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April 24, 2003
poor old ABC
There is an article in the latest issue of The Bulletin by Graham Davis, called, 'Its yore ABC. It argues that the ABC did a bad job on covering the Iraq war.
This was not because of the bias of the left liberal culture in news and current affairs. All news and commentary is biased and prejudiced--some left some right. Rather Davis focuses on the poor news reporting due to the lack of correspondents in Iraq, and it says that the ABC was outgunned by Nine, which has become the national broadcaster. The ABC is no longer the news leader. Davis argues that the current affairs programs--the 7.30 Report and Lateline-- did an excellent job.
I did not see Lateline as I was on the Internet. I saw the 7.30 Report and I thought that it did a poor job as it failed to give us the Arab perspective on the war; not in the sense of dishing up the pro-Hussein line, but give an account, and an evaluation of what was being said by Arab current affairs commentators living in the region. All we ever heard was commentary from the Anglo-American perspective which mostly focused on the military strategy and not the politics of the region.
I appreciate that giving space for Arab commentary on the war would not go down well in Canberra, which dutfully followed the Washington neo-conservative line. But it is the role of the ABC as a public broadcaster to educate. And public opinion needed some education about the Middle East. The ABC failed and failed badly to counter the shallowness, glibness and cartoon analysis of what passes for public debate on foreign policy and national security issues in Australia.
An example? To say that working through the UN was an act of appeasement with all its historical evoking of Hitler and Neville Chamberlain.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at April 24, 2003 11:53 AM
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Comments
The ABC radio seemed to do better, but that is what you would probably expect, as the medium generally has more time for content and analysis. I must say, i followed developments mainly on-line.
Posted by: dj at April 24, 2003 12:17 PM
DJ,
I think a lot of people went online.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson at April 24, 2003 01:24 PM