Apparently the new word at their ABC is "en-ter-tain-ment"... New promotional spirit has entered the place with a "new" image in which the ABC professes to brainwash you... with fun fun fun... "Think Entertainment" is the buzz. A story about death and hard life: Entertainment. A story about suffering: Entertainment. A report on AIDS: Entertainment... The promos and new image of course are to be designed to match this entertaining lively death with a smile and excitement.

Hopefully, management will come to its senses but I may dither on this one. Some of the comments on this new image range from the ABC being 70 per cent leftie up to being a hub for Abbott adulation... Meanwhile the serious etiquette of the place is deliberately eroded to be replaced with lightweight "entertaining" programs... all in the chase for ratings, I believe... Making sure the place is dumbed down for the morons who won't watch it anyway since there is more moronic TV on the other channels.

see toons above...

From Chris Kenny at the Australian

...

Let us assume, just for argument's sake, that the critics of the ABC are right; that its publicly funded journalists and program-makers, with their commitment to public broadcasting, inner-city sensibilities and disdain for commercial media, reinforce a progressive political culture that inevitably skews their story selection and treatment to the Left and provides content that can often be out of touch with the mainstream.

The question that would immediately arise is how the situation could be rectified.

The ABC is certainly the most influential cultural institution in the nation, increasing its complexity and reach almost by the day. The corporation consists of six national and international radio stations, five television stations, online services, publishing and retailing, with annual public funding topping $1 billion, and more than 5000 staff in more than 70 locations in Australia and overseas. Yet as it has expanded there has been no commensurate increase in accountability or responsiveness to the public who fund it. With chairman Maurice Newman's term expiring in September, this is an issue the new chairman may need to examine.

The charter makes it clear the ABC has to "provide a balance between broadcasting programs of wide appeal and specialised broadcasting programs". In many ways this is the key challenge and it is open to broad interpretation.

read more at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/whose-abc/story-fn59niix-1226063961087

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Gus: one thing that has been ommitted from this anti-ABC article is the Liberal leaning neck of Chris Kenny in the byline... In some way Kenny, the turd man, had more pumping honesty about his craft. Chris Kenny was the media spruiker for Alexander Downer and then for Malcolm Turnbull... Say no more... Now Kenny writes for the Australian — a Murdoch paper — which has a strong bent in supporting everything Liberal (conservative) including illegal little wars such as the war on Iraq... Thus we have to be weary of what Chris Kenny spruiks about these days... To tell the truth, I have an inkling as to where the butter and the margarine for his toasts comes from... But I'll say no more.

See toon at top and below it...

Back in the good ol' January 2009

...

Turnbull’s new Chief of Staff is a climate change denialist of the old school. In radio spots on 5AA and in a series of pieces for the ‘Tiser, Kenny has repeatedly demonstrated a less-than-perspicacious grasp of the science of global warming, recycling many of the same embarrassments made infamous by Andrew Bolt.

Take this little gem from his 31 December piece in the Adelaide Advertiser:

"Inconveniently for global-warming alarmists, global average temperatures have, for 10 years running, fallen short of those recorded in 1998.

Still, there has been plenty of action. The Federal Government has outlined its planned carbon tax scheme, the US has elected a President promising to tackle carbon emissions and diplomats have agonised unsuccessfully over a truly international scheme.

All this action suggests the remedy is running ahead of the detailed diagnosis. The raw temperature figures allow room for significant scientific interpretation.

The consensus view is that the past decade has still been historically warm and the trend is up, so it’s just a matter of time before the 1998 records are topped. Dissenters say we are seeing the end of a warming phase and we may be entering a cooler period.

We all know the climate changes constantly. The critical question is whether carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are significantly affecting climate patterns."

Oh dear. Malcolm Turnbull’s new arm-twister is wrong, wrong and wrong. Global average temperatures falling since 1998? No — as research undertaken by the Hadley Centre, the Goddard Institute, our own Bureau of Metereology  and the US Government’s National Climactic Data Centre — among many distinguished climate research centres internationally — has shown.

What about his suggestion that the raw temperatures allow plenty of room for significant scientific interpretation? Wrong. The earth is really, actually, currently warming. That’s not interpretation: that’s fact.

And how about Kenny’s claim that "the critical question" is whether carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are significantly affecting climate patterns?" It’s been answered: greenhouse gas emissions are unmistakably the cause of the currently observed global warming since the industrial revolution, as Jim Hansen’s gold standard 1996 paper clearly shows.

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Gus: see if you spruik long enough that Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction like Downer did about 8,000 times publicly (which we knew Saddam did not have) you can convince enough people of the necessity — how regrettable — of war... Kenny is an ultra right wing piece of something who spruiks the wrong ideas about true science and other subjects... Maybe we should hire the services of Kenny, the turd man to do something about it.

See toon at top and also letter to prue

This morning, in front of the ABC headquarters in Ultimo, Sydney, a huge crow was defleshing the entrails of a massive dead rat in the middle of the road... Unbothered by pedestrians crossing close-by and while nudging the cross traffic, the big crow only took off when the Harris Street traffic got a green light. Once in the air, the crow was attacked by a small bird, as crows usually are when too close from nesting sites... The crow did not seem to care.

Is this an omen about:

a) the ABC?

b) global warming?

c) the rat population in Sydney is thriving so much that some of them commit suicide as road kill?

d) the neighbourly UTS (University of technology, Sydney) has a new policy of Kill-Rat bait?

e) the ABC inquisition department?

f) just nature at work?...

see toons at top...

By By ABC's

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/09/3239865.htm

Gus: Who in hell writes this shit? Hidding behind Aunty's petticoat?... A cow? No byline? Bye bye ABC...

The ABC drum article was written by Barrie Cassidy

and was updated Thu Jun 9, 2011 4:32pm AEST

Bloody hell and Cassidy claims to be a journalist? Where is Paul Chadwick when you need him?