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a new boss for the australian broadcasting corporation (ABC)....

The head of X and Donald Trump’s new best friend, Elon Musk, has claimed that the ABC Chair, Kim Williams, is “the head of Australian government-funded media, their Pravda.” 

Pravda was the official voice of Soviet communism and the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1918 and 1991. While it began life as an underground workers’ newspaper, after the Russian revolution in 1917 it became the official publication of the Soviet era, and all party members were required to read it.

 

Cassandra Parkinson
President
ABC Friends

 

Pravda was a government mouthpiece, seen by both Soviet citizens and foreigners as a reliable reflection of the Soviet government's positions on various issues.

Elon Musk’s post implies that, because the ABC receives government funding, it is controlled by the state. It’s not the first time he has made such a claim. He simply doesn’t understand the role that public media organisations play in a democracy.

Although the ABC receives government funding, it is editorially independent of Australian governments. The Charter under which it was established states that the Corporation is the provider of an independent national broadcasting service. Its board has a duty to "maintain the independence and integrity of the Corporation".

Stephen McDonell, the China-based journalist for the BBC (and formerly ABC) put it well when he said:

The issue is control. China’s state media is completely controlled by the Communist Party. Is it ever able to publish material critical of the government? No. Does the BBC publish such material? All the time.

In fact, politicians often hate organisations like the ABC or the BBC because they expose government mistakes and corruption. This is not the case with China’s Party-controlled media.

State media are instruments of government propaganda and control. The ABC is an independent media organisation, free from political and commercial interests.

This goes to the heart of what the ABC is. It's why ABC Friends is committed to fighting to retain a truly independent public media organisation.

Cassandra Parkinson

https://www.abcfriends.net.au/no_elon_musk_the_abc_is_nothing_like_pravda

 

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ABC chair Kim Williams has announced former Nine boss Hugh Marks will be the public broadcaster’s next managing director.

As managing director, Marks will act as the public broadcaster’s editor-in-chief. This means he will be the ABC’s ultimate editorial authority, responsible to the board.

https://www.themandarin.com.au/283938-abc-gets-new-managing-director/

 

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FROM THE SMH — 19/12/2024

The first job for Hugh “I knew nothing” Marks when he moves into the MD’s office at the ABC will be to get to know his staff (“OMG ABC! Did it have to be Hugh?”, December 18). His ignorance of some of the alleged bad behaviour by senior staff members at Nine Entertainment (publisher of the Herald) does not bode well. Recently, the ABC has had a habit of tackling perceived problems by importing executives from commercial media, leading to the departure of such experienced, trusted and popular broadcasters as Simon Marnie and Sarah MacDonald. Marks should be given a chance to prove his critics wrong by recognising that the ABC is not a commercial outfit, but a public broadcaster dedicated to producing independent, trustworthy and quality programming to a diverse audience, regardless of class or political persuasion. And most importantly he should make sure his next fundraiser should be for the perennially cash strapped ABC rather than for the Liberal Party. I wish him good luck – he’ll need it. Nick Franklin, Katoomba

 

Hugh Marks is the new managing director of the ABC? The same fellow who felt it appropriate as boss at the purportedly independent, frank and fearless Nine, five years ago, to hold a $10,000-a-head Liberal Party fundraiser? His selection has already been attributed to Nine being the media organisation in Australia most similar to the ABC, in its TV, radio and online reach. And perhaps from next year in other ways as well – noting that in his role as managing director, Marks will be responsible for making editorial decisions. You have to wonder whether the Nine Liberal Party sympathies under his tenure there came up in his ABC job interview. Australia is a small talent pond. But still. Alex Mattea, Sydney

 

Surely Kim Williams is right not to make the distinction between public and private ownership. Engagement should be the magic metric for any media organisation, public or private. For private media organisations, relevance and excellence will ensure return on capital for shareholders; they would do well to focus on engagement. Any dichotomy between public and private is false. We are all shareholders in the ABC anyway. We are all entitled to get a return on capital. Mark Porter, New Lambton

 

Good luck to Hugh Marks in trying to revive the ABC. As an ex-ABC employee and longtime viewer and listener, I have witnessed the ABC become a shell of its former self. It used to be innovative and unique. Invaluable sound resources have been sold off on EBay, so radio now just uses boring repetitive playlists the way commercial radio stations do. TV likewise has been dumbed down to quiz shows and boring panel programs. Anything vaguely intellectual is rare. A mammoth task lies ahead. Julius Timmerman, Lawson 

 

Susan Anthony is correct to call out the tell-tale warnings re Hugh Marks’ appointment (Letters, December 18). Do we really want a man in charge of the culture of our beloved and critically important national broadcaster to be a manager who says he was unaware of Nine’s cultural problems, sexual harassment and bullying? For Kim Williams to brush aside this background is also deeply worrying. Your headline for Ms Anthony’s letter was “ABC chief mis-step”. In my opinion, it’s a gobsmacking tragedy. Anne Elliott, Balmain

 

Apart from issues of perceived political bias and the potential concern about popularising the ABC, there’s the serious issue of Hugh Marks, when at Nine Entertainment, unwittingly presiding over an aggressively inappropriate male-dominated environment. Is it possible that a fair proportion of senior male managers simply don’t consider female-centric issues important? In this context alone, the appointment of Marks is extraordinary because, whatever his impressive qualifications, he failed to notice gross misogyny and inappropriate sexual behaviour in his own workplace. But given all the ABC’s senior roles are currently held by men, perhaps this explains why such issues might not receive the emphasis they deserve.
Alison Stewart, Riverview

 

I share Jenna Price’s concern about the appointment of Hugh Marks. Unfortunately, at a time when the future relevance of the ABC should be top of the agenda, the need to address the culture of the ABC has overtaken this. The choice of someone who failed to recognise, let alone address, similar issues at Nine is of concern. The ABC needs to value and nurture its staff if it is to remain creative, innovative and relevant. Philip Cooney, Wentworth Falls

 

Someone, sometime ago must have insisted that the ABC become more like a commercial TV station. To some degree, it did, with more emphasis on celebrities, trivia and stories of minor interest to many. So, regardless of Hugh Marks’ alleged past deficiencies as listed by Jenna Price, good on him if he can shift the ABC away from the celebrity circus and back toward a more detailed examination of the serious issues in a world now experiencing the rise of clamorous, democracy-damaging extremists. Ron Sinclair, Windradyne

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/new-abc-boss-has-a-steep-learning-curve-ahead-of-him-20241218-p5kz89.html

 

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

IN CASE YOU DID NOT RECOGNISE, THE LADY NEXT TO HUGH MARKS IN THE TOON AT TOP IS A CARICATURE OF MIRIAM MARGOLYES....

 

ABC job....

 

Hugh Marks does not have a background in journalism, yet becomes ex officio editor-in-chief of the ABC. Is he the right person for the job?    By Denis Muller

 

Aspects of Hugh Marks’s record as chief executive of the Nine Entertainment Company raise questions about his suitability for the position of managing director of the ABC, to which he has just been appointed.

Those aspects concern political independence, internal culture and news leadership, all issues of pressing concern at the ABC.

On political independence, during Marks’s tenure as chief of Nine he hosted a $10,000-a-head fundraising dinner for the Liberal Party at which the guests of honour were the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, and communications minister Paul Fletcher. The event was organised by the Liberal Party’s fundraising arm, the Australian Business Network.

This came as a shock to journalists at the three major newspapers owned by Nine: The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review. They protested, and Marks admitted hosting the dinner was a mistake.

On culture, in May 2024 allegations came to light that Nine’s long-time news director, Darren Wick, had for decades got away with drunkenly groping women. This unleashed a cascade of allegations by women about the culture inside Nine that had existed for many years, including the period when Marks was chief executive. He has said he didn’t know anything about it and was shocked by what was revealed.

By the time these allegations emerged, Marks had been gone for four years, having abruptly left the company after The Australian newspaper reported that as chief executive he was in a sexual relationship with a subordinate.

Now he is to find himself leading an organisation that is in the midst of developing a response to an external review of its own culture, which found systemic racism across the ABC.

On news leadership, like his predecessors David Anderson and Michelle Guthrie, Marks does not have a background in journalism, yet becomes ex officio editor-in-chief of the ABC.

That has proved a weakness in the past – Guthrie once said publicly she was not responsible for every story that appeared on the ABC.

The appointment of Marks seems unlikely to remedy this weakness, which has laid the ABC open to accusations it fails to adequately protect its journalists from external attack.

Other aspects of Marks’s career, however, clearly carried decisive weight with the ABC board.

A graduate in law and finance from the University of New South Wales, Marks joined Nine as legal counsel in 1995. Two years later, he became director of film and television for the network and was recognised internally for his work on audience measurement.

In 2003 he left Nine to head a television distribution company, Southern Star Group. Under his leadership it produced hit shows such as Big Brother for Ten and Deal or No Deal for Seven.

A decade later he returned to the Nine network as a non-executive director, and was appointed chief executive in 2015.

In 2018, he engineered Nine’s takeover of the Fairfax media empire, creating Australia’s largest commercial media group with major interests in newspapers, radio, television and streaming services.

Nine’s takeover of Fairfax provided a lifeline for those three big mastheads, which had been caught utterly unprepared by the onslaught on their advertising revenues from internet platforms in areas such as real estate, employment and motor vehicles.

Those mastheads have continued to assert their editorial independence despite Nine’s questionable corporate-level management of political relationships and internal culture. However, the editorial content of the Herald and The Age, taken as a whole, has drifted downstream since the takeover.

Excellent pockets of public interest journalism remain, notably in their political analysis and the incomparable work of their investigative teams. However, soft news and lifestyle content have grown at the expense of broader coverage of political issues, leaving that territory more open to the propagandising of News Corp than is good for Australian democracy.

Given the repeated assertions by the ABC chair, Kim Williams, that the ABC needs to strike a better balance between lifestyle content and public-interest journalism, it is an open question how well-equipped Marks is to achieve this shift.

After his departure from Nine in 2020, Marks founded Dreamchaser, a successful television content production and distribution studio.

It is these business credentials that are clearly attractive to the ABC. In a statement announcing his appointment, the ABC said he was a standout candidate with a strong track record of leading media organisations and driving substantial and sustained audience engagement.

This might indicate a desire on the part of the ABC board to inject a more popularising approach to its entertainment content.

Williams has shown himself to be an activist chair, particularly in editorial matters, so perhaps there is an understanding that Marks will focus primarily on wider content strategy and corporate management. But the fact remains that when he takes over in March 2025, Marks will become the ABC’s editor-in-chief.

From the outside it looks like an odd appointment. But Williams is a change agent, and it may be safely assumed this is part of the new direction he has sketched out for the ABC, the ultimate destination of which remains difficult to discern.

Disclosure statement
Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

 

Republished from The Conversation, Dec 17, 2024

https://johnmenadue.com/hugh-marks-does-not-have-a-background-in-journalism-yet-becomes-ex-officio-editor-in-chief-of-the-abc-is-he-the-right-person-for-the-job/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…