tracy and sociologist Bradford Wilcox also said the ABC journalists said to have spent a year working on the religion and domestic violence series did not contact them either before or since the program went to air last week.

Facts go missing in ABC report on ‘violent Christians’
The ABC reports that this article was based on a year-long investigation. So they had a year to get this right.

They could have analysed existing ­national surveys, worked with ­serious scholars to conduct quantitative, nationally representative research on religion and domestic violence in Australia, or even fielded their own survey of Australian couples. But Baird and Gleeson, and their bosses at the ABC, did none of this hard work. ­Instead, they relied largely on ­research done in the US to make sweeping and illogical claims about religion and domestic violence in Australia.

So we really know nothing about how common domestic ­violence is among Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist and secular Aussies, what role relig­ious attendance plays in increasing or reducing the odds of abuse in Australia, or whether Australian clergy do a better or worse job of counselling abuse victims than other important figures in victims’ lives — such as psychologists and psychiatrists. That the reader is left so ignorant of the basic facts is perhaps the most scandalous and disappointing aspect of the ABC’s year-long investigation

Recommended Reading

Some insightful Op Eds in today's Australian....

First a piece by Greg Sheridan that puts ABC's decision to throw Australia's relationship with Indonesia under a bus into perspective:

Spy story shows ABC at its left-wing worst
THE ABC emerges from the Indonesian spy scandal a diminished organisation, morally compromised and journalistically discredited.

The second exposes ABC's willful ignorance of what may be one of the biggest news stories of a generation:
When Aunty turned a blind eye
THIS year, the ABC has studiously ignored every major development in the Victoria Police major fraud squad investigation into the Australian Workers Union scandal. Even the proceedings of Victoria's courts on the matter - the bread and butter of local journalism - have eluded the national broadcaster's local reporters. 

Brain donation required

Help save the Colvin engine. Critical components missing in action. 

ABC's Mark Colvin was fortunate to have recently been donated a kidney. Can anyone help with a brain? In our opinion it seems Mark's is a little defective. Based on PM's uncritical broadcast of the news item below one can only surmise that Mr Colvin's "critical thinking" lobe has worn out and is in need of replacement or repair. Will someone assist before Mr Colvin's lost capacity of critical thinking becomes permanent? Or is it too late already?

Arctic melt damage bill could hit $65 trillion: study.

MARK COLVIN: New international research has put a hefty price tag on the effects of global warming in the Arctic. A group of researchers has worked out that methane releases in the East Siberian Sea could speed up global warming and create a damage bill of up to $65 trillion.
The research paper published in the science journal 'Nature' says the impacts of a warming Arctic are largely being ignored.

The criticism that Mark and his forgetful reporter Stephanie Smail forgot to mention (one of many, but this the most succinct):

Methane mischief: misleading commentary published in Nature

By Jason Samenow

A catastrophic release of the potent greenhouse gas methane in the Arctic could cause a sudden warming with massive economic consequences says a commentary published in the esteemed scientific journal Nature Wednesday. Yet most everything known and published about methane indicates this scenario is very unlikely. This piece should never have been published without discussing this critical point.

snip

And, here’s the kicker: Nature, the same journal which published Wednesday’s commentary, published a scientific review of methane hydrates and climate change by Carolyn Ruppel in 2011 which suggests the scenario in said commentary is virtually impossible. The review states:

Catastrophic, widespread dissociation of methane gas hydrates will not be triggered by continued climate warming at contemporary rates (0.2ºC per decade; IPCC 2007) over timescales of a few hundred years. Most of Earth’s gas hydrates occur at low saturations and in sediments at such great depths below the seafloor or onshore permafrost that they will barely be affected by warming over even [1,000] yr.

UPDATE. For alarming climate stories ABC often has several incarnations of the same story. We left a comment at the environment site for this one but somehow comment are now closed. 
The story published July 25, 2013. Our comment made this morning. There is an editorial comment that reads as follows:

COMMENTS

Comments for this story are no longer available. ABC policy is to delete comments on stories three months after they are published.

UPDATE: Mr Colvin pushes another scare story, this one to do with sea level on his twit account. Looks like it is indeed too late! That "ïsland"now completely man made:

A new dam was built seven years ago near the mouth of the river Couesnon, close to the Mont. The dam captures river and tide and expels the water in a series of great flushing actions which have freed the isle from the silt and mud. Within 10 years, it is anticipated the Mont will be encircled by the high tide up to 90 times a year.

Slander on the Science show

ABC's Science Show Saturday 2 October 2010 featured an interview between presenter Robyn Williams and Bob Ward under the title “Sceptics’ publishing record on climate”. The interview aired Bob Ward’s views about the quality of scientific research by internationally respected scientists Richard Lindzen, Robert Carter and Ian Plimer.

How does the ABC justify allowing Mr Ward time on The Science Show to provide an evaluation of the scientific work of Lindzen, Carter and Plimer when apparently Mr Ward, a Public Relations director, is not a working climate scientist, has no qualifications in climate science, and has no record of peer reviewed publications in academic scientific journals on climate science.  The interview misrepresented the publishing record of Lindzen, Carter and Plimer who all have long records of academic publishing in the peer reviewed academic science literature. No statement about Mr Ward's apparent lack of expertise or political bias in the area of climate science was provided by presenter Robyn Williams, misleading ABC's audience. The obvious hypocrisy of Mr Ward's argument was not challenged by Robyn Williams. A piece on The Drum might be appropriate, but space on The Science Show gives unwarranted credence to Ward's spurious opinions.

While the ABC provided an opportunity for Bob Carter to respond to the allegations made in the interview, it seems no such opportunity was provided for either Richard Lindzen or Ian Plimer to respond to statements made by Bob Ward, left unchallenged by Robyn Williams. As such this piece lacks balance and contravenes ABC editorial policy.

It appears the ABC, The Science Show, Bob Ward and Robyn Williams owe an apology to those it has slandered.

Here's what Roger Pielke Jnr recently had to say about Bob Ward in a post titled Empty debate and climate attack dogs: "Ward's frequent efforts to reduce debate over climate change to tabloid-style mud wrestling is symptomatic of a debate that has lost touch with what matters.  It is remarkable to me that an institution of higher learning such as LSE would hire a spin doctor to systematically engage in attacking reputations across the blogoosphere and letter pages of newspapers.  "

Once again ABC's audience is left in the dark.

UPDATE: Jones' BBC Interview missing in action-rogue chickens are not

ABC Audience and Consumer affairs have replied to our complaint about the missing Jones interview. This was the BBC interview in which Dr Phil Jones, climate scientist at the centre of the Climategate controversy, made a number of assertions on the state of climate change science including the following stunning claims: 
No statistically significant warming since 1995.
Debate over Medieval Warm Period not settled.
The rates of warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were statistically identical 
Cooling from January 2002 is not statistically significant but has occurred at -0.12C per decade.
Says the debate is not over!

The BBC report of the interview can be found HERE, and the interview questions and Dr Jones' response can be found HERE. 


ABC replied with the following: Section 5.2.2(d) of the ABC Editorial Policies states that editorial judgements are based on news values.   What is, or is not, considered newsworthy is a decision made at the discretion of ABC News editorial managers, based on their considerable editorial experience.

ABC News Online is not a specialist website reporting only on the topic of climate science and not every development or aspect of the issue will be reported on the site.  ABC News editorial managers will continue to assess stories on this subject on their merits.

ABC NEWS WATCH is left baffled as to why ABC news editors didn't run this highly significant story. On the same day BBC reported on Dr Jones interview with its far ranging implications for climate change policy, ABC News editors judged that spending tax payers money covering rogue chickens "Chickens rounded up after truck smash" had greater news value! I guess we at ABC NEWS WATCH don't have the benefit of ABC News editors considerable editorial experience but we felt that the BBC Jones interview was a worthwhile news event that deserved some coverage.

Those who rely on ABC for all their news and current affairs should be mindful of what they are missing out on. There's more happening in the world than rogue chickens menacing our nations highways. 

We are left wondering how ABC's proposed 24 hour news service will find enough comical traffic accidents to fill in all that time. Perhaps they can call on Channel Nine's Funniest Home Video's show for some assistance.