http://www.theguardian.com/media/datablog/2014/feb/06/australian-broadcasting-corporation-australia
Another way to approach the question of bias is by using public trust as a proxy. Newspoll conducts a survey commissioned by the ABC every year to gauge various aspects of audience satisfaction.
In the 2012-13 financial year, the "percentage of people who believe the ABC is balanced and even-handed when reporting news and current affairs" was 79% (PDF, page 30). While this is down slightly from early years (it was 83% in 2008-09), this is still an overwhelming majority.
A 2013 Essential poll on trust in different media organisations has ABC TV news and current affairs as the most trusted, with 70% saying they had total, a lot, or some trust in the ABC. Again, there was a small decline from the last poll, but almost all media organisations on the list had seen similar declines in trust.
Complaints are another measure of dissatisfaction with the ABC.
The famous 7:30 interview with Abbott by Leigh Sales accrued 523 complaints of anti-opposition bias. There were 2139 political bias complaints in 2012-13, meaning this one interview accounted for a quarter of all accusations of political bias.
However, Sales was cleared of political bias by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) and the ABC's audience and consumer affairs section.
Complaints have historically been split evenly between right and left viewer who feel their team is hard done by Aunty. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq there were 147 complaints of pro-US coverage and 144 complaints of anti-US coverage. On this Wayne Errington and Narelle Miragliotta wrote in 2011, "there appears not to be any factual evidence to back the claim of left-wing bias" at the ABC.
