On 23 April 2024, former ABC National Arts Reporter Anne Maria Nicholson spoke to the Central Coast branch of ABC Friends NSW in Gosford.  This is an edited version of her speech.Today I am going to try to answer three questions: Why do the arts matter?  Why should they be reported?  And is the ABC doing the job well enough these days? In the darkest days of the pandemic, when at times all hope seemed lost, people around the world turned to the arts for comfort.  The most basic of human cries f...

7 May 2024   The ABC now faces an awful dilemma. If, as now seems certain, it loses the media bargaining code revenue it has been receiving from Facebook, now Meta, it will have to sack many of the 60 journalists and support staff it has recruited since entering into commercial contracts in 2021.The ABC is legally obligated not to reveal the quantum of the revenue it receives from either Meta or Google. But it can fairly be speculated that a workforce payroll of 60 with associated capital costs...