Strangling Aunty: Perilous Times for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
List of Images
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Institutional Frameworks and Losing the Field
	1.1 Australia’s ABC
	1.2 Theories and Methodology Framework: The Main Arguments
	1.3 ‘Leaving the ABC Building’: Pierre Bourdieu, and the Once Exclusive ABC Field
	1.4 Institutional Logics Theory: Inaugurating the ABC as “the Gaiety of the Nation”
	1.5 Chapter 2: Managing the ABC
	1.6 Chapter 3: The ABC, “Service for Funding … to Serve, as a Service”
	1.7 Chapter 4: What Ideas Rule? The Digital Commercial Field—Shifting from Private Playfield to Commercial Minefield
	1.8 Chapter 5: Losing the Brand in the Australian Media Landscape—The ABC’s Loss of Privilege and Abandonment of Cultural Rituals
	1.9 Chapter 6: Political Influences on the ABC—ABC Journalists, Impartial Intermediaries
	1.10 Chapter 7: Future Options—A Fourth Estate in Disarray, Clouds on the Horizon
	References
Chapter 2: Managing the ABC
	2.1 Management and Leadership
	2.2 Leadership and Institutional Logics
	2.3 Leading the Institution of the ABC
	2.4 Managing the Educated Cultural Field of the ABC
	2.5 “The cone of silence”161,162: ABC Management Culture
	2.6 Managing the Field
	2.7 Blowing Up Aunty’s Skirt: Upheaval at the ABC
	2.8 Michelle Guthrie and Capture Theory
	2.9 Management Inaction Versus Active Staff
	2.10 The ABC’s Institutional Significance
	2.11 Digitising the ABC
	References
Chapter 3: The ABC: Service for Funding
	3.1 ABC Staff: To Serve through Service
	3.2 The ABC as a Public Broadcaster
	3.3 Impact of ABC Staff Culture
	3.4 Genesis of Staff Culture?
	3.5 Management Versus Staff
	3.6 ABC Staff ‘Spooked’
	3.7 Challenging Times for Any Public Funding
	3.8 What Are They Fighting For?
	3.9 Alan Ashbolt
	3.10 Addressing Accusations of Bias
	3.11 Specialist Court Reporting
	3.12 Thematic Analysis of the ABC Coverage
	3.13 Research Findings
	3.14 Analysis: Choice of Words
	3.15 Advocacy and Activist Journalism Versus Neutral Reporting
	3.16 Conclusion
	Appendix: Service for Funding
	References
Chapter 4: What Ideas Rule? A Decline Towards “pop and pap” or a “duty to serve”?
	4.1 A Confused World Seeking a Truth
	4.2 “Getting down” with Social Media
	4.3 Challengers to Anzac Day and Yassmin Abdel-Magied
	4.4 Q&A and Feminists
	4.5 Manifest Offence
	4.6 What Remains of Aunty’s Voice?
	4.7 What Exactly Do Journalists Now Do?
	4.8 iWar on the Internet: And What Should Keep Australians up at Night
	4.9 The ABC’s Regional Footprint
	4.10 Digital Disruptors and Activist Publicists
	4.11 ABC New Years’ Coverage
		New Years’ Eve 2017–2018
		New Year’s Eve 2019–2020
	4.12 The ABC’s Role in Social Media
	4.13 Impact of Social Media and How It Shapes Knowledge
	4.14 The Contribution of ABC Journalists to the New Field
	4.15 Moving Along and Digitising the ABC
	4.16 Pressure to Grow Audiences
	4.17 ABC Election Reporting
	4.18 Conclusion
	References
Chapter 5: Losing the Brand in the Australian Media Landscape
	5.1 Discerning the best pronouns to describe ABC ownership
	5.2 The COVID-19 Pandemic
	5.3 Reporting on Crisis Leadership
	5.4 ABC Independence
	5.5 Losing Sport
	5.6 Mourning Those Lost Argonauts
	5.7 Where Are Those Old Argonauts?
	5.8 The ABC Fights for Survival
	5.9 Losing the Brand
	5.10 Murdoch: Beware the Bogey Man
	5.11 Sir Keith Murdoch: Ancient Hatreds
	5.12 Rupert Murdoch Versus The ABC
	5.13 Strangling the Voice of the Public Interest
	References
Chapter 6: Political Influences on the ABC: The Loss of the Greater Good
	6.1 Organisational Politicking at the ABC
	6.2 A Changing Australian Society, the Decline of ABC Privilege—And Change Confusion
	6.3 Bias? Or, Whose Bias?
	6.4 The Wild Goose Chase: Online Media and Audience Politics
	6.5 Searching for Shades of Media Grey: Poor Aunty Is “white”
	6.6 Government Meddling
	6.7 Accenting the High(er) Political Ground in the Field
	6.8 The Politics of Supporting War
	6.9 Axings and Dispatchings
	6.10 Aunty’s Voice: Supporting a Free, Democratic Society
	6.11 Raiding the News
	References
Chapter 7: Future Options
	7.1 Aunty’s Woes
	7.2 Jumping at Shadows
	7.3 The Way Ahead
	7.4 What Else Ails Aunty?: An Uncommonly Precarious World
	7.5 Looking After Aunty’s Future
	7.6 Conclusion
	References
References
Index