Chris Oliver-Taylor seemed at home giving an introduction at the ABC’s innovation conference, Futurecast.
The public broadcaster’s first ever chief content officer strode around the stage with the energy of a Silicon Valley exec as he spoke about the need for the public broadcaster to think, work and use technology creatively.
About halfway through, he said that the ABC “must be at the centre of social cohesion”. And then, a bit later, he reiterated those comments.
“I mentioned social cohesion earlier. The ABC must play a fundamental role in the continued evolution of Australia, and that conversation plays a significant part of that social cohesion,” he stressed.
It’s not just Oliver-Taylor saying that either. In June, new ABC chair Kim Williams warned in a speech of “the threat posed to national cohesion by the way the internet, social media and in some instances, artificial intelligence-generated materials which are altering our public debates and denying our media institutions of their capacity to enhance democracy and create new ideas and national cultures we can call our own”.
Williams later explicitly made the case for the ABC being a solution to this issue of social cohesion, and linked the broadcaster’s public funding to this mission, in a podcast with Nine broadcaster Neil Mitchell in July.
“Investment that is justified by the ABC in making a case to government, in making a case for the work that needs to be done in areas such as social cohesion,” he said.
The term “social cohesion” is getting a workout, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese frequently citing it as both a cause for concern and a goal for his government.
Pitching the ABC as one of the forces defending Australia against attacks on cohesion isn’t a drastic reimagining of the broadcaster. Its charter lays out a need to “contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community” — something that would seem to be a key component of social cohesion.
But the specific phrasing is the latest attempt to make the case for the ABC using the values and rhetoric of the government of the day. The ABC’s output isn’t just good entertainment and information, the argument goes; it’s also important for stopping things from boiling over. We need to find and fund the next Bluey for national security reasons.
As the business models that fund traditional media continue to collapse, there is increasing pressure on the government from other media companies to stop funding an organisation that competes with them for eyeballs but without the same commercial pressures. In this environment, the ABC is always looking to sharpen its case for why it should still exist.
Does the ABC have a role to play in “social cohesion”? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
