This piece is part of a Crikey Deep Dive series: “What is the ABC For?”. We’re trying to unravel and distill some of the crucial questions the ABC should be asking itself in this post-Guthrie/Milne era.
The ABC has never been more important in its 90 year history. The slow death of the traditional commercial media that we’re now so familiar with means we’re now ever more reliant on the public broadcasters for quality journalism, as funding for that dries up and commercial outlets lose their appetite for risk. Serious current affairs has almost entirely vanished from commercial television; round after round of redundancies have taken hundreds of journalists out of Fairfax and News Corp papers. Quality journalism is crucial to a functioning democracy, and bit by bit the burden of providing that has shifted toward the ABC, first in regional communities, and increasingly in national affairs.
This shift hasn’t been accompanied by additional funding — the ABC has had to sack hundreds of its own staff in order to meet huge funding cuts by the current government over the last five years. And while its role has grown more crucial, it has grown more contested as well, with its dying commercial rivals lashing out at any competition it provides and the Coalition abandoning its support for public broadcasting in favour of, within the Liberal Party, a policy of privatisation and a practice of funding cuts and incessant war.
There’s another reason why the ABC is more important now than ever. In a period of deep disillusion with the political process, fierce resentment toward big business, anger at the major churches for their cover-up of mass pedophilia and general distrust in the media, the ABC remains, unusually, a trusted institution. In Essential Research’s most recent trust in media polling, the ABC TV news — as it always has — is the most trusted source for Australians, with 62% having a lot or some trust in it; 61% have some or a lot of trust in SBS TV news, and 57% have some or a lot of trust in ABC radio news. The best commercial outlets could achieve is 48% for commercial TV news. The public broadcasters are thus the only source of news and current affairs in the country that have the trust of the majority of the population, despite the relentless demonisation of the ABC as a fount of doctrinaire socialism by the Coalition and News Corp.
As important as trust, the ABC is also the one media outlet that is commonly used in a media landscape that is fragmenting ever more rapidly. Just 10% of Australians say they don’t use ABC TV news and current affairs. No other media outlet can claim to reach 90% of Australians, who like other media consumers elsewhere, now have the power to control which outlets they access their news from. The ABC is the one media outlet outside the self-constructed echo chamber of many news consumers, accessed by nearly everyone, contributing to a shared understanding of the world and shared facts, even if their meaning is strongly contested.
This was not the world in which the ABC was established, or within which it operated, for most of its history. Australia, and Australia’s media landscape, has changed radically, but the ABC remains the product of an early-80s charter that has been updated on occasion since then, sometimes usefully, sometimes not (who can forget Richard Alston’s ridiculous “datacasting”). The role of the ABC, and how it performs that role, is thus an appropriate subject for debate, and one Crikey has invited several commentators to address. As Simon Cowan notes in his piece, the history of the ABC — founded in the pre-TV era — isn’t necessarily the best guide to what it should be doing now, and a requirement to deliver comprehensive programming may no longer be appropriate at a time when commercial broadcasters are facing existential threats.
Plainly, there are tasks that all will agree the ABC should perform, such as regional programming and high-quality news and current affairs. But beyond that lies disputed territory — and weaving those roles into a coherent charter and organisational philosophy capable of withstanding poor boards and poor managing directors is another challenge in itself. The ABC Act, and the charter within it, has served Australia well for 35 years, but we need to discuss whether it’s fit for purpose for the 2020s and beyond.
Interesting series of articles – written by journalists with varying interests and a Labor politician – ? well balanced
The ABC has become a cess pit for lefty’s, with political shows over run by washed out Labor and Greens identities and wantabees, like Barrie Cassidy (ex Labor Staffer), Juanita Phillips, Laura Tingle, Tony Jones. the panels are always stacked and so are the audience and when they do pick someone from right, its always a buffoon, who cannot mount any argument. The ABC needs to be gutted of its political on air and off air people
The crucial point of difference between a public broadcaster and commercial media is its customer. Commercial media has the advertiser as its customer and its job is to deliver an audience to the advertiser. Public media has the nation as its customer and its job is to be a trusted source for the nation.
The government is the custodian on behalf of the people. It is not the owner or the customer. It genuinely should be ‘Our ABC’.
Quite so Dennis. Once realised that commercial media, especially radio and tv, are in the advertising business and the shows are the bits between the ads, then i automatically lowered my expectations.
I’d like to see the ABC’s budget vastly increased – double or triple and create a modern soft power cultural presence in our region. Revive Radio Australia. Produce foreign language news, high grade drama, documentaries and fine and not so fine arts.
We can’t do belt and road but we can offer the perspective of a successful democracy and way of life.
Valid point Mark, but when you say “I’d like to see the ABC’s budget vastly increased – double or triple”, do you have a source to fund this largesse? What other government departments or services must be de-funded in order to boost the ABC’s coffers to two or three BILLION dollars a year? Or maybe you support the UK model of a licence fee (currently around $A260)?
Easy targets would be offshore detention and submarine contract reassignment. But they’re only short term. The new war museum and Barrier reef fund boondoggle for another billion. I’m sure a well funded ABC could find more haha.
Doing away with the diesel excise freebie for miners & farmers (aka soil miners) would be favourite, followed by disallowing advertising as a tax write off,
end subsidies to private schools & health care.
Excellent precis. The distinction between the ABC & the rest is crucial and applies to all media.
When Fairfax could rely upon the rivers of gold it was fearless but as those ran dry it became less & less willing to upset the monied class.
Without doubt the trust rating of the ABC would be even higher if the LNP did not put so much effort into demonising it.
Aside from genuinely balanced (not false balanced) news and current affairs, the ABC also should be a source of entertainment that is not US based drivel, shot through with mind- numbing ads.
Hmmm … some selective statistics there Bernard, not including the Essential figures that say that more people think more money should be spent on “regional and rural areas” rather than the largely Ultimo-based “news and current affairs”; or that “trust” in ABC News has decreased (comparing the 2018 figures with those of 2010); or that only 40% believe that ABC reporting is “unbiased” (rising to 52% for Greens voters – which kinda suggests where the bias is perceived to be). And the ABC started down the path of reducing funding to every other department and branch in 2010 in order to launch a supposed 24-hour news channel that was never adequately planned or properly funded – all of this years before Tony Abbott started slashing the taxpayer funds. I absolutely agree with you that something needs to be done and the first of those things is to restore some internal balance to funding for programming as directed by the Charter and return the ABC to its proper role as a ‘Broadcasting’ organisation not just a “news organisation” that some erroneously see as its place.