Where There's Muck (1)

Bias in the ABC looks like being the hot topic for the next couple of days, at least as far as the Ozbloggeist is concerned. If you're wondering just what goods Senator Alston has to back up his claim of anti-US bias a good place to start looking is page 32 of this transcript of Monday's proceedings of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Committee [PDF file]. It's all in Senator Santoro's "questions" to ABC Managing Director Russell Balding.

In yet another cheesy and insultingly obvious attempt to get linkage, I've gone over the earlier questions, to collect together all the muck that Senator Santoro has raked up on Max Uechtritz, the ABC’s Director of News and Current Affairs. I'm even going to try to present it without comment.

At the second annual Newsworld Asia conference in Singapore last August, Uechtritz remarked, "We now know for certain that only three things in life are certain: death, taxes and the fact that the military are lying bastards."

Uechtritz also said, at the same conference, "The lessons of war? So much technology, so many outlets, so much ignorance."

According to Senator Santoro, Uechtritz’s predetermined view about the military being lying bastards found a loud echo in the ABC’s coverage of the Iraq war.

According to a November 2001 bulletin of the Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Mass Media project, Uechtritz attended a session at a Barcelona conference which examined

... the extent to which the rights of asylum-seekers, internally displaced people and refugees are catered for by the media, and consider how broadcasters can communicate the complexities of their amazing stories without losing audiences or exacerbating internal and international tensions.

In a report on the Barcelona conference The Guardian said:

Max Uechtritz, director of news and current affairs at the ABC network in Australia, pointed out that at least 1,000 fewer people had died in New York than perished in Srebrenica, when "people were taken out and shot" in an even more horrific manner than the instant deaths on September 11. "Because it was a western capital, the scale seemed bigger," he said.

Uechtritz also attended the Eurasian Media Forum 2002 held in Almaty, Kazakhstan in April 2002. He was also listed on the program as a participant in a session titled "The role of media in international conflict."

Uechtritz weighs the same as a duck therefore he must be made of wood.