Last year, the ABC received $560 million of our taxes to keep it going. What value do we get for our funds?
Well, the ABC brings us a lot of British programs -- eight out of the ABC's top 10 rating shows are British while 60 per cent of its top 100 programs are produced overseas.
Ads on the ABC are congenially located between, rather than within, programs.
The ABC deals with matters in a more in-depth and comprehensive way than the commercial channels generally do, though Nine's Sunday remains the best current affairs program on TV, mainly because it tends to be more open-minded in its viewpoint.
The benefits of expenditure on the ABC go to the ABC's viewers -- whose incomes average 20-25 per cent more than those of the commercial channels.
It is not clear why working class families who watch commercial television should be taxed to provide congenial viewing and listening for higher income Australians (according to Morgan-Gallup figures, almost 40 per cent of TV news watchers with incomes of $70,000 or more watch ABC News).
Indeed, the ABC's viewing audience is a group that a potential private owner of the ABC would be eager to continue to cater for.
All this makes it doubly important that the ABC plays fair by the range of opinion and values in this country.
It is particularly important how the ABC responds to allegations of bias.
During the waterfront dispute last year, Senator Richard Alston -- the Minister responsible for the ABC -- suggested publicly the ABC's coverage was biased. The ABC responded by commissioning Professor Philip Bell to do a study of its ABC News and 7.30 Report coverage.
This report was released on 27 May. The ABC made much of its finding that the coverage was balanced -- particularly citing the count of "soundbites" of on-air which found that the union side only had 6 per cent more soundbites than the Patrick-Howard Government side.
I have just completed my own "audit" of the ABC News coverage, including a complete count of soundbites.
This full count shows that the union side received 25 per cent more soundbites than their opponents, and, because the pro-union soundbites averaged nine seconds, compared to eight seconds for the Patrick/ Government side, achieved 36 per cent more air time.
ABC journalists also made 33 per cent more MUA-favourable statements than Patrick/ Government favourable statements, were twice as likely to report the MUA's legal arguments as Patrick's, and were twice as likely to report opinion polls favourable to the Maritime Unions' side than the Patrick/ Government side, despite the polls during the period showing public opinion to be very evenly divided.
In 69 reports over 27 days totalling over 2 1/2 hours of coverage they failed to inform viewers of the context of the dispute.
In particular, the Maritime Union campaign against the leasing of Webb Dock to P&C Stevedores, a campaign which provoked an increasingly desperate Patrick into the lockout, was effectively a "non-subject".
Without that context, the ABC News' viewers were not given key information relevant to the dispute. Instead, we had a waterfront "war" with Patrick cast as the (unprovoked) aggressors.
Given the ABC had made so much of the Bell Report finding that its coverage was balanced, my exposure of inadequacies of the Bell Report, particularly the count of soundbites, should surely be a matter for concern. Instead, it is being treated by the ABC as another "non-subject".
ABC Managing Director Brian Johns' response to our findings was to say that the ABC Board was happy with the Bell Report (did they have the information to properly judge it? One wonders), that my report came from "their point of view" and added "no independent value".
In other words, don't bother me with awkward facts, no matter how well-documented.
As an exercise in accountability, the ABC's performance and response is completely inadequate.
Despite what Mr Johns seems happy to imply, we did not conjure our findings out of thin air or our prejudices.
Soundbites are things you can count; we did not invent extra soundbites, nor did we strategically leave them out.
Coding statements for subject matter, etc is also a relatively straightforward exercise, as is determining what was not covered.
It is only "our ABC" if it is genuinely accountable to us for the quality of its product, and it takes that accountability seriously.
On the above evidence, there is a fair way to go before we can be confident that either is true
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