賈斯汀·史蒂文斯

2023年6月16日

廣告ABC的堪培拉局工作人員與高級新聞管理舉行的閉門會議後,安德魯·普羅賓決定網絡的政治編輯,多餘的。知情人士,誰不願透露姓名的,這樣他們可以暢所欲言,電視台的新聞主任說,賈斯汀史蒂文斯和他的副手,加文方,每個員工發表30分鍾來證明編輯部的決定震驚了。ABC新聞主管賈斯汀史蒂文斯堪培拉局今天解決。會議審視如何決定,誰提出了更改。ABC發言人證實該提案提出了美國廣播公司的董事會由行政電視台的新聞。“所有計劃提出的新聞主管,主管認可新聞和經總經理批準,”該發言人說。美國廣播公司新聞行政包括史蒂文斯和方;喬普契尼-調查性新聞和時事;唐娜,國家元首和新聞報道業務;新聞負責人斯圖亞特·瓦特分布與策略; Suzanne Dredge, head of indigenous news; and Lee Glendinning, head of digital. One of the sources said Probyn did not attend the meeting. The decision to make Probyn’s role redundant prompted an angry response from current and former ABC staff as well as sections of the wider community. Management has come under fire for removing the political editor position while retaining roles such as business editor and global affairs editor. Former foreign minister Bob Carr, himself a former journalist, took to Twitter to lament the decision, saying that sacking Probyn and “replacing him with junior reporters who can get stuff on TikTok will drive down audience even further. The chair and board must reverse this.” Advertisement Loading Long-time ABC broadcaster Barrie Cassidy tweeted yesterday that the decision is “like saying a restaurant doesn’t need a head chef. The cooks stay”. “The ABC now needs to explain how the kitchen works without a head chef,” he added. Stevens, who was interviewed on ABC Radio Melbourne yesterday and on Queensland ABC this morning said the kitchen analogy was an outdated look at how the broadcaster operates. “In terms of the head chef analogy, it’s an analogy that might have worked in the ’80s or ’90s, when the restaurant was servicing people in one way only. The restaurant now is servicing people in all sorts of ways.” Asked yesterday by ABC Melbourne’s Raf Epstein about the Probyn decision, Stevens said the political editor role has largely been dedicated to servicing its 7pm news broadcast. “Andrew doesn’t only do 7 o’clock,” Epstein rebutted, “he’s not someone who is allergic to working away from 7 o’clock is he?” Probyn did not attend the closed-door meeting. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen “What I would say is, the way we cover federal politics doesn’t turn on an individual,” Stevens responded. “We have a great deal of experience in that bureau beyond a few individuals, and we cover federal politics outside of Canberra, too.” On ABC Brisbane, Stevens sought to explain the impact removing the political editor role would have on its news output. Loading “Sometimes the word editor can mean different things to different people, it’s not like a newspaper editor who’s editing a newspaper. It was a job title created in 2015, I think for Chris Uhlmann, and it’s a role that was created really at a time when the audience was by and large being serviced through the stories that that role would report for the 7pm nightly news.” “So after these changes, we’ll still have David Speers, Laura Tingle, Greg Jennett, we have an editor of politics who leads that bureau, commissions stories and has editorial responsibility for what we do day-to-day. So, it’s one of many tough choices, but we really respect and value what he’s done for the ABC.” Stevens was pressed by both Epstein and Brisbane host Rebecca Livingston on the decision to nationalise the 7pm bulletin. “The biggest story in Victoria should be of interest to someone in Queensland as much as it is in WA,” he told Epstein. “The key thing here,” Stevens said to Livingston, “is we will scale up a local edition if there is enough of a threshold that’s reached to do that. So, we’re not reducing the number of local staff in any of the newsrooms around the country, including Queensland on weekends. We will have the ability to do a local edition if it warrants it.”