Bad Aunty – Tracker article By CHRIS GRAHAM

BY TRACKER, JULY 30, 2012

 

Bad Aunty

NATIONAL: The truth about the NT intervention and the case for an independent media. By CHRIS GRAHAM.

Open any newspaper, tune into any TV or radio station, and you’ll hear that the rise of the internet and social media has sent Australia’s Fourth Estate into serious decline.

But the Australian media has been in decline for a very long time, argues CHRIS GRAHAM*.

Social media has simply has made it a lot more obvious. In this special feature, we bring you the story of how the Northern Territory intervention was extended last month by the Gillard government for another decade with the support of the Liberals and Nationals, despite the fact the policy is failing badly.

And it couldn’t have happened without the support of the nation’s media, one institution in particular. The ABC, also known as Aunty.

Self praise is no recommendation, so when television personality Tony Jones last year described ABC Lateline’s 2006 coverage of sexual violence in remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities – reporting which led directly to the 2007 NT intervention – as among the best he’d ever seen, I was a little underwhelmed.

Jones, of course, is the former anchor of Lateline, now the face of the popular Q&A program.

My sense of unease wasn’t helped by the fact that Lateline’s coverage proved extremely popular with politicians.

Read the rest of the article here – http://tracker.org.au/2012/07/bad-aunty/