So how many people has the ABC sent to the UK to cover the death and funeral of Elizabeth II? It’s 27, according to the ABC — plus two extra journalists or former journalists who were coincidentally in Europe at the time, who have been roped in to help, including veteran correspondent Phil Williams, who though he retired from the ABC last year can’t seem to stay away from the joint.
ABC News has a team of “around” 12 journalists and nine production staff in the UK, it says.
But ABC Radio has also sent six people — three presenters (we’re told Virginia Trioli and Raf Epstein from ABC Melbourne and Richard Glover, ABC Sydney Drive host) and three production people. Crikey has been told Trioli, Epstein and Glover travelled business class, but the ABC declined to confirm this.
Why ABC Local Radio has its own special representation isn’t clear given the score of journalists and producers who’ve been separately sent. The ABC says the presenters are “filing stories and providing live updates for the entire network, including the 44 local daily breakfast shows”. Why it takes three to do this also isn’t clear — Trioli, who has huge television experience as well, or Epstein, who is a veteran journalist, could surely have managed it themselves.
The ABC was always going to cop criticism for its coverage of the queen’s death — do too little, and conservatives would have belted the national broadcaster yet again, while progressives and people who couldn’t care less about the monarchy would always have been upset with anything more than minimal coverage. The actual number of people who could ever possibly be happy with the level of ABC coverage is likely to be rather small. But 27 people, including three radio presenters?
Maybe Trioli could host a Q+A in London while she’s there. It would be likely to be much better than what we’re being served up back here.
News Corp is wrong. The ABC is not filled with communists, it’s filled with closet monarchists. Remind me, what was Ita’s former occupation, and how many front covers and inside stories featured the British Royals?
“it’s filled with closet monarchists.”
Or it has just a few, but in key positions.
Agreed. And it trickles down.
Golden Shower is another name for the ‘trickle down’ effect.
When it boils down to it, Monarchy basically amounts to an admission of failure as a society. We can do so much better.
This would be a good time to get arrested for a heinous crime in Australia. The ABC and most of the other media will barely cover it, even if they know about it at all. Also other international stories are taking a back seat. I think the 30 million people displaced by flooding in Pakistan are watching the Queen’s funeral from their rafts.
Or a good time to promote oil, gas and mining exploration- oh, and why not coal too?
Germany is currently knocking down one of the few old growth forests left in the old BDR (Hambach near Buir in North Rhine-Westphalia between Aachen & Köln) to dig the very poor quality lignite/brown coal to generate electricity.
Pity about NordStream 1 & 2 gas pipelines not being available – must be some technical problem…
Sad but true.
Also quite funny!
ABC totally over the top ridiculous re Royals. There is coverage of nothing else.
I’m not at all surprised at this considering the head of the ABC has stated that in her previous job as editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly she knew that having headline stories of the royals increased sales by 100,000 per issue. Little wonder that the ABC is now somewhat intellectually facile as the current hysteria demonstrates.
I think Barry Cassidy got it right with his recent comment about the ABC’s abysmal ratings this past week. He said, with just a degree of understatement: “I think the ABC may have misread its audience.”
With the old guard across all departments now all gone, the new lot under Ita are manifestly just floundering. And we lot have no choice but to just turn off – and probably never to return.