The Un-Australian Media
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The Un-Australian Media Australia’s media has forever been dominated by the wealthy, arch conservative interests of big business and their government allies. The Packer and Murdoch dynasties have served up their version of the Australian way of life ought to be, their thinking as how we need to be governed, how to vote and what we should think. Along, of course, with a generous serving of bread and circuses. A fiercely inbred nationalism, patriotism to the motherland, a healthy dose of racism and the warm embrace of Christianity welded us into the nation we are today. We overlooked the unrelenting partisan, biased, corrupt lies of these proprietors who stopped at nothing to achieve their needs. Rupert Murdoch got caught out in the UK hacking all forms of communication, making hush money payments to possible whistleblowers, bribing police and toping-up the politicians’ slush funds. At the Government ‘inquiry’, Rupert said ‘it was the most humble day of my life’. Fortunately, Rupert’s staff carried the can so it was a one off! Tax evasion, money-laundering, extra-marital affairs, prostitution services for favoured patrons, indiscreet gatherings with organized crime and unlimited patronage of potential and present prime ministers and presidents were all part and parcel of the empires’ offerings and services. In today’s media scene, the Murdoch oligopoly controls 64% of Australian metropolitan newspapers whilst the other major player, Nine Entertainment controls 26%. Television is similarly in the hands of the few with Channels 7, 9 and 10 accounting for 74% of viewers. The ABC and SBS share the balance. The ABC The ABC began in 1929 and was the major news, information, sport, music, arts, entertainment, education and government service across the continent for decades. In the 50’s and 60’s the on- camera and broadcasting staff were white (and mostly still are) and spoke with a faux, snobby British accent. The ABC dutifully delivered the Queen’s Christmas Message, covered all royal visits, all occasions where the Governor-General represented the Queen at regal and national functions, provided extensive coverage of war celebrations and memorials including Remembrance Day and Anzac Day, the glory of Captain Cook’s landing and the First Settlement at Botany Bay, marking Australia Day. All States have a Queen’s Birthday holiday and religious services at Christmas and Easter are still extensively covered. Today the ABC is a sad, shallow representative of its former self. Having had a network of State and regional offices and stations across the country offering local and national broadcasting content, it has shrunk to an elitist Sydney-centric base. Gone are the State current affairs programs, regional news and a sense of local content in every sphere. Coverage of local, national and international sports including Commonwealth and Olympic Games has been taken over by commercial media with the ABC providing synopses based on network services. With the ABC headquartered in NSW, Radio National should be re-named ABC East Coast. During last summer the entire focus of RN was the bushfires and this year on Corona Virus which in both cases were eastern state events. Certainly, in need of local coverage, but not exclusively to the detriment of essential national news broadcasting. The same applies to television news. Perhaps the longest standing failure of the ABC is its inability to shake off the heritage of White Australia. In its international news coverage, the ABC puts almost its entire focus on the US, UK and Europe and in that sense generally mirrors our conservative governments (Long live the Queen and thank heavens for the Anzus Treaty). Utterly irrelevant news of Royal Family goings-on, the rantings of Boris Johnson and Trump deserve to be replaced by creating relationships with our neighbours even if they are deemed to be the wrong colour with curious cultures and strange religions. Fortunately, the ABC still has two highly regarded investigative journalism programs (Four Corners on TV and Background Briefing on RN). However, its news and current affairs programs are in breach of the Corporation’s Charter that requires it to provide independence and integrity and to gather and present accurate, impartial and objective journalism. For example, programs like Saturday Extra, Breakfast, A.M., P.M. Insiders, Q & A, Drive, The Drum and the 7.30 Report providing a broadcasting service to government officials and ministers who are trained to talk-over their hosts, to Think Tank representatives who have their own forms of communication and most unacceptable of all, providing a forum for lobbyists and red-neck journalists from private media to use the ABC as a mouth-piece to promote Climate Change denialism, false interpretation of the monarchy’s role in the Whitlam dismissal and so on and so forth. Think Tank persons, business groups, industry bodies, professional lobbyists, right-wing journalists and in-explicably, Sydney City Councilors, often make up the panel on The Drum. The ABC also has its own right-wing lobby as program hosts – Amanda Vanstone (Counterpoint), Tom Switzer (Between the Lines) and David Speers (Insiders). There is no left-wing representation, no counter to the failed neo-liberal notions of society and human wellbeing. To reinforce the Board and management’s cooperative approach to the big-end of town, the ABC presents specialist economic commentators wrap up of daily currency dealings, stock market reports, share market projections, economic forecasts. These experts are the people, the economists from the Big Four Banks (of Royal Commission fame) or their auditors from the Big Four Audit Firms ( the ones that were supposed to audit the Big 4 Banks). Adjunct to that is the daily commentary on Breakfast, the top-gun journalists from the AFR (Phil Coorey), The Australian (Peter van Onselen), SMH & Age (David Crowe) and surprisingly a moderate from The Conversation (Michelle Grattan). Totally unacceptable practice is Stan Grant (Fellow of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute) and Defence reporter, Andrew Greene, spruiking for ASPI and Leigh Sales hosting Corporate Club Australia’s fundraiser with Gladys Berejiklian. A fatal flaw in the ABC today is the failure to address, by way of programming, the key issues of public concern. For example, there is no Department dealing with environmental and conservation issues, especially climate change. Equally there is no special focus on our First Peoples. Add to that the future of democracy, dealing with change and planning for an unknown future. It is reasonable to conclude that the demise of the ABC is due in large part to the intense feeling of the business, industry and conservative politicians that it does not reflect their values, needs or wishes. That it has no role to play. Successive Liberal/National party governments have made their opposition very clear through aggressive Ministerial appointments, endless inquiries, direct opposition, reduced funding and stacking of the Board despite the pretense of an independent selection processes. PM Morrison made a ‘captain’s pick’ when he selected the near octogenarian, Ita Buttrose, as Chair. I think it is now fair to say that THE ABC IS REDUNDANT. JOHN BRENNAN.