Society/Culture Which is the best unbiased media outlet in Australia?

[Saab NLAW]

The Herald Sun is just pure trash, the ABC are appalling and outrageously biased and The Age is just as bad. If you want to have a daily decrease of your IQ level then head to news.com.au. Unfortunately, The Guardian is just a shadow of its former self and now far to left whilst Sky News is far too right (politically speaking of course) in their views.

So, which do you think is the best Australian Media Outlet to read for unbiased reporting of the news and not trying to ram their ideologies down your throat or are just terrible click bait? And if not Australian, which worldwide Media Outlet can be trusted for unbiased news reporting?

 

[Malifice]

the ABC are appalling and outrageously biased

They have a board appointed to ensure political impartiality. On political shows like QandA they literally have even representation from both sides of the spectrum, and let both sides speak.

The only people who think the ABC are politically biased, think Sky and Fox are 'centrist, maybe leaning a little to the right'.

 

[Saab NLAW]

They have a board appointed to ensure political impartiality. On political shows like QandA they literally have even representation from both sides of the spectrum, and let both sides speak.

The only people who think the ABC are politically biased, think Sky and Fox are 'centrist, maybe leaning a little to the right'.

This has proven to be inaccurate, as evidenced by the recent reports on their "Fact Checking"

And if 'centrists' are calling them out then it's for a good reason.

 

[Malifice]

This has proven to be inaccurate, as evidenced by the recent reports on their "Fact Checking"

What recent report on fact checking?

Compare the ABC (legislative mandated political neutrality required under the ABC Act) with literally anything done by Murdoch.

For example on the recent QandA panel they had Alexander Downer (Liberal), Dee Madigan (Labor), Patrick Gorman (Labor), James McGrath (LNP):

The Voice Vote and Violence in the Middle East - Q+A

Compare that to Sky News' Outsiders which when discussing literally any topic features Rita Panahi, Rowan Dean, James Morrow and often features 'special guests' such as Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin, and Hitler.

You cant compare the two.

And if 'centrists' are calling them out then it's for a good reason.

People who think Sky and Fox news are 'centrist' are not centrists.

 

[Malifice]

The ABC has flagged it will lodge a formal complaint with Sky News Australia after Bronwyn Bishop said the public broadcaster was “aligning themselves with the policy of Germany’s national socialist party for the elimination of Jews” in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

A regular guest on Sky, the former Liberal senator was responding to Sky News host Sharri Markson’s claim that the ABC was “so biased, so one-sided, so anti-Israel”.

“They [Nazis] were against the establishment of the national homeland [Israel],” Bishop said on Thursday night’s program.

“So [the ABC] are aligning themselves with the policies that were in place with national socialism during world war two. And there’s no two ways about it, it’s in the DNA of socialism. And unfortunately, we have lost any balance in the ABC; any reasonableness for proper debate and for proper balance of justice.”

MSN

There is a recent example of just how ****ed up Sky news is.

Bishop is legit claiming the ABC are not balanced or moderate. Notwithstanding she's sitting there on a show with a bunch of hard-core conservatives and not a liberal voice in sight and attacking a station that has legislatively mandated balance and moderation.

Leaving aside the sniping from a bunch of hard-core conservatives, with no voice to moderate those views (as opposed to the ABC who do have voices to moderate those views, deliberately employing a mix of conservatives and liberals on their talk show panels), the claim (that the Nazis were against the establishment of Israel) is also wildly incorrect:

Haavara Agreement - Wikipedia

The Haavara Agreement (Hebrew: הֶסְכֵּם הַעֲבָרָה‎ Translit.: heskem haavara Translated: "transfer agreement") was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist German Jews signed on 25 August 1933. The agreement was finalized after three months of talks by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank (under the directive of the Jewish Agency) and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany. It was a major factor in making possible the migration of approximately 60,000 German Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939.

The Nazis wanted the (British) Palestinian Mandate to take more German Jewish people (so they could remove them all from Germany), but the UK refused. The Nazis then looked into plans to then deport Jewish Germans to Madagascar (and other places) without success before then eventually moving on to the 'final solution'.

Something that likely would have been pointed out to her, if the whole station wasn't just a huge echo chamber for conservatives.

 

[owen87]

It's quite amusing that those who protest the hardest about how deeply biased the ABC is can rarely go more than a post or two without showing that they're a fair way right of centre.

 

[Malifice]

It's quite amusing that those who protest the hardest about how deeply biased the ABC is can rarely go more than a post or two without showing that they're a fair way right of centre.

Whats really disturbing to me is that (as a liberal) Im incredibly wary of Government owned media.

It says something about the state of Media regulation in this country, that the most unbiased and impartial media sources you can go to (which includes shows like Media watch, that hold the media to account) is our government owned broadcaster.

 

[owen87]

Whats really disturbing to me is that (as a liberal) Im incredibly wary of Government owned media.

It says something about the state of Media regulation in this country, that the most unbiased and impartial media sources you can go to (which includes shows like Media watch, that hold the media to account) is our government owned broadcaster.

Decades of Murdoch owned media being the dominant form of media in this country'll do that.

 

[the_interloper]

The SRP board obvs

 

[dumb]

i don't think there's any one site or source that could not be called objectively unbiased. doesn't matter what it is, someone somewhere will accuse it of a political or ideological slant. it's up to you take what you read with a grain of salt. at the end of the day, you're still making the same decision that what you read is true or not, slanted or not, wherever you read it or hear it.
i'm sure others do this, but i have a running commentary in my head as i read/listen about whether it's true or not. i kind of like reading opinions that are adversarial to my own (don't always have the mental energy to get into a debate though), i feel like it helps round out my opinion.

 

[Mofra]

The ABC are held to higher standards than other media outlets, as the the ABC Standard that is enforceable insert the BSA.

You could argue Kangaroo Court of Australia is the most independent media source when you consider they DGAF about any disclosure laws and are regularly sued.

 

[Malifice]

The ABC are held to higher standards than other media outlets, as the the ABC Standard that is enforceable insert the BSA.

You could argue Kangaroo Court of Australia is the most independent media source when you consider they DGAF about any disclosure laws and are regularly sued.

Imagine a world where there is legislation regulating the Media and compelling private media companies to be held to the same standards as the ABC (requiring balanced panels of commentators and a moderator on every show discussing politics).

The Sky news people would explode.

 

[Mofra]

Imagine a world where there is legislation regulating the Media and compelling private media companies to be held to the same standards as the ABC (requiring balanced panels of commentators and a moderator on every show discussing politics).

The Sky news people would explode.

Sky News officially broadcast 'opinion' and not news, which bypasses media codes of conduct restrictions

 

[Malifice]

Sky News officially broadcast 'opinion' and not news, which bypasses media codes of conduct restrictions

Doesn't help the ABC. Even their 'opinion' bits are moderated.

 

[schneebly111]

If you listen to commentators like Friendly Jordies they’ll make a compelling argument the ABC are too biased……

…..to the right, parroting a lot of LNP talking points, not really holding Liberal leaders to account and wanting to kiss the backsides of the Liberal wets. And their rural focus parrots National party talking points.

 

[schneebly111]

I use Media Bias Fact Check to research ideology and accuracy.

Here’s some ratings for various Oz news sites. You’ll notice a pattern:

• Overall, we rate ABC News Australia as left-center Biased based on story selection that moderately favors the left and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and being a certified fact-checker.

• Overall, we rate The Sydney Morning Herald Left-Center Biased based on editorial positions that slightly favor the left. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.
• 
  
• Overall, we rate The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Left-Center Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that moderately favor the left. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record.

• Overall, we rate The Herald-Sun Right-Center biased based on story selection and editorial positions that favor the right. We also rate them Mostly Factual in reporting rather than High due to questionable positions regarding the consensus of science.

• Overall, we rate The Australian Right-Center biased based on story selection and editorial positions that favor the right. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to two failed facts and questionable reporting on climate change.

• Overall, we rate Sky News Australia Right-Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that mostly favor the right. We also rate them borderline Questionable and Mixed for factual reporting due to several failed fact checks, unproven claims, and the promotion of conspiracy theories and misinformation.

 

[evolved2]

It's quite amusing that those who protest the hardest about how deeply biased the ABC is can rarely go more than a post or two without showing that they're a fair way right of centre.

It's usually the other way in my experience. How do you read the OP's political leaning from their posts in this thread?

 

[Grin]

This has proven to be inaccurate, as evidenced by the recent reports on their "Fact Checking"

And if 'centrists' are calling them out then it's for a good reason.

You do realise don't you that 'Centrists' are wing nuts deluding themselves and/or other low IQ Murdoch drones?

 

[Grin]

It's usually the other way in my experience. How do you read the OP's political leaning from their posts in this thread?

You'd know. You're a self proclaimed centrist.

 

[Chief Ten Beers]

They have a board appointed to ensure political impartiality. On political shows like QandA they literally have even representation from both sides of the spectrum, and let both sides speak.

The only people who think the ABC are politically biased, think Sky and Fox are 'centrist, maybe leaning a little to the right'.

How many right commentators host ABC shows again? How many people were advocating the no vote mate. You're deluded at best.

 

[btdg]

I'm not totally sure what 'unbiased' even means.


All News and Media broadly have to make conscious decisions about what they think is important enough to cover, and on how they cover those things. This inherently reflects bias, whether at editorial, cultural or individual journalist level.

The question is there not 'which is the best unbiased media outlet' but 'which has the BEST BIAS' - that is, the bias that best serves the public interest or whatever you want to judge it on.

This is obviously quite subjective, but I suspect the best consensus is that what we consider the BEST BIAS is something like:

• political independence; a lack of alignment with any particular political, religious or other organisation
• a soft liberal philosophy: a belief in indvidual rights, humanism, but with a bent towards 'hard news' = politics, wars, and disasters (not news.com.au reporting on MAFS and what instagram models wore to the Melbourne Cup)
• ensuring that a variety of voices are heard and moderated effectively; both major voices and minorities
• a willingness, if not a preference, to question and critique the views of powerful figures
• a heavy emphasis on 'facts' and clear processes for confirming the validity of information prior to publication
• a firm understanding that the current social structure is correct: that bad things happen because of immoral people or bad luck, and good things because of moral people or good luck; that the story is always the chef and never the kitchen.

And of course, this is lovely in theory but also diverges from what we actually CONSUME in relation to news, which gravitates towards 'what I already think, but espoused by more articulate and prettier people than me'.

It is also questioned by an increasingly large segment of society that instead think BEST BIAS means 'balanced' - that is, criticising both 'sides' of politics (it helps to simplify politics to 'left' and 'right' if this is your view) and having vocal and 'both sides' coverage of every single issue ever. This has, sadly, become the dominant view of many conservatives, who love to be able to simplify 'the left' into a single thing to oppose. They also oppose the 'soft liberal' part above (as do some on the 'left' who see it as a bit weak...)

There's no doubt in my mind that the ABC is the closest we have to BEST BIAS news. 'The Age' used to be pretty good, too, but always had some problematic aspects (not 'left' bias IMO, but its reliance on property and other classified advertising that skewed its reporting). To be honest, 'The Australian' has always been reasonably close to BEST BIAS in its NEWS pages, but with an Australian Liberal (and sadly, modern Conversative) skew in its opinion/editorials. And the major TV news - 7/9/10 in Australia are also pretty good. Even the Herald Sun is passable (it just extends the opinion skew to its front page).

 

[DickieKnee]

I don't watch it often cos it depresses the s**t out of me but SBS world news just reports the news with no opinion.

 

[Malifice]

How many right commentators host ABC shows again? How many people were advocating the no vote mate. You're deluded at best.

Mate the ABC are legislatively required to have balanced representation with what they do. You'll see Pauline Hanson as much you will see Adam Bandt on that channel.

Contrast to Sky news, who only have people on the right to far right, including platforming Neo Nazis.

 

[tastiger]

Avi, reble news

On VOG-L09 using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Engimal v3]

To anyone who says the ABC is left of centre in their reporting, I ask - what right wing perspectives should they consider that they currently aren't, and on what issues?