Who Needs the ABC?

Why taking it for granted is no longer an option

Matthew Ricketson, Patrick Mullins

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English

Scribe Publications
29 March 2022

Social & cultural history; Central government policies; Media, information & communication industries; Press & journalism; Australian Society

For the past nine years, the ABC has been besieged. Its funding has been slashed. Its staffing levels have been cut. It has been assailed by complaints from ministers and prime ministers. Its board has been stacked with a succession of political appointees. It has been relentlessly attacked by commercial media outlets. And it has suffered crisis after crisis.

Who Needs the ABC? charts how the best-trusted news organisation in Australia arrived at its current predicament- doing the most it ever has, with less than it needs, under a barrage of constant criticism.

This book examines the profound changes that have swept through the Australian media, technology, and political landscapes in the past decade, and explores the tense relationship between the ABC and governments of both stripes over the past 40 years. It dispels any complacency about the ABC's future by charting the very real threat now posed by the hostility of the Liberal-National Party coalition, and the damage that it has done to the ABC over the past nine years.

Amid this, Who Needs the ABC? identifies the vital role that the ABC has played and continues to play in Australia today- in its award-winning journalism, in its vast array of cultural programming on television, radio, and online, and the comprehensive service it provides, geographically and culturally, to people across the country.

At a time when the truth has to vie with obfuscation and misinformation, this book offers a rejoinder to the ABC's critics, points to a way out of the ABC's current predicament, and answers the question posed by the title. Who Needs the ABC? We do.

Who Needs the ABC?: Why taking it for granted is no longer an option

By: Matthew Ricketson, Patrick Mullins
Imprint: Scribe Publications
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 208mm, Width: 136mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 273g
ISBN: 9781922310927
ISBN 10: 1922310921
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 29 March 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Patrick Mullins is a Canberra-based writer and academic who has a PhD from the University of Canberra. Tiberius with a Telephone, his first book, won the 2020 NSW Premier's Non-Fiction Award and the 2020 National Biography Award. He is also the author of The Trials of Portnoy- how Penguin brought down Australia's censorship system. Matthew Ricketson (Author) Professor Matthew Ricketson is an academic, author, and journalist. He is head of the Communication group at Deakin University; before that, he was inaugural professor of journalism at the University of Canberra between 2009 and 2017, and ran the journalism program at RMIT for 11 years. He has worked for a number of newspapers and media organisations, and is the author of several books. He assisted former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein QC in the Independent Media inquiry that reported to the federal government in 2012.