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Last week we led the program with an interview with respected Sydney academic Professor Elizabeth Jacka. Professor Jacka had been commissioned by the CPSU, the Community and Public Sector Union to report on the ABC's performance in culture related programming.
Her report, released on April 4th gave substance to what many believed was happening to cultural programming: It was in decline and had been so for ten years.
The story was reported in the print media, especially in the Fairfax press and the Australian newspaper, but totally ignored by the ABC itself - Well, not quite ignored. Russell Balding, the ABC's general manager issued a statement describing as 'palpable nonsense for the CPSU funded report to assert that the "ABC is failing in its role as Australia's premier producer of cultural programming"'.
We asked the ABC for an interview to balance Professor Jacka comments but were told that the two paragraphs from Mr Balding, with a further three paragraphs from Margaret Seares, chair of the ABC's Arts Development Advisory Group, was exactly 100% of all comment that the ABC was going to make.
Since Prof. Jacka's scholarly report was released, ABC news, current affairs, arts and media related programs have studiously ignored its existence. Either at the direction of management or by the nervous self-censorship and failure of courage by broadcasters themselves, the ABC is trying to starve the debate about its own performance as the "premier producer of cultural programming".
In doing so it's failing itself, it's failing its listeners and it's failing Australia's cultural development.
Back to this week's hightlight
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