Around the world, growing government hostility is threatening independent media who do their job, ask tough questions, and hold the powerful to account. Here Alan Sunderland explains why the recent UK government’s announcement to freeze the BBC licence fee for the next two years, and potentially eradicate it, is about a lot more than funding models and has worrying parallels with what has been happening to the ABC for several years. By Alan Sunderland / 25 January 2022 In Berlin recently, anti-...

In the early hours of 5th September 1972, the Munich Olympic Games were rocked by a terrorist attack. Eight terrorists from the Palestinian organisation Black September (BSO) seized members of the Israeli Olympic team, killing two in the initial attack, with nine more Israeli athletes and officials taken hostage – and worse to come. Six days earlier, John Highfield thought he’d finished his current affairs reporting assignment at the Olympics, but within hours he was back in Munich, an eyewitne...

There was a time when academics rarely talked about their work to anyone outside of the universities, a time when Australia was so genuflective to Britain and Europe that it lacked a distinctive cultural voice.  And then came the ABC. Or more specifically, the radio service now known as RN – Radio National. With the ABC celebrating its 90th Anniversary in 2022, ABC Alumni is publishing a series of articles throughout the year, ranging from little-known history to recollections of significant an...