Lazy ABC journalism 1:

It was, the ABC suggested, possibly the 106th fire to be linked to the insulation program. A fire in the outer Sydney suburb of Woodpark had badly damaged a family residence on Thursday night. “Fire investigators will sift through the ruins of a family home in western Sydney this morning,” Tony Eastley told AM listeners on Friday morning, “after it was badly damaged by fire, suspected of being caused by faulty insulation.”

ABC 2’s News Breakfast program joined the chorus. Predictably, Andrew Bolt seized on it. “A program which Kevin Rudd claimed would cut emissions causes smoke instead,” he shrilled, linking to the ABC story. Imagine that – he said it would cut emissions, but it caused smoke instead!  Not to mention Morissettian levels of irony.

Crikey spoke to the NSW Fire Brigade’s operational media spokesman, Superintendent Ian Krimmer, on Friday morning. The house had had insulation installed recently, he said, but the cause of the fire was still being investigated and no comment would be made. The link between the fire and insulation had been made only by the ABC and not by investigators, he said.  Then we spoke to Krimmer again yesterday. What was the outcome of the investigation? “The fire had begun as an electrical fault in the ceiling of the house and was not in any way related to insulation,” he told us.

That’s not the only one.  Last week, a fire at a house in Lithgow had been attributed on Sydney talkback radio to insulation – except the home had not had insulation fitted under the Federal Government’s program.  Who’d have thought the ABC has the same standards as shock jocks?

Bear that in mind as the ABC continues to link fires to insulation before investigators have determined the cause of the blazes.

Lazy ABC journalism 2:

The Australian as usual heavily spins a static Newspoll result in the Coalition’s favour, revealing last night only that the Prime Minister’s satisfaction rating had fallen, rather than the flat 2PP outcome or a fall in Tony Abbott’s satisfaction rating, or a rise in the Greens’ vote, or the continuing and stable gap between Rudd and Abbott over preferred PM (which back in the day used to be the Shanahanigan’s real indicator of political dominance).  The ABC falls into line, with radio news bulletins this morning running with the fall in Rudd’s satisfaction levels and AM dragging out the “honeymoon is over” chestnut, bringing up the 1,000th time that phrase has been used since Rudd became leader.

Meanwhile, on the cheap-as-chips Caralis Network, talkback host Leon Delaney gets it right when he notes that the Government retains a commanding lead.

Can’t wait for the ABC to stretch its news resources even thinner with the 24 hour news channel.