The ABC’s Fairfax fascination and a dose of anti-Abbott bias

As an avid ABC listener I was subjected yesterday to repeated versions of stories like this one that appeared on the ABC website:
2013-11-26_abconnielsen
As an avowed disbeliever in the point of opinion polls measuring voting intention a long way from an election, I made my views about the page one efforts of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age known yesterday in my little item The great opinion polling irrelevance. It was little better than fictional nonsense and proved as such today when in The Australian Newspoll version of the state of the nation came out with the Coalition having a four point led over Labor with Essential putting the score at Coalition 53% to Labor’s 47%.
Given my prejudice against the reporting of opinion polls I can hardly express anger that the ABC largely ignored the story all day today but I was surprised at the difference in treatment. Labor in front – a big news story. Government still comfortably in the lead, give it the barest of mentions and move on to something else.
And in the story that the ABC did so briefly run, how about this for the angle of the day?
2013-11-26_abcandnewspollMuch more of this kind of bias and, heaven forbid, I might end up agreeing with Janet Albrechtsen about the need for some editorial reform at the national broadcaster. She went on about that at length in the Oz today with the highlight being this Albrechtian gem about the publication of Indonesian phone tapping documents:
2013-11-26_albrechtsenAnd that in a publication of the company that knows more about criminally obtained information than any other publisher in the world.

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