Keywords: Public Broadcaster
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 01 December 2014
29 Comments
ABC presenter Quentin Dempster has referred to a 'nincompoop' in senior ABC management who was heard to comment on the need to get rid of the 'strangle-hold of specialisation'. Radio National is the home of specialisation at the ABC, and religion has been one of its signature specialisations, because of the public broadcaster's 'cultural diversity' charter obligation. Management is executing the emasculation of the ABC that Rupert Murdoch expects from the Abbott Government as a reward for his role in its 2013 election victory.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 21 November 2014
25 Comments
Governments are tempted to use budgetary accountability as a neat cover for corporatisation of public utilities. As public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS do not inhabit the same philosophical territory as Sky News or Channel 7. The ABC's cuts are based on an efficiency report prepared by a financial officer from the commercial media. It does not seem relevant that balanced budgets do not deliver educated audiences.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 06 October 2014
14 Comments
ABC management is compliant with the Government in foreshadowing cuts to programs it considers expensive and expendable, thereby shielding the minister from public criticism and from having to justify the blood-letting. Perhaps it need not bother doing the Government’s dirty work, as Essential polling has revealed that a majority of Australians is worried about cuts to the public broadcaster. If the government is more driven by polls than ideology, it will go easy on the ABC.
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EUREKA STREET TV
- Peter Kirkwood
- 03 September 2014
5 Comments
Award-winning journalist Geraldine Doogue explores the experiences of women in leadership, from the nuns who taught her at school to former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She reflects on the importance of ambition and achieving work/life balance, and analyses the role of women leaders in the Catholic Church.
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AUSTRALIA
- Walter Hamilton
- 09 July 2014
5 Comments
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's perspective on modern history would offend most Australians. He sits in the camp that believes Japan fought a defensive war. Abe and Tony Abbott will adopt a series of measures for strengthening joint military exercises, enhance people-to-people exchanges, formally sign a 'free trade' agreement, and much more. A full-course meal that Australians would be advised to chew over well.
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AUSTRALIA
How ironic that, even as Attorney General Brandis ensures the rights of 'bigots', the rest of us find our own rights under threat. Liberal state governments continue to roll out laws that affect the more marginalised and less privileged among us. Victoria's new 'anti-protest' laws and Queensland's 'anti-bikie' laws threaten public protest and assembly, which for most of us is how we exercise our freedom of expression.
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MEDIA
- Michael Mullins
- 02 February 2014
18 Comments
Tony Abbott's suggestion that the ABC should be patriotic in its news reporting is not compatible with its Charter obligation to truth and impartiality. But it is a reminder that the ABC has muddied its own waters by taking on the running of the Government's Australia Network international television service, which gives patriotism priority over truth.
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MEDIA
- Walter Hamilton
- 29 November 2013
14 Comments
The ABC does not have a special responsibility to be 'diplomatic' in deciding what to report and what not to report. It does not have an obligation to adjust its news judgments to implicitly support government policies, or to weigh up what the majority of the public might think to do in such a situation. It must only exercise its professional judgment as to 'news value', and be accountable for it.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 03 June 2013
18 Comments
The ABC's efforts to compete with commercial media restrict the diversity of its content and help to make the case for it to be sold off. It might do well to withdraw from audience ratings surveys in favour of juries or another mechanism better geared to measure the content diversity that is its reason for being.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
- 31 May 2013
It wasn't so much a phone call as a lifeline — the day the fertility clinic called me with news of my pregnancy. After six years of hoping, the life my husband and I had all but given up on was to be ours. At that same time, radio host Sheridan Voysey and his wife Merryn were facing a more heartbreaking outcome.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
- 08 March 2013
7 Comments
Adams once told me about his room of gods. It's chockablock with deities from myriad cultures and creeds. While Adams is revered as Godfather to Australia's atheists, at heart he remains a young boy huddled under the covers at night; buried under the considerable challenges due his story of origin.
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MEDIA
- Michael Mullins
- 09 October 2012
32 Comments
Social media has outsmarted 2GB's Macquarie Radio Network management and forced them to cancel advertising on Alan Jones' program. But it is unlikely that the collective rage against Jones' behaviour will be sustained, respectable, and ultimately effective, unless the passion is accompanied by reasoned argument.
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