Eastern media will reduce SA to cliches: Weatherill
Premier Jay Weatherill will lobby the Federal Government against cuts to the ABC’s South Australian programming, warning that an eastern states’ dominated media agenda will reduce reporting on the state to cliches.
Weatherill told ABC 891 breakfast today that while he was concerned about staff losing their jobs, he was also worried about the cultural impact of losing South Australian perspectives on the national broadcaster.
The Federal Government is preparing to slash funding to SBS and the ABC, despite an election promise not to do so. The Australian reported today that an announcement on the magnitude of the cuts will be made soon by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
“What you’re seeing at the moment is I think an increasing centralisation of cultural authority on to the eastern seaboard,” Weatherill told the ABC.
“What that means is that South Australia gets presented in stereotypical form. The only time we leap on to the national stage is when we do something that fits into our stereotype. So say there’s a murder – we get the stereotype of the murder capital of the nation and so that gets a run on the national current affairs program during the course of the week.
“So it’s a massive concern that we’re seeing the nation being presented in a uniform fashion rather than the regional differences, which is what the ABC charter requires the ABC to do – that is to pick up the diversity of the nation and represent that to the nation and importantly to South Australians.”
He said unique South Australian stories would be lost if the ABC further centralised its programming.
“I’ll give you one example. The (local) 7.30 report a couple of months ago did a fantastic story on the relationship in South Australia between Muslims and non-Muslims. Now if you just ran the national story what you get is Lakemba mosques, all of this really heightened sense of conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims in western New South Wales.
“We don’t have it, whereas if you were to present the story and just look at the news stories and look at the current affairs stories that run during the week what you get is a false impression about Muslim/non-Muslim relations – that’s because South Australia is different.
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“We’ve had a fine tradition of multi-culturalism. We don’t have enclaves of people that just only can live in their own communities and talk to each other about things and then can separate themselves from the rest of our state. That’s a South Australian story that gets lost in the national wash-up.
“If we were to lose, for instance, the (local) 7.30 Report, which is one of the potential options in the cuts as I understand it, we would lose that small sliver of local current affairs that just balances up the national perspective.”
InDaily reported earlier this year that local television production at the ABC was under threat from funding cuts.
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