Most people agree that the way the BBC Panorama program “Trump: A Second Chance?” edited excerpts from Donald Trump’s speech to MAGA supporters before the riot on Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021 was unethical.  Even deceptive.

No one seems to have noticed that the man who exposed the inappropriate edit did something very similar in his leaked memorandum to the BBC Board.

But the usual Australian critics have been happy to jump on the British bandwagon, accusing the ABC of deceptive conduct and calling for inquiries into its impartiality.

Last week Alumni director Jonathan Holmes wrote in the Nine newspapers that the BBC’s critics had a point. But he’s now wondering whether the scandal that led to the resignation of the BBC’s two most senior executives was, after all, a political hatchet job.

National Response to Islamophobia: A Strategic Framework for Inclusion, Safety and Prosperity. Report by Australia’s special envoy to combat Islamophobia

On 12 September 2025, Aftab Malik, Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, released his report entitled  National Response to Islamophobia: A Strategic Framework for Inclusion, Safety and Prosperity. The report has made a number of comments on the role of the media. A brief summary and comments by ABC Alumni chair, Michael Ward are provided below.

Michael Ward, Chair, ABC Alumni, provides insights into the ABC’s social media presence and the increasing significance of social media for news media.

On 20 August 2025 the ABC published its new guidelines on public comment by ABC workers. They were commissioned by the ABC’s new Managing Director, Hugh Marks, following the highly damaging Antoinette Lattouf affair. Their principal author, ABC Editorial Director Gavin Fang, discussed them with members of the Board of ABC Alumni prior to publication.

Alumni director Jonathan Holmes believes that, contrary to a lot of third-party commentary, the new guidelines offer more protection to ABC workers than existed before.

The cohort of first time voters at this year’s Federal election have different ways of learning about the world than many of us. Generation Z’s media consumption habits are shaped by growing up with high-speed internet, smartphones and streaming media from an early age.

These digital natives consume primarily on mobile phones: TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. They prefer short-form video as it’s fast and entertaining. What they see is driven by the platforms’ algorithmic feeds rather than by their conscious choices.

Generation Z do not watch broadcast TV or radio, do not buy newspapers, and are not used to reading long form articles - in fact they may have several screens going at a time.

While these new voters are at the extreme in terms of changes to media consumption, reaching Generation Y (Millennials born up to 1996) and earlier is also a challenge, not the least for supporters of the ABC who’s careers there revolved around a style of production is less appreciated than it once was.

During this election campaign, ABC Alumni have produced videos designed for distribution on social media. The videos are short, have vertical orientation and have “burned in” sub-titles (as many viewers watch with the sound off, we’re advised).

It seems like the power of the two major parties is diminishing and if there is a hung parliament, independents will be critical in legislating to support our valued public broadcaster. Many of the short videos produced have included statements from Independent candidates. Other videos are “vox pops” from people on the street who explain why they value Our ABC.

The videos have done quite well, particularly on Facebook, getting a wide viewing audience both through “organic” sharing and some paid “boosting”. The best videos have an engaging poster frame and the speaker gets right to the point. (Average viewing time is about six seconds). The videos have stimulated “engagement” with likes, or other reactions and often comments.

Some comments, however, are quite negative about the ABC. Some examples:

Pretty simple really.... shut it down! Australia doesn't need a media mouth piece for left wing ideology.

ABC needs to just go…

We need a referendum about giving ABC tax money ,, if asked ? There would be no abc

Defund the ABC.

The ABC is an absolute disgrace.

The ABC in the last four decades has evolved into a left wing political party teir funding has to be pulled back.

Defund the ABC now, what a waste of taxpayers money.

Lefty love in

We were a bit rocked to see these reactions but an examination of the accounts that made the comments reveals that almost all of them are “bots” or “sock puppet” accounts. 

There are clearly groups who pay money to have fake comments sprayed around social media and unsurprisingly the ABC is a target of this too. It is risky to assume that comments on social media are a real reflection of public opinion.

Looking at the accounts of negative commenters is interesting.

• Milton S. 100 friends. From Louisville, Kentucky. Only 2 posts, pictures of a dog.
• Mike S. 98 friends. No details. No posts. 
• Steve R. 8 friends. No posts. Follows 3 including 9 News.
• Robert M. 171 friends. Townsville. No posts. Looks fake.
• Lindsay B. 79 Friends. Red Cliffs, Victoria. Pictured on a tractor. Likes prospecting. One post with dog.
• Jim B. Locked profile. 147 friends.

A quick internet search finds that there are numerous services on-line that offer to get you social media followers for a fee and we suspect that many of these accounts have used them.

AI has made it cheap to automate inauthentic activity by “bots” on social media. Poor grammar and typos in the comments might seem to indicate emotion in the commenter but this is often a deliberate tactic.

Red flags in an account that indicate it might be fake include: no profile picture (or an AI generated one), unusual usernames, empty or vague bio and personal information. Lots of comments but little interaction by others. 

Bots, and the comments they create, do cost money and indicate that someone is funding a sophisticated campaign against a publicly funded ABC.

This election campaign is being fought on Social Media with massive spending by all parties. We have found that available ad inventory is so scarce that it’s been hard to spend our budget at times.

A great drawback of today’s election advertising that is highly targeted through Social Media advertising and that different groups get different messages - the leaders can be vague, as they have been about ABC funding - but can tell different audience segments what they want to hear without the risk of appearing contradictory. There is no unified message to all Australians.

ABC Friends and ABC Alumni are doing their best to campaign for more support for the ABC. Look for us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube and LinkedIn.

One practical thing you can do to support the efforts of ABC Alumni (and ABC Friends) in arguing for the ABC is to follow our social accounts and like, share and comment on the posts you see from us. Don’t be alarmed by some of what you see under the posts - they may not even be by real people.

Peter Marks

More than 80 per cent of Australians are now getting their information and content from American social media and video streaming services. It’s impacting on the number of Australian stories we see and hear as well as damaging what has been a vibrant Australian film, radio and television industry.

The Albanese Government is stalling on its decision to regulate Australian content on streaming platforms and local producers and advocates are worried that the lobbying power of the streaming giants is holding sway.

Quentin Dempster argues it’s imperative to fight for Australian voices and stories on the new digital platforms and to resist the Americanization of Aussie culture.

This article was first published in Pearls and Irritations, John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal on 18 August 2024.

7 May 2024

The ABC now faces an awful dilemma.

If, as now seems certain, it loses the media bargaining code revenue it has been receiving from Facebook, now Meta, it will have to sack many of the 60 journalists and support staff it has recruited since entering into commercial contracts in 2021.

During the referendum campaign, and since the overwhelming No vote, a chorus of respected journalists and media academics have declared that the Australian mass media, very much including the ABC, failed in their duty to the Australian public by slavishly adhering to the concept of ‘balance’, and by not calling out misinformation as and when they reported it. This is not the usual claim of bias by the Murdoch media or the No campaign: most of these critics clearly supported Yes. Among them, Mark Kenny, of the Canberra Times and the ANU’s Australian Studies Institute; Chris Warren, former Secretary of the Media Alliance, now at Crikey; Denis Muller of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, in The Conversation; Nikki Savva in a recent column in the Nine newspapers; and the ABC’s staff-elected Board director, and 7.30’s chief political correspondent, Laura Tingle. [Some links may be paywalled]

ABC Alumni does not agree that the ABC’s journalists made a bad job of an all-but impossible task: reporting fairly on both sides of the Referendum debate, while simultaneously distinguishing between information, genuine opinion and outright misinformation. And the Share of Voice count, which the ABC has used for decades in elections, is a useful tool for assessing, and if necessary demonstrating, that the ABC’s coverage has been fair.

But as ABC Alumni Board director and former ABC Editorial Director ALAN SUNDERLAND points out in this article, Voice Tracker is a tool, and ‘balance’ is a concept, that can be misused, misunderstood, or simply abused.

A version of this article first appeared in the Nine Newspapers on Friday October 30.

by Jonathan Holmes

Nine Entertainment, Chris Masters, Nick McKenzie and David Wroe won a famous victory [appeal pending, see below] in the ‘defamation trial of the century’ against Ben Roberts-Smith, VC. Now Masters and McKenzie have each written books about the Flawed Hero who Crossed the Line between lawful and unlawful killing in war.   

ABC ALUMNI chair Jonathan Holmes reviews the books, and reflects on the lessons they have to teach us about investigative journalism, truth-telling, and the cost of a crucial victory.

The controversial ACMA finding on the Four Corners two-part program, ‘Fox and the Big Lie’, has again highlighted the shortcomings of the media standards regulation processes in Australia. But what to do about it? Alumni director Alan Sunderland has spent several years considering this issue. Here’s his view.