Steering the ABC Titanic   Every now and then, often enough that
the phrase is probably encoded as a single keystroke on ABC
keyboards, someone from the ABC (Australia’s national public
broadcaster, very similar to the BBC) will say “We get
allegations of bias from both the Left and the Right so we must
be very well-balanced”.  This specious, self-serving narrative
has been increasing in frequency over the last three years in
parallel with the increasing observations, by those of us on the
Left, of the undeniable lurch to the Right that the ABC has
made.  Sometimes this narrative might be accompanied by the
observation that both a Labor Prime Minister (Keating) and a
Liberal (conservative) one (Howard) in recent years have
complained about the ABC. And indeed this is a valid observation
in the 1990s (and previously) and tells you something important
about what was going on. In both cases the objection was that
the ABC was a public broadcaster was, without fear or favour,
willing to speak truth to power. And s