So, it’s a media farewell to Stan Grant, the talented broadcaster and fine journalist whom The Australian reported on Wednesday has quit the ABC. He will remain based in Sydney but will spend time in Melbourne and Aarhus, Denmark. In Victoria, Grant will become the inaugural director of the Constructive Institute Asia Pacific at Monash University’s faculty of [...]
Among Australia’s media outlets, it’s the ABC that appears to take the most prominent role in campaigning against what is termed misinformation or disinformation. On the ABC TV Insiders program last Sunday, for example, presenter David Speers saw fit to correct the (alleged) misinformation of his interview guest – Nationals leader David Littleproud. A somewhat [...]
There are not many occasions when a middle power with a relatively small population, like Australia, can make a significant impact on world affairs. Either on the field of battle or in diplomacy. A few instances, however, immediately come to mind. In 1918 – the year of victory on the Western Front – the Australian [...]
Among the reasons the ABC has lost many of its long-term, and primarily conservative, audiences, two stand out. Namely, the unwillingness of the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster to acknowledge errors of commission or omission, along with a refusal to provide an appropriate right of reply to individuals who have been unfairly criticised. Two recent examples illustrate [...]
It’s not so long ago (June 1, in fact) that Julia Holman – executive producer of the ABC Radio National Breakfast program – told ABC Radio Drive in Sydney that only the public broadcaster and Nine newspapers (The Age and Sydney Morning Herald) provide information that is not misinformation. Or words to that effect. A [...]
Australia has had a few abrasive, dominant and successful leaders in the modern era. Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the Country Party premier of Queensland between 1968 and 1987, immediately comes to mind. And now there is Victorian Labor Party premier Daniel Andrews, who was first elected to office in December 2014. Bjelke-Petersen dominated his state, assisted by a [...]
It was not so much a case of Australian writer Richard Flanagan failing to get the message. The problem was that the advice came too late, irrespective of whether it would have been heeded. The reference is to the report in The Australian on Wednesday about a recent speech given in Perth by former High Court [...]
It’s been more than a half-century since English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge published his book Tread Softly for You Tread on My Jokes. The title was inspired by poet WB Yeats, who referred to his dreams, not his jokes. Muggeridge’s point was that life had become so bizarre that what once passed for humour was now [...]
In the US there is increasing debate about the emergence of two standards of justice: a soft one for left-of-centre liberals (in the North American sense of the term) who vote for the Democrats and a harsh one for right-of-centre conservatives who vote Republican. American lawyer Alan Dershowitz is a Democrat who voted against Donald [...]
Last Monday’s ABC TV Q+A program was the familiar left-of-centre stack. The politicians on the panel were the Nationals’ Bridget McKenzie, teal independent Monique Ryan and Labor frontbencher Bill Shorten. Ryan and Shorten campaigned against the Coalition at the 2022 election. The trio was joined by disability advocate Sam Connor and comedian and singer Reuben [...]