Dear AM, (Radio National, Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I was listening just now to your coverage of the bombing of the American military installation in Mosul, and then to a brief item about what the event might mean with respect to the upcoming "election" in Iraq.

Why, can I ask, do you persist in interviewing partisan, ideologue cranks like Richard Perle, if you're trying to inform the public, rather than merely subject them to the propaganda of the very far right of the Republican Party, and of its satellite think-tank propaganda mills?

Sincerely,
xxxx


Dear Mr xxxx

Thank you for your email of 22 December 2004, regarding the AM report;
Terrorists attack Mosul military base.

The ABC has an editorial responsibility to provide the relevant principle
viewpoints on matters of importance. By providing a broad range of perspectives
on the war in Iraq, as the ABC has done and will continue to do, listeners are
able to consider each of the views presented and then draw their own
conclusions, as you have clearly done.

The ABC is satisfied that its coverage of the war in Iraq and associated issues
has been, and continues to be, the most comprehensive and balanced of any media
organisation in Australia, across television, radio and online.

Nevertheless, please be assured that your concerns have been noted.

Yours sincerely

K... D....
ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs

--------

Mr D....

Thanks for your reply. I agree that the ABC's coverage has been excellent. Your persistence in covering the appalling contempt for legal precedent exhibited by the American administration and its military, especially in the case of David Hicks, has been exemplary. It has also, I should say, stood in stark contrast to the kind of sanctimonious and crawling coverage of such issues here in the US.

As an Australian, and a journalist, I do take some heart from the islands of continued responsibility and integrity displayed in the Australian press, and by the ABC, in particular. I merely wished to point out that figures like Richard Perle, whose contributions can be predicted as easily as bush fires in the Brindabellas, really are not contributors at all - not, at least, to open, sincere debates. His arguments, like those of many like him, in and near the Bush Administration, simply are rolled out like sausage meat, and can be predicted by naming the subject. They also are famously duplicitous, self-serving (the gravy train of the pundit industry), and patently designed to serve some purpose of the Administration's henchmen and billionaire hangers-on - the very same people who fund the sorts of ultra-right-wing "think tanks" that provide shelter for utterly disgraced figures like the warmonger Perle.

But, as you say, your interests are in balanced coverage - if you now air the opinions of someone like Osama bin Laden's mother, or Saddam's torturers (who have a lot in common with people like Perle who are happy to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of civilians to their sham goal of "democracy"), I will be satisfied that you really do do that.

Regards,