Our regular correspondent, Marcus May, reads the tea leaves on what we can expect from the anti-ABC forces during the coming election campaign. We were warned!

The trends for ABC watchers are already emerging, as the run-up to the next federal election heats up.

• The Murdoch media empire has moved into stage two ABC attack mode.
• The Coalition is preparing to piggyback on those media attacks with some serious possible moves on Aunty’s independence and impartiality.

As the ABC Alumni reported this week:

News Corp’s tabloid papers published a vicious attack on the ABC on Friday 14, and another on Saturday 15 February. Their content has been endlessly regurgitated on Sky News.

It looks like a continuing campaign to abolish the ABC will be a feature of News Corp's election coverage.  ABC Chairman Kim Williams issued a robust response to the first front-page article on Friday.

To back up Kim Williams, ABC Alumni director Dr Michael Ward, an acknowledged expert on ABC funding, has some other points to make – about the ABC, and about News Corp Australia. They provide excellent ammunition if you find yourself having to defend the ABC and its so-called “waste”.

Access Ward’s paper, “Getting the Facts Straight’” here

ABC Chair Kim Williams has labelled the claims published in News Corporation articles, that the public broadcaster costs Australians “more than the price of a Netflix subscription”, as “inaccurate, unbalanced and agenda-driven”.

Willliams is not the only one to worry about the culture within the Murdoch empire. When referring to Murdoch media, Rupert’s own son James, in an interview with The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, said, according to Coppin, “If lying to your audience is how you juice ratings”, “a good culture wouldn’t do that”.

The Murdoch articles last week claimed the ABC “fails to reach 10.6 million Australians”, despite managing a budget of $1.1 billion.

Mr Williams has rubbished those claims, confirming the ABC reaches “around 80 per cent of Australians” across its broadcast and publishing arms.

This is not the first time (by a long way) that Murdoch media outlets have misrepresented the truth about the ABC, and some say that it is “modus operandi” for the Murdoch media networks. We remember Rupert Murdoch’s 2023 statement under oath in a USA defamation case against Fox News that effectively admitted what was already clear: that Fox knowingly broadcast untrue information.

As respected independent journalism advocate Margaret Simons said at the time: “for a mainstream, professional news organisation to lie, and effectively admit to having done so – that is new, and we should stop and think about the implications. Nor was this a trivial lie. It was politically charged, and dangerous – concerning allegations the US election had been rigged.”

And why is there this on-going series of attacks by Murdoch on the ABC here in Australia, using false information to justify its argument?

Simple really, as Reuters pointed out in this graph, the ABC is a major competitor to News Corp:

And the other ABC enemies?

A reliable source has told ABC Friends that in some quarters it is believed Liberal leader Peter Dutton is likely, either before the election or after, to propose legislation to put a paywall in front of the popular ABC’s iview offering.

If true, such a move would be a significant building block to compromise and ultimately privatise the ABC (privatisation of the ABC is still official Liberal Party Council policy, despite its politicians saying they would never do that). At the very least it would discourage use of something valuable that the taxpayer has already paid for.

Why would Dutton bother with such a move when all the experts identify the key issues this election are likely to be cost of living & economic management, immigration refugees and asylum seekers, energy, the environment, health and Medicare, and mis/dis Information - not the ABC?

Well, apart from the fact that any move against the ABC would be very well received by the influential anti-ABC Murdoch press, the ABC has a proud tradition of holding politicians and their parties to account for what they put forward and say, especially during election times. Dutton has been exposed quite a few times by the ABC over the years, on his publicly expressed views on numerous matters and on key issues in the election campaign.

The ABC is not beholden to our political leaders and we expect it to resist being bullied – it will support the facts and publish the results of its ‘Fact Checking’ research on any asserted statement. So, for anyone pursuing a Trump style policy of blatant disregard for the truth, the ABC should be a problem.

And Dutton seems to take it personally – “The ABC is dead to me” he said in 2018, and nothing has changed since, as his regular ABC attacks have shown.

So, in this election, watch out for more direct attacks on the ABC, by both Murdoch press and Dutton & colleagues, using disinformation and misrepresentation in the hope that the public will take it on without question.

Let’s make sure that strategy fails!

Join ABC Friends HERE