All we have to put up with is our Dear Leader the Prime Minister telling the ABC it must be more patriotic in its reporting ...

PRIME MINISTER: ... as far as I'm concerned, I'll call it as I see it and I think it dismays Australians when the national broadcaster appears to take everyone's side but our own, and I think it is a problem. — 2GB, The Ray Hadley Morning Show, 29th January, 2014

According to the Prime Minister who sighed, chuckled and enthusiastically agreed with shockjock Ray Hadley in that interview last Wednesday, the ABC is unpatriotic and unwilling to cheer the home team.

The next day, the PM's attack was front page news in Rupert Murdoch's Daily Telegraph:

THE ABC OF TREACHERY PM brands national broadcaster un-Australian — Daily Telegraph, 30th January, 2014

The PM's salvo also made the front page of Fairfax papers ... where the former Liberal leader and current Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull dared to challenge his boss ...

Abbott, Turnbull clash over ABC The national broadcaster 'instinctively takes everyone's side but Australia's'. [Abbott] 'What's the alternative ... the editor-in-chief [of the ABC] becomes the prime minister?' [Turnbull] — Sydney Morning Herald, 30th January, 2014

And so, with battle lines drawn, and a battalion of Coalition members, including Julie Bishop, Kevin Andrews and Ian MacDonald, joining the assault, the trumpet did sound.

STEVE PRICE: ... you'd have to say tonight, for the first time since the election of the Abbott government, 'Let the culture wars begin'. And who said Tony Abbott didn't have an appetite for this battle? Well I've said he didn't. Andrew Bolt has suggested he probably didn't. But it seems he's for turning. — 2GB, Nights with Steve Price, 29th January, 2014

So what provoked the Prime Minister to finally attack?

The first trigger, no doubt, is the ABC's role in publishing leaked documents from US whistleblower Edward Snowden, which sensationally revealed that Australia spied on Indonesia's president and his wife back in 2009.

The PM told Hadley with dismay ...

TONY ABBOTT: ... the ABC seemed to delight in broadcasting allegations by a traitor, this gentleman Snowden ... ... and of course the ABC didn't just report what he said, they took the lead in advertising what he said and ... RAY HADLEY: They did it feverishly. TONY ABBOTT: That was, that was a deep concern, and I said so at the time. — 2GB, The Ray Hadley Morning Show, 29th January, 2014

The second spark is the ABC's more recent allegations that the Navy mistreated asylum seekers on boats turned back to Indonesia, by deliberately burning their hands.

The claims of Navy torture-as some other media groups described it-caused a big row last month.

And the row got bigger last week when an ABC News researcher sent an email asking for witnesses.

This found its way to Andrew Bolt who seized on this ill-judged admission.

My boss feels the allegations are likely to be untrue ... — Herald Sun Online, 28th January, 2014

The next step was for Bolt to ask ...

Then why the frantic pushing of these damaging claims? — Herald Sun Online, 28th January, 2014

Soon fellow News Corp columnist Miranda Devine was asking ...

So just why does the ABC hate our navy? — Daily Telegraph, 29th January, 2014

And 2GB's Ray Hadley was angrily complaining to the Prime Minister ...

RAY HADLEY: ... these blokes and these women get away with this on a daily basis and no-one holds them accountable ... — 2GB, The Ray Hadley Show, 29th January, 2014

The Prime Minister replied that he shared Ray's frustration and the ABC should support the home team ...

TONY ABBOTT: Look, you know if there's credible evidence the ABC, like all other news organisations, is entitled to report it, but you can't leap to be critical, you shouldn't leap to be critical of your own country and you certainly ought to be prepared to give the Australian Navy and its hardworking personnel the benefit of the doubt. — 2GB, The Ray Hadley Show, 29th January, 2014

The allegations of Navy mistreatment were widely reported by the Australian media.

And here's how it happened.

Claims of burns and torture first surfaced on Indonesian news sites on 7th January.

The burns claims were repeated by Agence France Presse on the 8th.

And on the 9th they made it to Channel Seven which showed a video from a boat the Navy had intercepted and talked to asylum seekers making the claims ...

ASYLUM SEEKER: ... you know the engine was very hot, so they put on them as a punishment. — Channel Seven News, 9th January, 2014

On 10th January, allegations of 'burns' and 'torture' were also published in The Australian , with a strong denial from the Head of the Defence Force David Hurley.

But it was the ABC who ran hardest on the story and gave it most credence

TIM PALMER: New footage appears to back asylum seekers' claims of mistreatment by the Australian Navy. — ABC AM, 22nd January, 2014

On 22nd January the ABC obtained exclusive video of the asylum seekers' injuries, and spoke to the local police by phone.

GEORGE ROBERTS: Indonesian authorities have confirmed that seven asylum seekers had to be given medical treatment for severe burns on their hands. Indonesian police say that the burns were from being forced by Australian navy personnel to hold onto hot pipes coming out of their boat's engine. — ABC News 24, 22nd January, 2014

But this is where the ABC over-reached, by essentially endorsing the allegations of Navy mistreatment on radio, TV and online throughout the day.

Because even if the police did back the asylum seekers' claims, there was no way of knowing they were true.

The police and asylum seekers were on Rote Island off West Timor and in nearby Kupang.

The incident had happened way out in the ocean. And the Navy wasn't talking.

Meanwhile, the ABC's George Roberts, and it seems all other Australian reporters, were in Bali, Jakarta, Sydney or Canberra, trying to wrangle the truth from people who spoke little or no English.

We believe the ABC should have been far more cautious, given the evidence it had, and given it was making such a big call against the Navy.

And late last week, when the ABC and The Australian finally made it to Kupang, this became only too obvious .

ABC navy brutality reports unravel — The Weekend Australian, 1-2 February, 2014

It now seems the burns occurred in a scuffle with the Navy. And were not deliberately inflicted by Navy personnel.

We believe ABC News got it wrong.

And if so ... it needs to admit it, to find out how the mistake was made, and to make sure it will not happen again.

But tonight the ABC's Managing Director Mark Scott had this to say .

It was an important story to report, the right story to report, the result of investigations by the ABC. And what's very important in this context, is that it's clear that the ABC was not judge and jury on that matter. The ABC did not say that these allegations had been proved — ABC PM, 3rd February, 2014

That aside, you have to ask if the Snowden and Navy mistreatment stories explain the current storm of criticism, and we believe they don't. It's part of a bigger game.

The ABC has come under constant attack in the past year the Murdoch press, led by The Australian and columnists in News Corp's tabloids.

This has been matched by a barrage of criticism on commercial radio ...

ANDREW BOLT: It's not only crushing diversity, crushing innovation... — 2GB, The Ray Hadley Morning Show, 4th December, 2013

ALAN JONES: The ABC's involvement in this treason, yes that's the word... — 2GB The Alan Jones Breakfast Show, 20th November, 2013

RAY HADLEY: It has become an arm of the Labor party... — 2GB, The Ray Hadley Morning Show, 4th December, 2013

When the Prime Minister finally joined the chorus last week the ABC's enemies and detractors put the boot in again.

Aunty's tactical mistakes haunt it with a vengeance — The Weekend Australian, 1-2 February, 2014

ABC's shame as slanders continue — Daily Telegraph, 1st February, 2014

On Friday, a long leader in the Australian called for ABC managing director Mark Scott to quit and laid into ABC staff for being a ...

... collectivist inner-city clique of broadcasters, bloggers, latter-day Trotskyites and inked hipsters ... — The Australian, 31st January, 2014

Singling out Fran Kelly, Mark Colvin and Barrie Cassidy, The Australian urged all ABC journalists to:

... admit Aunty's age-old values of fairness and balance are merely a pretence and that the news agenda across radio bulletins and ABC24 is driven by the Greens-Left activist complex. — The Australian, 31st January, 2014

OK, it's a fair cop. I admit the crime.

I only voted Liberal at the last election as a cover.

Now, despite what the Australian says, the vast majority of Australians seem happy with their national broadcaster.

Indeed, in June News Corp's own Newspoll found that 85% of Australians believe the ABC is valuable

A similar thumbs-up comes from Essential Research, which found last March that after the High Court, the ABC is the most trusted institution in Australia

But the ABC's popularity has never stopped governments attacking it.

As ABC managing director David Hill told Sydney Morning Herald readers on Friday

Practically every prime minister since Bob Menzies has at some stage complained that the ABC either got it wrong, or demonstrated bias in reporting a story. — Sydney Morning Herald, 31st January, 2014

Late last year, in the hope of defusing new attacks, the ABC set up its own internal bias inquiry.

But it hasn't stemmed the tide of criticism. And David Hill predicts it won't.

No doubt Abbott's recent comments are the first of a series of new assaults we can expect on the ABC in the coming months. — Sydney Morning Herald, 31st January, 2014

The first Coalition target, according to The Australian, will be the ABC's international satellite service which Rupert Murdoch has long wanted for Sky News ...

EXCLUSIVE ABC's Asia TV network faces axe — The Australian, 30th January, 2014

The next will be cuts to ABC funding in the budget in May.

Remarkably, even the Australian's Dennis Shanahan declares the current attacks on the ABC are designed to provide justification for those cuts.

He means attacks by the government, of course, not the Australian.

And in the meantime, an efficiency audit of the ABC-to report in April-has been announced by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who assures the ABC he is among its strongest defenders and who seems keen to hose it all down.

The day that everybody says that they're happy with the ABC, they don't have a complaint about it, then it's probably become a bit dull. — ABC, 7.30, 30th January, 2014

But the big question is: will this be the end of it?

And the answer is, No. Or not if News Corp and Andrew Bolt have their way.

ANDREW BOLT: The ABC is just too big for a state-funded, government-beholden, media outlet. It runs an empire so vast, across so many platforms, that no private media operator is even allowed to do that. — 2GB, Nights with Steve Price, 29th January, 2014

We'll come back to that issue in another program and to the charge that ABC News Online makes life impossible for its commercial rivals.

But meanwhile let's get back to flag waving and what the ABC's job really should be. According to former boss David Hill.

It is a great shame governments don't recognise the ABC's greatest patriotic duty is to continue to hold governments to account by the provision of independent, unbiased, and honest news to the Australian public. — Sydney Morning Herald, 31st January, 2014

It's hard to disagree with that. But if the ABC is to keep the trust of the Australian public it needs to nurture that balance and honesty.

And it needs to come clean when it gets things wrong.

All in all it's going to be an interesting year, especially here on Media Watch.

And don't forget you can read more on our website, including a response from the ABC , you can watch us on iview, and contact Media Watch or me on Twitter.

But for now, until next week, Good bye.