Plebiscite on gay marriage. Why and why not?

[David]

Meanwhile, homophobic pamphlets in Chinese are turning up in Sydney, making the (on many levels) absurd claim that same-sex marriage will lead to transgender women committing rapes in public bathrooms. Talk about conflation!

https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/08/28/afr-says-nestle-and-campbells-puts-offal-and-feathers-in-two-minute-noodles/

[watt price tully]

[stui magpie]

[Mugwump]

^ it's interesting that no one has refuted it. Compare the deafening silence on the likelihood it was a false flag operation, with the deafening clamour when it was first reported.

While I have no great interest in this topic, and will probably abstain from voting either way (because I want legal equality but not this particular way), I am shocked at the clear partisanship shown by the ABC on the subject. Night after night the 730 Report and the ABC news have been giving coverage and reports slanted heavily toward "marriage equality" (a term they use wholly uncritically). This would never happen on the BBC, which diligently tries to project impartiality even though it too has a clear preponderance of leftists on its staff. Such routine slippages of independence will probably ultimately bring down public broadcasting, and that would be a real shame.

[swoop42]

Given that plenty of society have left wing views why shouldn't the ABC slant that way?

Not many socialists can afford there own right wing television stations like Murdoch with Fox news.

[David]

Even Bolt admits that the first questions were raised by the "far-left publication" (lol) Crikey. Indeed, that's where I first heard questions about the mainstream media reportage on the poster, followed by a discussion on Radio National the other night when, again, one of the hosts was questioning whether it had ever even existed (in Melbourne, at any rate). And, unsurprisingly, Media Watch ran with the story tonight. Deafening silence, eh.

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4725257.htm

Of course, the point that Bolt and fellow conservatives are ignoring here is that, regardless of whether this poster was a one-off, such material is appearing in letterboxes and elsewhere, and can reasonably be expected to intensify once the plebiscite kicks off.

To the question of ABC coverage, this is a difficult one that is made more difficult by the fundamental lack of serious argument on the other side � and it of course raises old questions of how to handle the issue of 'balance' in, say, climate change or vaccination debates. If the government, in some increasingly plausible moment of insanity, decided to hold a plebiscite on teaching creationism in schools, would we expect to have 50% of the public broadcaster's time on the subject to be allotted to the Answers in Genesis brigade?

These are difficult questions, and not ones that I'm fully sure of the answer on. All I am sure about is that news should be neutral, opinion should be free and alternative views should be sought, standards that the ABC have generally upheld � but I hope they can find stronger opposing arguments than this risible piece I read the other day:

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-15/same-sex-marriage-is-more-complex-than-yes-campaign-admits/8804466

[think positive]

Asking for neutral news is as farcical as asking for neutral umpiring. Everyone has bias, it's unavoidable. Not in every subject, but every person has it. Only in something you don't care about can you maybe be neutral. In anything that means something to you, you have bias.

[Mugwump]

[David]

Do people who pay for government-funded media have a right to have their views represented?

Is it, for instance, an injustice that the 21% of Australians who either don't believe in evolution or are not convinced by the science do not have their views represented on taxpayer-funded science programs? (Keep in mind that the percentage who oppose same-sex marriage is not much higher than that.)

https://ncse.com/news/2013/07/polling-evolution-down-under-again-0014909

[HAL]

Not that I know of.

[Mugwump]

[David]

See my edit above. What qualifies as 'substantial'?

I don't think anyone's arguing that the ABC's journalism should be politically biased, by the way. The question is more what views should be given equal time.

[Mugwump]

^ I edited to respond to yours. Swoop was surely arguing exactly that.

I think you were also defining views you do not agree with as "risible" so that they public broadcaster can dispense with its obligation to be impartial. That sounds like political bias to me.

What qualifies as "substantial" is of course a matter of reasonable judgement, but the existing law (as in this case) certainly passes it. For the national broadcaster, underpinned by the state's forcible extraction of taxes, to campaign flagrantly for a change in the law is astonishing.

[Mugwump]

[HAL]

Where then?