So far, the SBS, Australia's second noncommercial broadcaster (specialising in international film and television and world news) has escaped the scourging that the ABC has repeatedly received from right-wing culture-warriors in the government. All this looks about to change, as the government, triumphant after its neutering of the ABC, announces that SBS is next in line for straightening out:

Liberal Senator Michael Ronaldson said George Negus had expressed "pro-Arab" sentiments on international current affairs program Dateline and Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said SBS had "sided" with Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks and exhibited "a rather equivocal view of terrorism".

Fierravanti-Wells, who declined to speak to Green Guide, told the hearing that SBS broadcast "smut and pornography" by showing foreign films and adult animation programs

SBS, with its cosmopolitan (and thus, by definition, "un-Australian") agenda, is an artefact of the Thaw, the three or so decades of liberalism between the collapse of the old wowser monoculture around the late 1960s and the rise of the new wowserism; I was wondering how long it would be tolerated in Howard's majoritarian new order.

Want to say something? Do so here.

Note to spammers: This comment system applies the rel=nofollow attribute to the poster's URL and all links. Posting links to this page will not improve their search engine rankings.

Display name:
URL:(optional)
To prove that you are not a bot, please enter the text in the image on the right in the field below it.

Your Comment:

Remember my details.

Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.

Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.