The fight is on to defend the ABC.
The local branch of Friends of the ABC meets this Saturday 14 December at Bangalow Bowlo at 1pm.
Be there to add your voice of support for the ABC in the face of last week’s calls by Abbott government members for radical budget cuts to the ABC.
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi has suggested, ‘we could perhaps cut the ABC budget and allow the commercial media operators to compete’. Meaning Rupert Murdoch.
Members of the government do not like the ABC’s reporting on refugee matters, our spying on the Indonesian president exposés and that our national intelligence agency under the Howard/Downer government illegally bugged the offices of the East Timorese government on behalf of oil and gas giant, Woodside Petroleum.
David Bradbury, Wilsons Creek
Couldn’t agree more with David Bradbury.
Bravo Mr Bradbury… no doubt the barbarians are at the gate again…
Every time the LNP get power they have a try…
Mirrabella for chairman indeed….
“Aunty” is our last bastion of free speech and freedom of debate/information in Australia. Murdoch NO! ABC YES!
Heaven help us if we’re forced to rely on the likes of Rupert Murdoch for unbiased news and information. Decent Australian drama/comedy employing Australian actors would also be lost forever. We need to get rid of a few useless politicians and use the money saved to fund OUR ABC!
Yes all power to the collective!
Our Aunty (the ABC) will need the troops to mass mobilize if my radar is correct. Our Treasurer Hockey keeps preparing us for ‘big cutback on funding’. With the political debt owed by the Tories at the big end of town and their inability to accommodate freedom of speech; our leader “Mr. Rabbit”would be happy to help Mr. Murdoch, whose recent media exit from the UK still loudly rings with his wrecking ball strategies.
Yet research reveals that Aunty is perceived to be the least biased media organization in Australia. Indeed, because of technological convergence the ABC is in direct competition with privately owned media in a much more comprehensive way than ever before. Dennis Muller (Media Studies, Melbourne University) notes that Murdoch’s Newscorp takes particular exception to this and has been running an aggressive campaign against the ABC attempting to create a climate in which the ABC is seen as an unwanted drain on the public purse and an encroucher on private commercial territory. As we know, Murdoch has been successful in getting politicians to do what he wants in the field of media policy specifically. With the present governments preference for secrecy I suspect there will be heavy leaning to change the ABC Charter and funding. I hope I am wrong. If not, backwards we go to the echo of old prejudices endorsed by the Tories. Gavin Souter when scribing the history of the Sydney Morning Herald noted that its “inner” Charter was ‘against emancipists, penal reformers, Catholics and Blacks”. All the Tories need today is more secrecy and dismantling of freedom of speech structures. Alas, sweet democracy. .