I find it pretty distasteful the way Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair (more or less) high five themselves when their media opposition downscales journalist jobs. All tied up with their campaign against "leftists" generally, and the ABC for allegedly crowding out the news media here.
This argument is beloved of their aging, remarried boss; except that I don't see how it can account for the fact that American newpapers, without anything like a government funded media outlet competitor, have been suffering exactly the same decline for the last decade or so.
And let's face it: apart from the basic news services, commercial TV here gave up serious domestic and international journalism decades ago in favour of magazine TV. Was this due to ABC "crowding out"? I doubt it.
1 comment:
The crowding out argument is bulldust. The ABC has been a consistent leader in developing high quality investigative journalism. While programs like Current Affair go after the small fish like tradies it is programs like Four Corners that have initiated major investigations into criminality and corruption. It is the ABC that produces programs like Q&A, the most democratic forum in the country if not the world. The commercial stations won't go there because they can't make a buck out of it. Instead they gave us that stupid program last year I think it was called "The Verdict", which obviously chose controversial figures to ratings rather than have experts.
Bolt is already a dinosaur. His program failed while Insiders is now a top rating morning show in spite of a terrible 9.00am Sunday timeslot. Bolt was a disastrous host because he couldn't keep his mouth shut, Cassidy facilitates discussion whereas Bolt's narcissism shouted everyone down.
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