Cuts To The ABC

When Are These Things Not Political?

If there's one institution in the media landscape that deserves a bit of respect, it has to be the ABC. Even more than the Fairfax newspapers, the ABC has been editorially neutral. The fact that conservatives have a bad time when they end up on the ABC is not the ABC's liberal bias as much as the Coalition believe, but rather the ABC's bias towards facts and science. In other words, it shouldn't be made into the ABC's problem when clearly so many in the Coalition don't believe in facts and would like to invent their own realities. Like Tony Abbott, who wants us to believe he didn't promise to not cut the ABC's funding, when he said he would. (Of course today he is arguing that he's not breaking his promise not to cut when he makes these cuts,which is an even weirder spin on facts as they stand). It's all very laughable because they can't both be true.

Should the ABC be made responsible for idiots who can't get facts straight, can't understand science or how it is delivering sound prognostication? It's actually hard to say. I kind of think the teachers at the exclusive private schools these Coalition members attended that did a really bad job in teaching epistemology to these clunk-heads deserve more blame than the ABC. What kind of evil (or incompetent, you pick) educators gave us Chris Pyne? What school deprived Malcolm Turnbull of learning judgment? What idiot Jesuits gave us Tony Abbott, Oxford Blue Rhodes Scholar who can't understand logic or climate science?
It's like that song where they sing "there's no telling where the money went."

The ABC for its part is going to town with its cuts. One imagines there are a lot of tenured people of whom it wants to rid itself so this will be management's big opportunity to push some people out the door. It's hard to be sympathetic because, well, I was once an ABC employee too and I can tell you that there are some amazing bits of deadwood clogged in the ABC system. It's a bit obnoxious when somebody says the ABC has flab to cut, but if you know the inner workings of the ABC somewhat, you'll be forced to admit that there might be a point to it - maybe even a sharp edge too. You'd think that the same person would be mightily offended if one went up to her and said she has some flab that can be cut out so God only knows why the ABC and its fans won't get up in arms about some comment like that going to the press at Fairfax.

The cuts being made by the ABC themselves are political payback because it hits the electorates of the Coalition pretty solidly. They're closing production facilities in Adelaide, probably because Christopher Pyne made an appeal for it. One imagines this as a diabolical plea made by Pyne so that the ABC would close the Adelaide ABC production unit and thus offer up less scrutiny of Pyne in his own country. The ABC are also closing their production unit in Perth and axing the 7:30 report in the regions - which can be read as payback to the Nationals for supporting their rather nasty Liberal Party brethren. It's hard to imagine the latte-sipping inner-city types in Sydney and Melbourne would shed tears over those cuts. The bush, as it were, is about to get even less connection to the urban centres of this country. It's a funny kind of boomerang that hits the thrower in the head. So, here's laughing to the cutters getting cut. Hardy-har-har.