What Ideas Rule? A Decline Towards “pop and pap” or a “duty to serve”?

This chapter will examine some of the major ideas which influenced coverage of content on the ABC. It will begin by analysing challenges to the value of democracy. It will then discuss the impact of social media as a carrier of ideas and enabler and the reliance of the professional media on it for information and what is regarded as providing them with public opinion and the by now engaging with “counter publics”. This has had ramifications for social interaction and social control in the flow and gate-keeping of ideas, generally. It will examine what has been described as “the insidious” role of the digital media in sabotaging journalists’ authoritative, neutral and professional distance from news events. It will argue that the intellectual élite field, and accompanying voice, of the ABC was becoming subsumed into the maelstrom of opinion in the emergent commercial digital field. The ABC’s cultural capital and reputational capital was now challenged through a lack of preparedness, planning, robust policies, effective leadership and self-reflection in its drift to the emergent commercial field. The institution displayed a disconnect to its Australian citizens between its policies and its published/broadcast content, with the ABC either unwilling or unable to rectify the inconsistencies. It now faced fierce competition from opinion-makers and has tried to match that with variable results. Its new approach to content contrasted its once independent, attitudinal aloofness and its cultural capital which were its strengths in its own field.