LOE apathetic board

Unedited version of a letter in today's Australian....


Rather than take the opportunity to restructure the ABC to get back to basics  it seems Mark Scott is intent on burning it to the ground and salting the earth behind him. In similar circumstances, in other institutions, an informed, competent board would step in and end the farce by sacking the CEO, but ABC's current crop of apathetic chair warmers lacks the balls to act. If Minister Turnbull wants to leave a lasting legacy then it's time he stepped in and reframed the ABC's enabling legislation to provide for the replacement of the board in cases of gross incompetence or indifference. One way to put an end to the lasting destruction now unfolding.

Rather than trim the fat Scott has taken the knife to the few remaining areas of the organisation that actually help meet the charter. This is one management team that should be sent packing before they do further damage.

Questions remain about agencies contacted by the ABC in Snowden scandal

We will not succumb to pressure to suppress or ignore legitimate stories to protect those in power.
Kate Torney ABC News Director

In November, 2013 ABC reported on Top secret Australian DSD documents that showed Australian Spy agencies tapped the mobile phones of the Indonesian President and his wife in 2009. The report included copies of Top Secret Defense Signals Directorate Powerpoint slides stolen by US contractor Edward Snowden, currently hiding from US authorities. Public disclosure of this information has done significant damage to Australian Indonesian relations. The Australian Newspaper recently provided important background information missing from ABC's reporting that provides an explanation for Australia's interest in the private conversations of the Indonesian President and his wife.

ABC justified its reporting and collaboration with The Guardian on the basis that release of the information was in the public interest. In senate estimates ABC Managing Director Mark Scott indicated that prior to the report being published the ABC discussed the story with "Australian Authorities". According to Alan Sunderland the communications were done face to face and the ABC retained no records, explaining the failure of an FOI request we made to see documents related to this advice.

Questions remain as to which agencies the ABC contacted and the advice that was provided.

We assume if the agencies involved had Australia's interests in mind they would have strongly objected to the ABC's involvement in reporting the documents in collaboration with the Guardian. Why did the ABC ignore these requests? If objections were not made then this would represent a serious breach of duty of care to our national interests. This is a matter of public interest and as such we will attempt to obtain more details of the advice ABC was provided.

In ABC's justification for reporting this story its News Director Kate Torney concluded:
We will not succumb to pressure to suppress or ignore legitimate stories to protect those in power.
We shall wait and see whether ABC live up to this maxim? Or are those words mere confetti?

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 Open project -What about FOI?

ABC Director Mark Scott replies to criticism of its "ABC Open Project" in today's Australian. At ABC NEWS WATCH we wonder whether the ABC's stance on FOI requests will form part of this "open" project...see - ABC: you can't open the chamber of secrets. Under ABC's current FOI regime the public would likely be denied access to any documents requested concerning development and production of this content.

ABC not waging war
THE ABC welcomes public debate about its future in the new media landscape. But recent criticisms of its ABC Open project ("ABC’s `hidden’ plans under fire”, 24/2) do not stand up to scrutiny. Firstly, the ABC is not asking for, nor has it been given, taxpayers’ funds to wage war on commercial media in regional markets. ABC local radio has happily coexisted with commercial news operators in regional markets for more than 70 years.
The aim of ABC Open is to put producers and editors into regions to equip locals with the skills to create and post content. One would have thought this attempt to bridge the digital divide - so evident in regional Australia - would benefit all media organisations. There is no hidden or stealth agenda. The broadband hubs project was announced in last year’s federal budget and the ABC has been answerable to its details in Estimates committees.

Mark Scott, ABC Managing Director