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Liberal senator David Van is speaking to Sydney radio 2GB about independent senator Lidia Thorpe’s allegations in the Senate yesterday.
Thorpe withdrew the remarks to comply with the Senate’s standing orders but said she would be making a statement on the issue today.
Continue reading...The public broadcaster’s five-year-plan, released on Friday, stops short of the BBC’s plan to shut down its TV and radio broadcasts to be digital first
The ABC will undergo a “significant transition” towards digital transmission, reducing the resources invested in AM radio stations and programs, and broadcast TV channels, by 2028 and increase podcasts and on-demand programs instead.
The ABC says it will continue to broadcast on AM and FM bands because some listeners – particularly elderly people – rely on them but resources will be diverted towards digital delivery of all content.
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Continue reading...Former political staffer suing national broadcaster over a February 2022 joint address by Higgins and Grace Tame at the National Press Club
Bruce Lehrmann has accused the Australian Broadcasting Corporation of acting maliciously by broadcasting Brittany Higgins’ National Press Club address, saying in court documents it was “wilfully blind” to the risk of her defaming him or making prejudicial comments close to his trial.
Lehrmann is suing the ABC over a joint address by Higgins and Grace Tame to the National Press Club in February 2022, which was broadcast live and later uploaded in full to the ABC’s YouTube channel.
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Continue reading...Murdoch’s Australian media chief calls on ABC to ‘correct the record’ after accusations that excessive coverage encouraged racist social media trolls
Rupert Murdoch’s top executive in Australia has defended News Corp’s reporting of the ABC’s coronation broadcast and denied it played a part in Stan Grant’s decision to stand down from hosting Q+A after becoming the target of racist attacks.
News Corp Australasia chief executive Michael Miller responded to an interview on Monday in which the ABC news director Justin Stevens accused News Corp of targeting the ABC because the public broadcaster threatened its business model.
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Continue reading...Data suggests Sky News and the Australian mentioned the ABC’s coverage of Charles III’s coronation more than 150 times in the past two weeks
The pro-monarchy Liberal party MP Julian Leeser has said fellow ABC coronation panellist Stan Grant faced “unrelenting racism online” in response to the broadcast, as data suggests Sky News and the Australian mentioned the coverage more than 150 times in the past two weeks.
On Friday, Grant announced he would walk away from hosting Q+A after this Monday’s episode following what he said was the media lying and distorting his words while criticising the ABC’s coverage of Charles III’s coronation.
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Continue reading...ABC says press club address could not have been defamatory even if Lehrmann’s identity already widely known
The ABC has argued that it did not identify Bruce Lehrmann when it broadcast Brittany Higgins’ and Grace Tame’s National Press Club address and, even if it had, it could not have been defamatory
The ABC says in court documents that if it was “notorious throughout Australia” that Lehrmann was Higgins’ alleged rapist – as Lehrmann’s lawyers have claimed – then its broadcast of the address would not have caused or been likely to cause serious harm to Lehrmann’s reputation.
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Continue reading...The ABC presenter says he has been a media target for racism and for now he’s ‘walking away’
The host of Q+A Stan Grant is standing down from the show after receiving “grotesque racist abuse” which escalated after he spoke on the ABC about the impact of colonialism ahead of the King’s coronation.
Grant said in a column published on the ABC website that after Monday’s episode he was “walking away”.
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Host expresses gratitude to national broadcaster and reflects on delivering a ‘fun, warm and intelligent’ run
High-profile ABC host Fran Kelly says she has no regrets, despite her Friday night talkshow Frankly not being commissioned for a second season.
Kelly told Guardian Australia she was grateful the national broadcaster gave her the opportunity to try something different and she understood there were competing interests to juggle.
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Continue reading...Managing director, David Anderson, told staff ‘this in no ways diminishes the importance of what we do’
A major ABC restructure will see the abolition of the separate regional and radio division and lead to redundancies of management and staff.
The managing director of the ABC, David Anderson, has moved to assure staff the biggest restructure since 2017 would not mean the importance of the regional bureaux or radio was being downgraded.
Continue reading...After being accused of being ‘obsequious’ over Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, ABC included discussion of colonialism and monarchy’s relevance
The ABC’s broadcast of King Charles’ coronation was labelled “despicable” by monarchists, but viewers loved it and gave the national broadcaster an easy ratings win over the commercial networks.
The king’s procession averaged 1,182,000 viewers on the ABC, putting it ahead of Seven’s 1,096,000 and Nine’s 738,000, according to OzTAM which now measures viewing through broadcast TV and streaming devices.
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Continue reading...Re-edited version omits opening scene after claims of fatphobia and replaces original on ABC and BBC platforms
The ABC has removed part of a Bluey episode that sparked accusations of fat-shaming and fatphobia.
It has now republished a version of the popular cartoon without a bathroom scene that showed Bluey’s parents complaining about their weight.
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Continue reading...The video, which has been removed from the ABC’s YouTube channel, had 127,000 views by the time Bruce Lehrmann’s claim was filed
The video of Brittany Higgins’ and Grace Tame’s full National Press Club address on the treatment of women has been removed from YouTube after defamation proceedings were lodged against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The ABC has for months resisted legal demands for the video to be removed from YouTube, prompting Bruce Lehrmann to sue in the federal court for defamation last week.
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Continue reading...Trial set down for 6 November for former military lawyer accused of leaking classified Australian defence information to journalists
Former military lawyer David McBride will have waited four years and eight months before facing trial for allegedly leaking classified defence information to the media.
McBride’s case was mentioned briefly in the ACT supreme court on Thursday morning, the latest step in protracted legal proceedings that have been in train since March 2019.
Continue reading...Centre for Responsible Technology ‘supportive’ of proposed reforms, calling them the ‘first significant upgrade of privacy laws in four decades’
Consumer digital rights advocates have rejected media companies’ call to preserve their exemption to privacy law, warning that commercial models should not be put ahead of public interest.
Peter Lewis, the director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology, said it was “disappointing” that the Right to Know coalition “set up with the laudable goal of protecting journalists and whistleblowers is now being deployed to prosecute Big Media’s business interests at the expense of the public they purport to serve”.
Continue reading...Coalition of organisations says changes would have ‘devastating impact on press freedom’ and are not in public interest
Media companies have rejected a proposal to reform Australian privacy law, warning that the changes – including a right to sue outlets for serious invasions of privacy – are not in the public interest and would harm press freedom.
The Right to Know coalition warns the attorney general’s department’s proposal, released in February, would have “a devastating impact on press freedom and journalism in Australia without any clearly defined need or benefit”.
Continue reading...Ban only applies to non-corporate government entities but may have flow-on effects to other agencies and businesses
The ABC is reviewing its use of TikTok following the federal government’s ban of the Chinese-owned social media app on government-issued devices.
The ban announced by the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, on Tuesday only applies to non-corporate government entities, meaning a range of government-owned businesses and agencies are not subject to the ban, including the ABC, SBS, Australia Post and NBN Co.
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Continue reading...Bipartisan approach likely as Senate addresses changes to the rules governing referendums. Follow the day’s news live
Voice negotiations
The referendum machinery legislation will set up how the voice referendum will run – the machinery surruounding the vote, if you will.
We’re negotiating in good faith in the Senate that’s being led by Jane Hume who is doing an outstanding job. What we said to the government in the beginning is what we’re saying to them now and that is that we are not prepared to trash decades of referendum precedent, and not do this in a way that Australians expect us to, in their interests, for their information.
We’re asking for a pamphlet to outline the yes and no case, and we’ve talked about that. We’re asking for equal funding of the yes or no case, not the millions of dollars that may go into a public campaign on either side of this debate, but just the administration funding.
Fifty-seven per cent of the population does not want to open new coal and gas mines and I think there’s a very clear message coming through there. Secondly, no, I have got a lot of time for Jacqui Lambie, but we had an emissions trading scheme in this country and she was part of a party that voted to repeal it so let’s let’s not get too carried away with the spin here.
We’re in a climate crisis, as the UN secretary general has made clear. The decisions that we make now will reverberate for generations to come and the big decisions that we’ve got to make, do we open new coal and gas mines or not?
Continue reading...Heston Russell’s lawyer tells federal court readers were given ‘impression’ he was responsible for shooting an unarmed prisoner in Afghanistan
Lawyers for a former special forces officer have argued an ABC article portrayed him as a war criminal, despite not directly alleging he had committed crimes.
Heston Russell is suing the ABC and two of its investigative journalists over stories published in 2020 and 2021 which he argues gave readers the “impression” he was responsible for shooting an unarmed prisoner and was being investigated.
Continue reading...Bid follows national broadcaster being turned down last election by Scott Morrison to appear in leaders’ debate despite its broad reach
The ABC has called for legislation to ensure it hosts and broadcasts at least one leaders’ debate during a federal election campaign.
The public broadcaster made the case for a mandated ABC election debate in a submission to the inquiry into the 2022 federal election, which continues its public hearings in Canberra on Tuesday.
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Continue reading...Thomas Mark Rickard, who served in ADF, avoids conviction but is ordered to pay $1,000 good behaviour bond for leaving reporter abusive and threatening voicemail
A Victorian man who served with the Australian Defence Force has pleaded guilty to harassing the ABC journalist Mark Willacy after he reported on alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan.
Thomas Mark Rickard, from Lara, near Geelong, was arrested late last year after phoning Willacy and leaving an abusive and threatening voicemail.
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