The Australian reports today that recently appointed ABC chair Ita Buttrose has taken charge of the board’s selection committee that will choose the public broadcaster’s next managing director. The paper says current State Library of Victoria CEO and the ABC’s former news director Kate Torney ruled herself out of contention after learning the job has to be Sydney-based.
Anyone not realising that shouldn’t have bothered putting themself forward.
There’s usually plenty of flexibility in high-level roles, though I guess the ABC is quite different to a private company.
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On the other hand, it’s 2019 and it’s not as if the ABC doesn’t have a presence in Melbourne.
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Nothing wrong in exploring options.
Anzac Day on ABC
The ABC has a proud history as broadcast partner of Anzac Day services and in 2019, we again invite you to share in the spirit of the occasion.
On Thursday 25 April, we will be broadcasting Anzac Day events and providing coverage across the ABC on TV, Radio, iview and online.
ABC RADIO
Across the ABC Radio network, there will be a range of specialist Anzac Day programming.
ABC Regional and Capital Cities: Listen to the National Dawn Service broadcast from Canberra from 5:28am to 6:15am on your local ABC Radio station. Then stay tuned from 10am for national Anzac Day coverage from around the country.
Triple J: Hack will be running stories about younger veterans
- The History Listen will focus on an Anzac story – a feature on Australian soldiers missing in action during the Korean War in the 50’s.
- Conversations will feature Gwen Cherne – a representative of the Invictus Games.
- Life Matters will interview retired soldier Gary Wilson who survived a catastrophic Black Hawk helicopter accident in Afghanistan in 2010.
- On Soul Search, Historian Colin Bale studied thousands of Australian epitaphs in the war cemeteries of the Western Front, finding them less patriotic – and more religious – than the public war memorials of the era.
ABC Classic: Broadcast of the ‘Digger’s Requiem’ – a work by seven living Australian composers, telling the story of the iconic battles on the western front
Listen on your radio, online or via the ABC listen app.
ABC TV
The ABC’s coverage will coordinate the key commemorative Anzac Day events from Australia, Turkey and France.
From 4.30am AEST, ABC will broadcast the Anzac Dawn Service from Sydney, followed by the Anzac Dawn Service from Canberra at 5:30am AEST. This will be followed from 8:45am AEST with live local coverages of marches in all State and Territory capital cities.
At 12:30pm AEST, the Gallipoli Dawn Service will commence from the Anzac Commemorative site at ANZAC Cove in Turkey. The cove is on the Gallipoli Peninsula and following the landing, became the main base for the Australian and New Zealand troops during the 8-month campaign.
At 1:30pm AEST, watch the Anzac Day Dawn Service from the Australian National Memorial in Villers-Bretonneux – the French town that was re-captured by the Australians on Anzac Day in 1918.
As is customary, the Anzac Day Address by the Governor-General, His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC, will be broadcast nationally immediately before the ABC evening news bulletin at 7pm.
ABC iview
ABC iview will feature a special collection of Anzac Day short stories available from Thursday 18 April.
SOCIAL MEDIA
ABC will stream Anzac Day services across social media on the day.
- For your local Anzac Day state march, watch a live-stream from your capital city Facebook page
– ABC Adelaide
– ABC Brisbane
– ABC Canberra
– ABC Darwin
– ABC Hobart
– ABC Melbourne
– ABC Perth
– ABC Sydney - The Canberra Anzac Day march will be broadcast on the ABC Australia Facebook page and ABC Australia Youtube
- Commemorative events from Villers-Bretonneux and Gallipoli can be viewed on the ABC News Facebook page
A subtle cut? Previously Melbourne’s had local coverage of the Dawn Service and the ANZAC March.
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ABC responds to Lowy Institute article on Bougainville coverage
From Kellie Mayo, ABC NEWS Managing Editor, Asia Pacific:
The ABC was surprised and disturbed that the Lowy Interpreter published the recent article “Australian media: missing in action on Bougainville” which included claims of a “paucity of coverage by the ABC of one of the most important running stories in the Pacific”.
The ABC supports the author’s desire for more Australian domestic mainstream media coverage of the issues relating to Bougainville – and the Pacific more broadly – but her specific statements about ABC News coverage are wrong, misleading, not based on a proper research methodology and could have been addressed had she contacted the ABC before publication.
A simple search of online coverage is manifestly inadequate in conveying the breadth and depth of coverage ABC News provides and a very unfair way to judge the contributions made by our teams.
As anyone familiar with international media coverage will be aware, the Pacific is one of the few regions in the world where you could argue that digital content offerings are less relevant than radio and TV (although clearly not irrelevant), which is why ABC News focuses its efforts in the region on radio platforms, as radio has the highest reach.
This non-digital coverage won’t always be surfaced through search. In any event, the author has still underestimated the number of our content offerings available online.
It is wrong to imply that the three Pacific news and current affairs services on ABC Radio Australia are somehow separate to ABC News. The Pacific Beat, Pacific Mornings and Wantok (Tok Pisin) teams are part of ABC News . All three teams work together in the Asia Pacific Newsroom in Melbourne under the Managing Editor Asia Pacific, who reports to the ABC’s Director of News.
The Pacific teams are among more than 40 journalists and producers in the Asia Pacific Newsroom and they work in conjunction with their digital and TV colleagues to provide regional stories for a variety of ABC News platforms and programs in English and in language.
The Pacific teams also work closely with the ABC’s PNG Correspondent, Natalie Whiting, and the ABC’s International Desk, which coordinates Australia’s largest team of foreign correspondents and bureaux. No other Australian media organisation makes this level of commitment to international coverage.
In regards to the PNG bureau specifically, so often the ABC asks the questions without fear or favour on the ground that provide the answers other media outlets run with. As one example, the article mentions the deferral of the Bougainville independence referendum. It was Natalie Whiting’s sit-down interview with Bertie Ahern, which ran on radio and TV, that provided the first confirmation the referendum would be delayed, after ongoing speculation. Natalie then covered the meeting where the new date was set and broke the news online of when it would be.
A little more robustness in the author’s search method, such as reading the RNZ online coverage of this, would show the RNZ article is actually based on the ABC’s interview: https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/383586/ahern-expects-bougainville-referendum-deadline-to-shift.
The article published by the Interpreter also mentions the controversial changes to Bougainville’s mining law. Our Pacific Affairs Reporter, Liam Fox, himself a former PNG correspondent, has covered this story extensively, along with other members of our Pacific teams.
The author has turned her complaint about the lack of Pacific coverage by Australian mainstream media into criticism of the organisation that does provide independent, consistent and detailed coverage of the region.
Our committed Pacific specialists work hard to provide a trusted ABC News service to their audiences: all our stories are gathered and independently verified by our own journalists in line with the ABC’s editorial policies. It is simplistic and wrong to compare the Pacific coverage of ABC News and RNZ online based on a search engine story count and to draw conclusions from that.
Well it seems Melbourne will be local on Anzac Day. Raf Epstein doing breakfast from the Shrine and Dawn Service and Faine doing the march again.
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I feel sorry for ABC staff which could be facing the chop in the next three years. With this funding squeeze, there will be less first-run programming throughout the calendar year. ABC simply can’t compete against commercial networks and Foxtel to secure first-run British dramas and documentaries. Ratings will suffer as a result.
I also reckon ABC Radio’s coverage of 2020 Tokyo Olympics will suffer because of funding freeze. Despite affordable airfares between Australia and Japan, I think the ABC will only be able to send reporters to Tokyo to interview athletes. Everyone else will have to call the sports over the TV in Sydney.
Is there any actual cut in funding or is this simply not providing funding increases for inflation?
Pressure’s on Ita to work some magic on the PM
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Not providing funding increases for inflation.
That is not a cut then. The management have to simply do their job in managing their costs. Money doesn’t grow on trees.