ABC Boss Defends BBC’s Honour

Caddish rogue James Murdoch recently besmirched the reputation of Britain’s most beloved public broadcaster, the fair damsel BBC – and now noble knight of the realm Mark Scott from our very own Australian Broadcasting Corporation has had to bravely step in and defend the BBC’s honour. Oh, it’s all so romantic!

Reports SMH:

The head of the ABC has leapt to the defence of Britain’s public broadcaster after a brutal attack on its services by James Murdoch.

In a controversial lecture delivered at a recent TV conference in Edinburgh, the heir apparent to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire branded the scope of the BBC’s broadcast and online operations as “chilling” and claimed its news services were “throttling” the market.

But I suppose it’s okay when it’s Murdoch-owned media outlets throttling the market, yeah?

Mark Scott, show this flakin’ and perpetratin’ brother what time it is.

ABC managing director Mark Scott says James Murdoch, who heads News Corp’s Europe and Asia arms, appeared to want to limit the BBC to “the point of irrelevance” at a time when his company wanted to start charging people to read news online. He slammed Murdoch’s suggestion that the future of independent digital journalism depended on the public having to pay to read news online instead of for free on the websites of public broadcasters like the BBC and ABC.

“Think about this: the reason [paying for online news] sounds like a bad idea is because it is a bad idea,” Scott told the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association on Tuesday.

“Strip away the lofty language, and you see that the James Murdoch solution is less about making a contribution to public policy than it is getting rid of the BBC’s services, effectively destroying the BBC as we know it – a tragedy for the UK – a tragedy for the world. It would mean ending the mixed economy in provision of news – introducing a purely commercial service would impose a limitation on diversity of views far greater than any we now know.

“And charging citizens to hold power to account is not the way to rectify an existing imbalance or promote a more meaningful democracy.”

Bam! How do you like that, James Murdoch?

Scott added that as “truly independent broadcasters” the ABC and BBC both had big roles to play in the digital media age and a responsibility to deliver the kinds of programs demanded by audiences but which the market struggles to deliver.

The ABC needed to continue to innovate in programming, hold its core audiences and draw in new ones as well as set higher standards.

“The need for public broadcasting in the digital age is growing, not diminishing,” Scott said. “At the ABC, we are confident that our best days lie head of us.”

I think he’s referring to Poh’s new show in that last bit.

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