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Comment by friendlybus | Hacker News Reader

If you were from Australia I'd let your whole post go.

Murdoch isn't that powerful. When the media tells people what they want to hear, it's very difficult from the outside to figure out who's the one pulling the shots.

The AFP raided the ABC to ensure accuracy of a report about military action that was released under the reign of a far left management. Now that Ita Buttrose is in charge, you won't see that again.

The Australian people trust their own government several orders of magnitude more than the foreign SV tech companies that put people out of jobs and push around politics which America can barely reign in.

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As an Australian, describing what the AFP did when raiding the ABC was intended as intimidation and nothing else. The report on the actions of the Australian military forces that may constitute war crimes. They know who leaked the information, he is already indicted for trial.

Similarly, and in the same week, raids by the AFP on a reporter from News Corporation, shows that your slur of ABC management as being "far left" is complete rubbish.

The management of the ABC has not changed. Ita Buttrose is the chair of the ABC board, which specifically does not involve itself in editorial decisions.

So Australians do not "trust" their own government, particularly after the various "anti terrorist" legislation that has creeped and allows ASIO etc to detain people for increasing periods of time without charge, or even notification that they are held (ie no habeas corpus).

The ACCC is one of the few Australian regulators that actually act on behalf of their stakeholders, ie the consumers of Australia.

Other regulators and law enforcement have either suffered extensive "regulatory capture" (particularly APRA and ASIC) or mission creep (AFP, "Border Force" etc).

If it were a slur of the ABC that it was far left, I would be happy. https://youtu.be/kxgeevlRElw?t=445 It was the managing director, Michelle Guthrie that was very quickly sacked and replaced.

Turnbull in his Oxford Union address spoke about maintaining the ABC's accuracy.

edit: Just to expand on Turnbull's point of view a bit here, because it applies with the social media angle. Turnbull's election run was plagued with fake phone sms's saying that he would privatize Medicare (gov health provider, loss making, impossible to run as private business). It scared some people to the point of voting the other way. He also struggled with social media stories about the way the world was run. The old thinking was to not dignify the stories with airtime. But that didn't work, so later on in his ministership, his party did what they could to get ahead of the stories and squash them, because social media gave them an infinite platform.

Turnbull defended the ABC's accuracy as a virtue, even though it speaks the other side of the political table to him, precisely because having an accurate ABC was key to having a verifiably true source for stories.

This is relevant to the discussion about the government wanting access to social media platforms that do not adequately restrict fake content.

I also share a belief that the ACCC works well.

>Other regulators and law enforcement have either suffered extensive "regulatory capture" (particularly APRA and ASIC) or mission creep (AFP, "Border Force" etc).

I have family that have worked in the banking sector. The regulations in Australia (up until recently at least) are strict to the point of boring. Maybe things have changed in the last 10 years, but the cases of fraud that are being dragged through the royal commission at the moment pale in comparison to the recession that was prevented by having sane regulations pre-2008.

> The AFP raided the ABC to ensure accuracy of a report about military action that was released under the reign of a far left management.

A police raid for biased reporting is not a proportionate response. I don't care how biased and towards what wing.

It's the government's broadcaster. This is not a private company. They own it.

That's irrelevant. Police raids are not a proportionate response to inaccuracy, regardless of ownership, bias, wing, hair colour, day of the week, preferred cologne or any other criteria whatsoever.

I don't agree, but say I give you that point, what's the difference? They can just do it behind closed doors and we wouldn't know.

> I don't agree, but say I give you that point, what's the difference?

The difference is not raiding journalists for reporting on matters of public interest.

So if they undermine reporting for matters of public interest in private it's okay? Just be aware you don't actually have control here.

It's a public broadcaster, WE own it. The idea that the government should set the agenda for it either as an organization or via intimidation is insanity.

It should represent the diversity of people that it in itself is there for. It should have diversity of political thought, culture and the ability to report on whatever it can fact check.

>The idea that the government should set the agenda for it either as an organization or via intimidation is insanity.

That's precisely what the government does on sensitive topics. That's why there's no anti-vax and conspiracy theory bs. What "we" want isn't always a good thing for running a country.

>What "we" want isn't always a good thing for running a country.

That isn't (and shouldn't be) up to anybody else to decide.

It should be, inside government institutions, like the ABC. Out in the commons and private companies, I agree it should be discussed openly.

This whole post has gotten too political and has already broken several rules. I'm bowing out.

> That's precisely what the government does on sensitive topics. That's why there's no anti-vax and conspiracy theory bs. What "we" want isn't always a good thing for running a country.

That is not at all their role. That conspiracy theories are unverified is what makes them theories, that they take a pro-vax stance is based on the data, research and reaching out to experts in the field.

What you're describing is the propaganda arm of a regime, not a media outlet.

I don't argue conspiracy theories or antivax is a good thing. My point is that the people have different interests in news than the gov does.

For or against the scientific arguments, there are some people out there that want to engage in stupidity and resentment. That is undeniable. The gov denies that outlet and you get it online. I'm not here to defend abject stupidity that you get online, merely to point out decision s are in fact being made by the media.

Yet and that's what every country in the west has. Watch the US media deal with NSA wiretapping laws in the 2000s. There are acres of examples of a value structure of stories imposed by governmental interest on gov broadcasters.

This is fundamental to what it does as an org.

What does that have to do with the critique of the raid? Or ABC's editorial independence?

> The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia's national broadcaster founded in 1929. It is currently principally funded by the direct grants from the Australian government, but is expressly independent of government and partisan politics. The ABC plays a leading role in journalistic independence and is fundamental in the history of broadcasting in Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Broadcasting_Corpor...

That page has a list a mile long for criticisms on it's attempt to be editorial independent. The ABC Board is appointed by the Governor General with the Federal Parliament.

If they own the corporation and can appoint board members they want, even political ones as listed on that wiki page, then they have zero incentive to actually raid the place to get anything done, they can simply do it.

So that takes away intent or motive for the "removal of rights" angle. They have a right to run the company as the government sees fit already. The raid may have been done for legitimate reasons, the simple fact it happened isn't enough to say that there was excessive foul play involved and we should distrust the face value story.

Every news outlet in existence has its own long list of controversies and accusations of being the government's lapdog; e.g. The New York Times has the legacy of Judith Miller [0] tied to its brand for the foreseeable future.

And in any case, what does this have to do with the critique of the raid? The previous commenter [1] argued that A police raid for biased reporting is not a proportionate response.. How is ABC's government charter, or its perceived lack of independence, a mitigating explanation? If the government has the "right to run the company as the government sees fit already" – again, an assertion with no official basis – then why was there a police raid in the first place? As opposed to the government, who purportedly runs and operates ABC, spiking the story?

And even this is just a tangential and irrelevant line of argument. In the U.S., the attorney general is appointed and directed by the President. When President Nixon initiated the "Saturday Night Massacre" [2], you believe that the public and the press should have remained unconcerned because Nixon is the boss of his attorney generals?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#Career_at_The_Ne...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20542135

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre

Murdoch owns 2/3rd of all newspapers and their associated brands in Australia. Arguing that he's "not that powerful" is disingenuous.

IIRC, that raid was over an article that was a few years old at that point. If it was about national security, it wouldn't have been delayed that long. It was a political stunt and intimidation.

Less powerful than you’d think. If you’re familiar with the zones of popularity of his main newspapers, you’d see that they correlate very nicely with Labor-held electorates.

(Just think about your own personal experiences: in a typical Liberal electorate, which paper is the most read? In a typical Labor electorate, which paper is the most read?)

You might call it the Murdoch Paradox.

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