The boss of the ABC’s regional and rural division says there’s “appetite and interest” within the public broadcaster to help smaller publishers stay afloat by pooling resources.
The bold possibility was floated as Hugh Martin, the head of ABC regional rural and emergency, was grilled at a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday about a story published by one of his bureaus that was labelled “smug” for its critique of under-resourced locxjmtzywal newspapers.
Communications and the arts standing committee chair Anne Webster told Mr Martin that the story was published by the local ABC in her electorate of Mallee in northwest Victoria.
She said the ABC criticised smaller newspapers for printing media releases from her office without editing them.
“Fundamentally my argument back to them was that media releases are primarily funding announcements and they are full of facts and numbers,” she said.
“The regional newspapers they were calling out are under-resourced, underfunded small operators who really struggle to get their news out period.
“I’d just like your comment – my view is that from a securely funded ABC, I thought it was a little smug that was a story they wished to print.
“Do you think this is a fair analysis?”
Mr Martin conceded that the ABC “could have done a better job in that instance”.
“I accept that there is a legitimate point of view to be put to us around how that story was handled,” he said.
“So yes, I think it could have been done differently.”
Mr Martin later said the ABC was open to partnering with struggling smaller publishers in regional areas to help them reduce costs.
“I think first of all there is a good deal of interest and appetite within the ABC to partner in a useful and meaningful way with smaller publishers and we’ve been, I guess, looking for ways to do that,” he said.
“There is definitely a will and an interest in helping to be part of a solution for regional media.”
He suggested a number of possibilities.
“Just off the top of my head pooling council coverage, pooling vision from press conferences and making that available in digital terms,” he said.
“There are all kinds of different ways of working together to make copy and vision available for shared usage where there’s a need from an audience point of view but not an exclusivity around the production side of it.
“That’s a starting suggestion and from there, there would be many other opportunities as well.”
The inquiry heard that the ABC had created 50 new journalism positions across parts of regional Australia after striking a deal with Google and Facebook under the news media bargaining code.
The legislation was created last year to compel tech giants to pay for public interest journalism used on their feeds and search engines.
However SBS has only struck a deal with Google under the code.
“We would certainly welcome the opportunity to negotiate with (Facebook),” SBS’s director of news and current affairs Mandi Wicks told the inquiry.
“We do feel SBS is quite unique in its proposition – we’re focused on multilingual operators and have a focus on Indigenous communities through NITV.
“We would welcome the opportunity to have that conversation with Facebook.”
She said the deal with Google had enabled them hire more staff and create additional content.
This included dispelling disinformation on social media through explainers.
