Fellow travellers, one of the most appalling trends in mainstream media discourse lately is this increasing perception that the ABC is somehow biased to the left. This is just completely false, and only a revolting right-wing reactionary would say such a thing.

The vile accusers making this offensive claim seem to be particularly fixated on Q&A for some reason. They say the show is guilty of bias in several ways, including the selection of guests. But haven't you noticed, they actually have conservatives on the show. I mean, people like Miranda Devine, Janet Albrechtsen, and Piers Akerman have appeared more than once. The appalling Barnaby Joyce has been given a place on the panel - as has Andrew Bolt. (Yes, that same Andrew Bolt who wants to put people in concentration camps!)

Fellow travellers, as I'm sure many of you will agree, these people should not only be silenced, they should be put in solitary confinement for the rest of their lives at the very least. Apart from their many other noxious ideas and views they are apologists for Big Oil and Big Carbon. They are sworn enemies of Gaia. They are climate change denialists who, if their campaign against the proposed carbon tax is successful (and it's looking increasingly like it will be) will be directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people all over the globe.

Earth-rapists! Climate criminals! Mass murderers!

Let me put it this way: Imagine if, just after World War Two, Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann was not only not punished for what he did, but was interviewed repeatedly on, say, the BBC. Surely that broadcaster would be guilty of pandering to Nazism. It wouldn't matter who else they had on, and how much air time they were given. If they gave a microphone to Eichmann, they'd be guilty of bias, surely.

And remember, the News Ltd columnists and Liberal Party politicians aren't just little Eichmanns. As I've just established earlier in the post they are really big ones. So, in letting this obscene cabal of conservatives be part of the Q&A debate, clearly the ABC has already buckled under the weight of right-wing political pressure.

Which brings me to the Q&A Twitter feed. Now, conservatives are turning their hateful eyes to the bottom of the television screen and focusing with their usual pettiness on who does the tweeting and what those tweets contain. Here, for example, is a blogger who has just painstakingly gone through all the tweets on a recent episode and found that there's a demonstrable lean to the left.

Now, he presents himself as an independent observer of the media. But I'm sure if you scratch the surface you'll find some pretty unsavoury associations. I suspect he's being paid by the Liberal Party, or BP, or Halliburton. I also can't be sure that what he's saying is accurate anyway. But frankly I just don't have the time to sit there and go through every tweet. Really, how boring!

But if Carrington Brigham's assessment is correct - and I sincerely hope it is - then surely the Twitter feed supplies a much needed balance by counteracting the poisonous views being openly, shamelessly and loudly expressed by the right-wing panelists. It actually shows the ABC's fairness more than anything.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the Q&A Twitter feed might just be one of the last bastions of free speech we have left in the country. We should all pray to Gaia that it too is not hijacked by those evil conservatives and used for their vicious planet-plundering ends.