Peter Marks, former ABC Technician and current ABC Alumni Board member, shares a personal reflection on how he fears for the future of the ABC as the federal election approaches.

ABC Alumni are people who have worked for the ABC. The vast majority loved their time with “auntie” and chose to work there, not for the money or glory, but because they treasure the output it produces and its place in the media landscape of Australia. The opportunity to go deep on topics without having to chase ratings or avoid criticisms of advertisers is unique and appreciated.

While the Labor government, in its first term, has acted to reverse some of the savage cuts of a run of conservative governments, the ABC is still at risk.

Global trends

There are global trends that both endanger and make the public broadcaster more important than ever.

Around the world, incumbent governments are being thrown out, with electorates hoping that conservative “strong” leadership will magically make them better off by unleashing the free market, being tough on crime, slashing immigration and cutting government itself.

Under normal circumstances, media would report factually on how these efforts pan out but today almost half of our population gets their “news” from social media and in particular charismatic but unqualified influencers.

Social news media

These platforms, and those who make a living on them, are not driven by truth but how viral their posts are and regrettably virality is correlated to outrage and all too often it is mis-information that gets the most traction.

Social media and search engines have stripped away the advertising revenue that used to support the journalism that filled our newspapers, radio and TV bulletins. It’s not surprising that the largest private media company, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is fighting for an audience. Unfortunately they see a national broadcaster, without ads, as a competitor to be attacked.

The anti-ABC campaign has run for years, most conspicuously on Sky News after dark and in the pages of News Ltd newspapers, led by The Australian. In the run up to the Federal election that campaign has ramped up with a widely run piece of disinformation by Stephen Drill that exclaimed “Time to say farewell to tax-funded aunty” beginning on February 14 2025 and continuing on with letters of agreement in the following days (see Marcus May’s piece in this newsletter).

If there’s one positive out of this prompt is that the new Chair, Kim Williams, was able to publish a robust takedown along with ABC Alumni Director Dr Michael Ward. 

Read the response

Self harm

Apart from attacks from outside, ABC Alumni understand that it’s a difficult organisation to manage. Excellent administrators, such as David Anderson, experience intense scrutiny not just from other media and Senate Estimates hearings, but also from highly articulate and opinionated staff.

We fear further inevitable “own goals” such as the recent case brought by Antoinette Lattouf, a five day contractor terminated after three. The legal cost (over a million dollars), and reputational damage done in defending the case looks like a waste of money that could have been spent on programs. The ABC was wedged. How could they not defend the case?

The ABC is criticised not just for wasting money defending itself in court but also for spending on marketing its products. All commercial organisations do both of these things - failing to defend and promote your product is a waste of the resources used to create it.

Even more modes

The ABC needs to be where the audience is. It used to be just on AM radio stations, but over the decades has added TV, FM radio, digital radio, audio streaming, TV audio, and video streaming. All but shortwave have continued and the costs mount. The oldest mode, the big AM stations in each state, are a vital part of the ABC service in emergency broadcasting.

ABC iview, ABC Listen and the podcasts distributed via numerous applications are a shining example of the depth of content the organisation creates. ABC Alumni know the complexity required behind the scenes and we fear how easy it is to attack it. Undoubtedly there will be more delivery modes in the future that will require resources to participate on them.

Quantity over quality

My big fear is that Australians will confuse the firehose of “news” they get on social media with the value of quality content making. There is a trend against consuming news as it’s just too chaotic and often depressing. This trend away from quality content kicks away one of the pillars of democracy.

We must fight for the ABC against many headwinds and adversaries.