The ‘relentless years’: ABC has shaken off culture of fear c...

The ABC was racked by a culture of fear after “relentless years” of external pressure when Hugh Marks took over as managing director six months ago, he has told an ABC Friends event.

“The first thing I found was that there was fear, that people were fearful of making decisions, that people were fearful of making mistakes,” Marks told the ABC supporters at the Sydney dinner.

“There was a fear of what might happen. And I think you all know where that comes from, and that’s the result of relentless years of external pressure, and I guess, a failure by the organisation to own its future and have hope. So what I want to leave with you hopefully tonight is a sense of hope for the future of the ABC.”

He did not identify the pressure’s source but we are confident in saying it was a combination of a hostile Coalition government accusing the national broadcaster news of bias and repeated attacks by News Corp outlets, compounded by budget cuts. Under Coalition governments between 2013 and 2022 the ABC lost $1.2bn in funding, according to an analysis by the ABC Alumni chair, Dr Michael Ward.

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Marks said under his leadership the ABC was “bold, confident, ambitious and focused on the future”, and explained he wanted to reframe success at Aunty based not on ratings but on trust, value and impact.

“I think this ABC will be stronger and stronger in 50 years’ time than it is today,” he said. “But you’ve got to be able to see how that future can play out.”

Tubi takes over

If proof is needed that News Corp is the master of cross-promotion of its assets, witness the slow death of the Binge brand in News Corp publications.

Foxtel’s streaming service Binge, which News Corp sold to the sports streaming service DAZN for $3.4bn in December, is no longer heavily promoted in the company’s newspapers.

The Binge TV guide in the Sunday metropolitan tabloids was ditched in July and relaunched as the Watchlist in August after the sale went though.

Of course all media conglomerates cross-promote. Nine has used its TV and newspaper assets to boost its streaming platform Stan. But it’s noteworthy that News Corp has quickly moved on to heavily promoting Tubi, a free streaming service owned by the Fox Corporation. News.com.au gave it editorial support when it published Tubi research that claimed people are watching TV at work.

Gaza claim sparks multiple complaints

One statistic about the humanitarian situation in Gaza was responsible for almost 40% of the ABC’s editorial breaches across its entire programming slate last financial year.

According to the ABC ombudsman’s annual report, 56 complaints resulted in a breach finding from a total of 2,919 complaints investigated between July 2024 and June 2025.

Of those 56 complaints, 22 were about a singular fact which, thanks to the nature of rolling news, was repeated multiple times across ABC News Breakfast, ABC News Mornings and Afternoon Briefing on 21 May before being corrected on 28 May.

The ABC’s woes began on 20 May when a UN undersecretary-general, Tom Fletcher, told BBC Radio: “There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.”

On 21 May News Breakfast’s opening headlines included the video footage of Fletcher making the claim. The statistic was repeated throughout the day until Afternoon Briefing threw cold water on it and said “the UN has since clarified the risk of 14,000 babies dying is over 12 months not 48 hours”.

Despite that intervention, the ombudsman found the news division “should have acknowledged and corrected it as soon as reasonably practicable” and not a week later. She also criticised the decision to make the correction online and rather than on air.

“Although ABC News took steps to prevent further reporting the statistic during the day’s rolling news coverage, it neither promptly acknowledged nor promptly corrected its earlier erroneous reporting,” Fiona Cameron wrote.

“Well before ABC News relied on the statistic, the United Nations had corrected it and the BBC, on whose platforms the statistic first appeared, had reported that correction. In these circumstances, ABC News cannot have made reasonable efforts to ensure accuracy.”

On 23 May a pre-recorded interview with the academic Peter Beinart in Planet America also quoted the statistic; the program corrected the mistake on air in the next episode.

Unsurprisingly, conflict in the Middle East attracted the most complaints, followed by sex, gender and gender identity, international war and politics, and the federal election.

Working hard or hardly working?

Will Hayward is the chief executive of Eric Beecher’s independent media company Private Media, which publishes Crikey, the Mandarin, SmartCompany and others.

He has embraced social media, in particular LinkedIn, and regularly post videos and thought bubbles. One such post has landed spectacularly badly for the media executive. “Your boss probably doesn’t work that hard,” he wrote – and it was all downhill from there.

Hayward said he travelled interstate regularly and noticed that his fellow business travellers were not gainfully employed during the 90-minute flight. Instead, they were wasting time “watching Netflix, playing a game on their phone, or asleep”. This, he surmised, was a “window into the complacency of many mid to senior ranks in business”.

The executive went on to suggest that travellers open their laptops and put away Candy Crush.

The comments rolled in – and not many were complimentary. Hayward patiently tried to explain himself and cut and paste a longer rationale to respond to individual comments.

“Do you know how difficult it is to see what’s on the screen after a handful of airport beers?” one commenter asked. “Also I wasn’t aware that The Onion was a subsidiary of Private Media”.

Another said: “Admittedly this is the best Betoota article I’ve read all morning.”

And: “I can’t wait to tell the prime minister that the solution to our productivity challenge is *checks notes* working in the cramped confines of economy class.”

Another: “Is this satire? Travel most weeks to Switzerland from Norfolk UK, involves 3am leaving the house travelling down to London City Airport. You want to make wild assumptions about work ethic on a 1 or 2-hour window of insight.”

ABC’s Matthew Carney honoured

The Four Corners executive producer, Matthew Carney, will travel to Timor-Leste next month to receive the award also given to John Martinkus and Mark Davis by the country’s president, José Ramos-Horta.

Carney is being honoured for the documentaries he made in the 1990s when he embedded in the mountains with David Alex, a leader of the resistance group Falintil as it fought a guerrilla war against Indonesian special forces, Kopassus.

He will give the keynote address at the official commemoration of the killing of the Balibo Five on 16 October.