The Fairfax papers today offer three attitudinal findings from a ReachTEL automated phone poll, which was conducted on Thursday evening from a sample of 2146 respondents:
• After Tony Abbott’s efforts to place the matter on the agenda earlier this week, a question on ABC bias finds 59.6% of respondents saying there is none. However, conservative critics of the public broadcaster can at least point to the fact that many more think it biased to Labor (32.2%) than the Coalition (8.2%). While the result at both ends may have been influenced by Abbott’s activism, it nonetheless offers an interesting supplement to the yearly ABC-commissioned Newspoll surveys, which consistently find overwhelming majorities considering its reporting to be “balanced and even-handed” without probing into respondents’ partisanship. The Sydney Morning Herald’s graphic features breakdowns by age and gender.
• Support for republicanism appears to be at a low ebb, with 39.4% in favour and 41.6% opposed. Tellingly, the 18-34 cohort joins 65-plus in recording a net negative rating (though by a considerably smaller margin), with those in between recording majorities in favour. Age and gender breakdowns here.
• There’s also a question on who is preferred out of the incumbent Governor-General and her designated successor, with 57.1% favouring Peter Cosgrove versus 42.9% for Quentin Bryce. I do wonder though about a method which requires a definite answer from all respondents to such a question, given the number that wouldn’t have an opinion.
UPDATE: And now a further finding from the poll that 52.5% agree that Labor should distance itself from the union movement”, compared with 25.6% who disagree.
Abetz and facts are not a good fit.
He’s floundering.
Not wearing the monocle this morning.
Haha. Abetz runs a screaming mile from the million jobs promise. He tries to transmute it into an ‘aspiration’.
Pathetic excuse.
Socrates
IMO, the notion of bias is at best useless and more usually misleading in discussions of news. We here ought really to eschew the term. All news is the result of choices about salience, the constraints of time, space and to some extent the media house’s culture. If by bias, one means ‘partisan’ one should say so, and if one is speaking about something far more paradigmatic– a cultural position, one should say that, and cite the informing data.
It’s far more useful, IMO, to focus on the intellectual rigour attending the composition of news, the soundness and adequacy of the salience choices, bearing in mind the temporal or other explicit constraints. Does the reportage compare and contrast adequately? Does it use terminology that is open or simply borrow uncritically terms that are the articles of one set of stakeholders? Does it probe the standing of witnesses to news to comment? To what extent is it framed to entertain or else enlarge insight into the relationships between events and public policy?
Good to see Cassidy focusing on employers.
Point will not be lost on viewers
Would we throw three million cubic metres of rubbish around the foot of the World Heritage listed Sydney Opera House? Or spew the same amount into the Grand Canyon or around the Vatican? So why has the Great Barrier Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) agreed to allow dumping of the same volume of dredge-spoil into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-31/mathiesson-great-barrier-reef/5228460
Cassidy should ask Abetz whether the Coalition vision includes the top 1% of Australians owning more than the bottom 40% of Australians, as is the case in the US.
Listening to Abetz really brings it home that the coalition are wholly bereft of new ideas.
“@AlexGreenwich: Looking forward to joining @AMEQUALITY at @pridemarchvic today, and showing Victorians there are nice Independents #springst”
I like the dig at Geoff Shaw 🙂
ML
many of those surveyed wouldn’t have gone near the ABC in years (as ABC ratings show). Their response is based on long seated core beliefs, rather than necessarily on evidence.
As for journalists’ self identification, that’s irrelevant. Firstly, because it’s the editor who calls the shots (so, for example, an interview I did which another journalist – not the one who did the interview – rang me to tell me was considered ‘brilliant’ and ‘would be front page news’ ended up being three paragraphs several pages in); secondly, because left learning journalists jump through all sorts of hoops to avoid being called ‘biased’ (“I’d love to report that, but Mirabella would have us up before the Press Council”) and thirdly, as can be seen from this site, people who identify as left of centre are often the ALP’s severest critics.
So, is ‘Tory’ Shepherd reliable?
Dennis Atkins “There’s a chance the coalition can win. there’s a chance labor can win”. (Griffith).
Stunning insights from our woeful msm.
confessions
The coalition have long held ideas and objectives.
They want to completely wipeout any remaining vestiges of the union movement, and that is on top of their agenda. This will ensure the bringing down of wages and conditions.
Well so much for the idiot proponents of a directly elected head of state that voted no to the referendum in 1999.
Their argument was that the momentum for a republic was so strong that they could vote down the model on offer and then vote yes at a subsequent referendum which would offer a direct election model.
What an appalling miscalculation!
Savva’s body language and deep sighs basically saying that it is all over Red Rover for Glasson.
JW
The really amusing change to the Republican vote is a hear beat away.
The arch monarchists are mostly also denialists, I dare say.
Charlies has just opined that the they are the ‘headless chicken brigade’.
So, how is Her Madge?
JW
No the miscalculation was the proponents of the model ignoring the people.
The polls were clear a majority of people wanted a directly elected president. It was the politicians wanting to be safe and “minimalist that miscalculated.
People truly were saying if little change why bother. Its not broke so don’t fix it etc.
What a difference an election makes.
Prior to the election Abbott promised taxpayer money to Cadbury.
After election no money for SPC.
But happy to forgo $1.8billion in FBT rorts.
Abbott now also saying companies should not be subsidised – so when will we see the end of the $2-4billion in fuel subsidies to mining companies?
victoria:
You can still have a longer term objective, but adjust the thinking on how to get there. The coalition are still replaying their last term in govt.
Turns out that Abbott was lying about the SPC worker conditions at his presser.
Savva saying that the RC into building rorts will have to have broad TOR, come what may.
[Savva’s body language and deep sighs basically saying that it is all over Red Rover for Glasson.]
She wasn’t very enthusiastic, was she?
What a difference the last few months and the current polling have made to the Liberal shills.
Abbott promised 2 million jobs over 10 years. 200,000 a year.
Someone should tell him that being on Newstart and registered with Centrelink is not a job.
He should stop creating so many unemployed
zoomster:
http://www.andrewleigh.org/pdf/MediaSlant.pdf
Your very own Andrew Leigh has done the most detailed analysis of the media and found it was not partisan in Australia.
Table 5 shows editorial slant and the only slant that met the 5% significance level for slant was the Age being pro-ALP.
Savva still doing bitchy comments well.
confessions
Considering they have the same old faces in the cabinet, it is hardly surprising
I can’t see much comparison between JHPM and TAPM at this time and doubt there ever will be.
Howard had the ability to reach people in a way I can’t see Abbott ever having.
dwh
Howard was far more clever at doing things like plausible deniability, disinformation and misrepresentation.
Abbott just lies.
Savva reckons that choccy lolly is good because it was in the election period but fruit lolly is bad after the election.
Hypocrisy is good.
http://johnmenadue.com/blog/?p=1208 good article
[Boerwar
Posted Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 9:39 am | PERMALINK
Savva still doing bitchy comments well.]
Oh dear…..confessions must be about to come down on you like a tonne of bricks for sexism…….for consistency, you know…..
E
So, you don’t think calling Shorten ‘cocky’ for travelling to Paris and London is a bitchy comment?
Boerwar
[Savva saying that the RC into building rorts will have to have broad TOR, come what may.]
Abbott will find it near impossible for any RC to only reflect poorly on the Unions, which of course is his objective.
Savva saying that a total lack of accountability and transparency is good.
Why “bitchy”?
[v
Abbott will find it near impossible for any RC to only reflect poorly on the Unions, which of course is his objective.]
IMHO it can, and should, do a great deal of damage to certain individuals and practices in the unions and in related businesses.
The sooner the better, IMHO.
We all pay for corruption.
Barrie Cassidy dead wrong. Polls tell the story. 53-47 to Labor.
E.
Why ‘cocky’?
I really think they need to change the Insiders format. They’ve changed the set, but now it just looks like a Qantas Club lounge.
Zoomster
[people who identify as left of centre are often the ALP’s severest critics.]
That’s true, but one might also add that not all people who identify as left of centre are left of centre. Also, some who identify as ‘centre’ are clearly on the right. Moreover, given the social pressure for a reporter to appear ‘balanced’ some who identify as left may compensate by giving rather too much credence and space to RW dissembling. Tony Jones and Fran Kelly would be exemplars of this tendency.
Everything
Three numbers that make me think something is wrong with their analysis.
[Larger Numbers Denote a More Pro-Coalition Outlet (0.47 Denotes Equality)
ABC Channel 2 News 0.511
Sydney 2GB 0.501
Daily Telegraph 0.477]
c
The set looks awful.
Because he is walking a tightrope between confident and cocky and falling on the wrong side.
It is going to be the major factor determining Shorten’s political future, IMO, whether he comes across as arrogant or confident and competent.
I have no problems with describing politicians as cocky. However, in the past, confessions would have jumped on any poster calling a leftie “bitchy”, I note that such horror appears to only be present when the subject is of the left…..it never seems to happen when the subject is thought to be of the right.
Boerwar
The corruptive practices are endemic in the Building Industry, and i agree that it should be cleaned up.
I hear that those within Liberal circles are discouraging Abbott from proceeding with a RC (we all know what happened with the painters and dockers and the bottom of the harbour scheme)
Savva lying about the sequence of events in relation to the torture story.
[poroti
Posted Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 9:50 am | PERMALINK
Everything
Three numbers that make me think something is wrong with their analysis.]
There is always noise around truth, so the statistical analysis is to look at whether or not the finding is different to the average by some pre-determined threshold of significance which we usually take to be 5%. That doesn’t mean there is a 5% difference, that means that the difference found was or wasn’t less than 5% likely to have happened just by chance.
“@sprocket___: #insiders ABC bashing has worked. A 100% Murdoch panel to cheerlead the Abbott government #auspol”
The other thing is that the more analyses that you do the more likely you are to find something even when it is not really there (i.e. just by random chance on that particular occasion, and if you repeated the identical study and nothing had changed, then you would be just as likely to get another result with the confidence interval range…..
“@unravelau: You cant tell me that our Navy are so stupid as to not know where it is in the water. The navy has to do as its told by TA what to do.”
Showing how much this panel cheerleading Abbott
The ABC’s Kelly and Jones are right-wing, they are not acting right-wing because they are left-wing.
A refreshing reminder of how crap Insider’s is.
The republic argument outshines Barrier Reef dumping FFS.