Slick but not satisfying.

LATELINE can be good. On Thursday last they reported a range of views at Ryde protests over having a convicted man living in the neighbourhood. What commercial media would let the man be properly heard ?
Letting the "exterminate" advocate speak is part of recognising what starts trouble and exactly where it starts . As a result, Australians are reminded that we do have people( incl non muslim's and those in living rooms ) who use a genuine threat as their excuse to throw in a truly terrorist type one. Predjudice about the non human nature of other people isn't always reinforced and thats to the ABC's credit. The Eugenics societies of the 1930's were not only popular in Germany - they were big in England . Simple predjudices are dangerous in trying times .Safety is not in the facts ( there are too many of them ); the safety is in hearing both sides of the argument.
The home grown nature of terrorism and politicization of science (interpreting gene mechanics to promote eugenics) must be faced - if we are to stay out of wars we can't win and effectively target a tougher change in attitude that would go beyond quick fix. We have choices and we must not use nature as an excuse to deny them or to justify cheap tricks on the way . That would be to make all of us less than human .
George Gentlys (ABCTV that night )great final words to his apprentice also reflect on this truth that we are talking about a call beyond nature -not a call to just "come under nature". His question -why did the young man learn to hate? Good science is only good when it talks possibilities and is not stuck or conveniently lost in some soup of mixed recipe facts.

The Lateline team can do a good job - But science talk is not ABCTV 's strong point. They still think that Barry Jones is the archtypal scientist when he's really the achetypal priest of the school of mere description - the ideal agent for those who insist the part is the whole. We will do better using wikipedia .
If presenters and their guests are to stay out of naive discussions that go nowhere they need to see the danger of the dialogue being held within the walls of misplaced concreteness. ABCTV won't win any hearts against blind predjudice in one night by talking facts ; They won't establish confidence in a situation of no confidence using that tired old cringe culture recipe : a new book and a new foreign expert
A change in attitude is always beyond science, The breath of fresh air the ABC needs is where the various sides of an argumnet can be properly heard . ( Where too is the respect for home grown science? ).

For example , Lea Sales was very competent in asking some really good questions on climate change's credibility problems ...But they went nowhere ..the well groomed respondent was there to defend a position - not the policisation of science in general .
Lea was asking the wrong person - A good book/ author on the real problem of disinterest in objective science- the title (and its politicisation ) WOULD not have made the mistake of playing the political hot football issues of evolution and climate change ;Such a person would have actually talked the physics through in a way that no ABCTV guest has done to date .YHIFOB
Someone who didn't want to join the political confusion would have drawn the audiences attention to the billions going to fad science research over the last twenty years ( salinity , ozone ) Such an independant scientist/author would have gone to the lessons of history and the technological fix that has eaten the heart of sound pure science research for the last twenty years.

If the book says something new, I will eat my hat;
If this is news to you - well you just aren't hearing from the right people- when will the ABC realise they are letting SBS run rings around them by letting the people who know talk, rather than controlling the discussion.
The wastage is evident. ABCTV allow themselves ( and the long suffering ABC audiences) to be further confused by letting the pedants close off while the reality of real life mirror moving politics moves onto yet another fiddle ( art /science , predjudice and practice, media manipulation by those desperate to maintain power and avoid any hint of their own confusion).