How the ABC Operates on a Paradigm from the 1960s

I recently conducted an experiment to gauge how readers might respond to receiving a digest of recent articles. I sent emails to a broad cross-section of people—family, colleagues, and politicians. The results were telling, and they point to something deeper: the ABC still operates on a paradigm that dominated the 1960s. One in which the viewer or reader is treated as a passive recipient of its authority.

In the 1960s, programming sat entirely in the hands of ABC managers. You watched what they deemed edifying, when they chose to broadcast it. They selected the content, controlled the timing, and feedback was effectively nonexistent. When the World Wide Web began to erode traditional audiences, the ABC adapted—at least superficially—by shifting to an on-demand model.

But what it has never truly embraced is scrutiny.

When criticism began to emerge online—outside platforms it could control—Leigh Sales lamented the “nastiness” directed at ABC presenters, suggesting a decline in the quality of public discourse. At the time, I wrote to her suggesting that the era of “shouting at the TV” had simply evolved. Audiences were no longer passive; they were engaged—and they were demanding accountability.

For me, the turning point came with the ABC’s reporting on the incident in which “Chinese fighter jets intercepted an Australian helicopter, releasing flares nearby.” In that coverage, the ABC appeared to abandon core principles of balanced and critical journalism.

The views of Andrew Hastie and Richard Marles were presented in a largely stenographic manner, treated as authoritative without meaningful scrutiny. Opinion blurred into fact. In a moment of heightened tension in Australia–China relations, one might reasonably expect more than the uncritical relay of official narratives.

No expert analysis was offered on the actual risks flares pose to helicopters. There was no examination of Australia’s legal or strategic basis for operating in the area, nor of how such actions might be perceived from China’s perspective. There was no discussion of flares as a recognised warning mechanism, which could have contextualised the actions of the Chinese pilots.

At the time, ABC articles employed emotive and loaded language. Even outlets such as CNN and 9News struck a more restrained tone. Claims made by Hastie and Marles—often broad and imprecise—were not rigorously tested. Nor did the ABC take the opportunity to clarify frameworks such as UNCLOS, which might have complicated the narrative it presented.

When journalism becomes a conduit for government messaging rather than a check on it, democracy is diminished.

Curiously, my experiment revealed a distinct aversion to counter-narratives. Of all the recipients, the only group to rapidly unsubscribe—apparently unwilling to encounter alternative perspectives—were those within the ABC. No one else opted out, not even politicians I had expected to be resistant.

There is an uncomfortable conclusion to draw.

The ABC appears to be operating within a nostalgic echo of the 1960s—one that resists criticism, filters out dissent, and assumes an audience that will accept rather than interrogate. Meanwhile, the world grows more complex and more contested. For those aboard the ABC Titanic, playing on may be easier than confronting that reality.