The curious and the incurious
Parnell Palme McGuiness believes ABC flagship programs cover only a narrow range of ideas and perspectives from a limited range of experts (“The ABC has lost its curiosity. Joe Rogan can help Kim Williams recover it”, December 8). I assume then that, in the interests of encouraging greater diversity in that regard, she will decline her next invitation to appear on Q&A in favour of a less-predictable opinion maker.
Ross Duncan, Potts Point
Kim Williams (right) might do well to find journalists who are curious enough to tune into Joe Rogan.Credit: Digitally altered image. Artwork: Marija Ercegovac.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is wrong about the ABC “losing its curiosity”. The ABC offers a wealth of open-minded, curious, thought-provoking programs interspersed between the repeats. Commercial broadcasters are pushing passionately delivered views and pre-masticated sound bites at many incurious and uncritical people because it’s cheap content. Commercial media mostly distracts by stirring emotions with sentimentality, cloying patriotism, outrage, anger and fear.
The battles for eyeballs, ears, minds and advertiser dollars by an overabundance of commercial media lead to increasing sensationalism and shallower reportage. It diminishes our society and democracy. Tim Coen, Ashfield
Parnell Palme McGuinness has written a quite critical article about the ABC. As a long-time member of Friends of the ABC, I agree. More of the same really won’t do it, and the loss of audience confirms that. The area that could be fruitfully tackled is the political education of the Australian public, especially the young. While Australians are clearly moving away from the two-party system, they need and want to know more about alternatives. Very little is presented about that by the ABC. Most of the commentary is concerned with issues within the existing systems rather than the examination of governance system alternatives that exist outside. The ABC is in a highly favourable position to address this problem.
Klaas Woldring, Pearl Beach
If the ABC is boring, commercial media outlets provide trite and juvenile offerings that insult the audience’s intelligence.
The media mantra “bad news sells” means we are inundated with reports of everything negative. We have journalists who have personal biases, so what chance do we, the audience, have of receiving credible and objective reports?
The media has a social obligation to report factual, unbiased, good and bad news, enabling their audience to make an informed and rational decision. Such journalism cannot be judged as “boring”, just credibly educational and balanced, to the benefit of all Australians. Mervyn Cross, Mosman
A diamond, despite the donkeys
At the last federal election, I scrutineered at a polling booth after voting closed and then several times at the main tally centre, where the voting papers for the whole electorate were accumulated (Letters, December 8). I was amazed and impressed by the integrity, thoroughness, transparency and security of the counting and checking process. I did not observe a single top-to-bottom donkey vote. No doubt they exist, but they seem extremely rare. The Australian electoral system is a gem of our democracy.
John Burman, Port Macquarie
Your correspondent opines that, on occasion, the “donkey voters” may determine the outcome of an election. Readers might be interested to know that in Tasmanian state elections, on new batches of ballot papers, all the names on the ballot are rotated – called the Robson rotation – so that no individual candidate garners an unfair advantage simply because of their position on the voting paper. Ross MacPherson, Seaforth
Care comes first in assisted dying
As a Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) practitioner at a different hospital, I would like to respond to an article on VAD (“I’m thankful my mother could leave the world on her own terms - but the system is flawed for families like mine”, December 8). Andrea Dixon wrote that their family was thankful for her care but was quite critical of their experience, particularly in relation to communicating with all family members. This all stems from several siblings not speaking to each other.
I would suggest her family’s issues predated the VAD process and were not caused by them. It is unrealistic to expect a VAD co-ordinator to interact with family members individually. The focus is, correctly, on the patient and their nominated key contact person, as occurred here.
The VAD co-ordinators I have interacted with are very caring, patient-focused clinicians who do everything they can to help patients and their families through this difficult process. It is unrealistic to expect them to resolve long-standing family issues. Bill Munro, Gosford
How unutterably sad that a family should endure the trauma described by Andrea Dixon because of the safeguard processes imposed by VAD laws. A peaceful death is a basic human right, and clearly, a considered decision to end our life at a time of our choosing should be respected and met with compassion, not with overwhelming obstacles that result in an unnecessary burden of guilt being felt by family members who support a sufferer’s choice of VAD and assist them in navigating the system. Joy Nason, Mona Vale
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