The Government funded ABC (and SBS) sits like a behemoth on serious political news and commentary in Australia, choking off any natural free market alternatives. We get the same tepid debates with everyone agreeing with everyone else on the panel. Q&A is a case in point of leftwing/green bias - check out this article on the disproportionate weighting of Q&A panelists: http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/gavin-atkins-shadowlands/it-s-bias-as-usual-for-the-abc-s-q-.htm And this is just one example of how 'State TV' has a seriously distorting effect on debate within this country. Perhaps the solution is to spilt the ABC and have ABC1 for the leftist green ideology and ABC 2 for the right. I'm not asking for debate to be shut down (as the left wants) but for both voices to be heard, since we taxpayers are paying for it and most Australians don't agree with the socialist elite's obsessions.

But everyone is biased/unbalanced/ideological. That's why we have democracy: to give a formal recognition to everyone's ideology. The point for a discussion of news media is that ethical journalists are honest about their biases, and try to report all sides of a given story. The other point is that not all journalists are particularly ethical.