Last week, the ACT’s Director of Public Prosecutions announced that there would be no retrial of Bruce Lehrmann, because it would pose a “significant and unacceptable risk to the life of the complainant”, Brittany Higgins.

It’s a classic example of the dilemma that confronts our courts in the trial of alleged sexual offenders. The accused is entitled to the presumption of innocence, until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt. He or she is also entitled to decline to give evidence – the “right to silence”. However, to plant a reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury, defence counsel will inevitably attempt to discredit the evidence of the complainant, who is usually the only other witness to the alleged offence. The result is too often a gruelling cross-examination that can retraumatise already vulnerable people, whether or not they avail themselves of the right to remain anonymous.

That is the issue with which Louise Milligan grapples in her 2020 book, Witness. It was the issue about which she was invited to speak to the Women Lawyers Association of the ACT at their gala dinner on 21 October this year. It is a matter of obvious public interest. But Milligan has now found herself under attack, not only in The Australian and on Sky News, but in the Commonwealth parliament, for things she did not say and does not believe.

This is News Corporation’s version of “cancel culture”, argues Jonathan Holmes – a phenomenon it has so often condemned.

Last Sunday, for the first time since 2014, the 7pm News on the main ABC channel ran for only 30 minutes. ABC Alumni director Alan Sunderland, a former senior manager in the News division, argues that this is “the final surrender in a long ABC retreat” from holding powerful state governments to account. “Something needs to be done,” he writes, “and now is the time to look again at the problem”. However, in a response received by the Alumni, the ABC's Director of News, Analysis and Investigations, Justin Stevens, strongly disagrees, saying that ABC state and territory coverage is comprehensive and impactful, delivering to audiences the national broadcaster has never reached before. Read both views here.  

As several commentators have noted this week, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp outlets have gone ‘rogue’ on election coverage, making no attempt to comply with one of the media’s primary obligations to a democratic society — the provision of truthful news coverage. Instead, the dominant commercial media player has become a truth-distorting propagandist for one side, the Liberal-NLP Coalition, and has blatantly attacked Labor, Greens and independents, often without a shred of evidence. Both the Press Council and the ACMA seem impotent to rein in even the most appalling excesses. Add to this, News Corp’s overwhelming reach through newspapers, TV and online outlets – as well as its pernicious influence on other media – and questions arise about a fundamental threat to the health of our democracy. In this article first published in The Conversation, Denis Muller – Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at The University of Melbourne – sums up the main concerns.

Since 2014, when the ABC stopped broadcasting state-based weekly current affairs, there’s been no consistent platform on ABC TV for holding state governments to account – even during the pandemic, when they wielded almost unprecedented power over our lives.

As for local government, traditionally that was the job of local newspapers.  But too many of them have closed, and the few local journalists who survive are starved of time and resources.

For the ABC to restore its coverage of state affairs, and increase its scrutiny of local government, would need a lot more funding than it currently gets.

But as Virginia Haussegger, who was one the ABC’s most experienced and respected news and current affairs presenters, points out in our latest campaign video, that’s what’s needed, urgently.

Almost exactly two years ago, the Australian Federal Police executed a search warrant at the ABC’s headquarters in Ultimo, Sydney. That raid, and the search the day before of News Corp reporter Annika Smethurst’s home, produced an outcry. But what has happened since? Two inquiries, two reports, and precious little else, reports ABC Alumni’s press freedom spokesperson Jonathan Holmes. Australia still suffers from ‘excessive and unnecessary secrecy’.

The three-part investigation of the 1979 Luna Park Ghost Train fire by the ABC’s Exposed team reminded Jonathan Holmes of the time almost forty years ago when Four Corners took on NSW Premier Neville Wran. In this special article for ABC Alumni, Jonathan recalls the challenges to investigative journalism posed then, as now, by Australia’s defamation laws – and asks whether new amendments, which come into force in some states in July, will make any difference. Perhaps, he writes, they will. But don’t hold your breath.

The ABC is rightly proud of the profound trust from audiences evident through the bushfire and pandemic national emergencies, but its paymaster, the Morrison government, has not responded to ABC Board pleas for respite from defunding. In this comprehensive article, Quentin Dempster discusses the fallout from ongoing staff and program losses, and serious challenges still facing the public broadcaster.

In February 2020 the ABC suffered a crushing defeat in the Federal Court, in its challenge to the validity of an AFP search warrant on its Ultimo headquarters relating to a series of stories known as The Afghan Files. Jonathan Holmes has been following the case closely and offers these observations of the judgment.