ABC finds big stories are an inconvenience

News and current affairs should be the heartland of ABC television, but under current management they are the poor cousin. When the Howard Government refused to increase the ABC's funding in 2003, what we got in response was a hissy-fit in which news and current affairs were slashed – including Business Breakfast, one of the rare ABC programs designed to appeal to those more interested in wealth creation than wealth redistribution. Meanwhile, the sort of forgettable comedy and chat shows that duplicate what is available on commercial TV have gone from strength to strength. Increasingly it is they, rather than serious and immediate coverage of the events that shape our nation, that seem to define the ABC.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in a series of baffling decisions that began just over two years ago when ABC television declined to interrupt its scheduled programs for live coverage of the invasion of Iraq. This was followed a month later by the same refusal when John Howard held a news conference to announce that governor-general Peter Hollingworth was stepping aside. While viewers of Sky News got the announcement live, ABC viewers got an archeology doco.

A pattern was set. Instead of the Prime Minister's election announcement last August, ABC viewers got a Gardening Australia repeat. The Sea King helicopter crash earlier this month, the arrival home of the bodies of those killed, even the death of Pope John Paul II: none of these events have been important enough to warrant a break in the ABC's schedule. It is hard to see how these decisions square with the frequent, and justified, claim that many Australian in remote areas depend wholly on the ABC for their news and current affairs. Perhaps the problem is that these decisions have been left to television director Sandra Levy when they properly belong to managing director Russell Balding. So here's a newsflash for Mr Balding: he needs to assume oversight of the treatment of major breaking news stories or risk the further trivialisation of the national broadcaster.