Malcolm Turnbull goes it alone on Q&A with host Tony Jones ahead of the 2016 federal election. ABC iView

Why politicians and television still need each other

Television shows that reveal politicians in a different light, such as Channel Ten’s The Project, or the ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet or Q&A, are vital outlets for them to convey their messages.
AAP/Mick Tsikas

ABC restructuring: leaner, but hopefully not meaner

Today’s long-awaited announcement of restructuring at the ABC highlights two directions for change in the coming year and beyond. Both are welcome. More money will be spent on content production and delivery…
A protest against Donald Trump in Stockholm, Sweden. Reuters/TT News Agency

Fake news – a user’s guide

With Zelig-like serendipity I was in Stockholm when #lastnightinsweden went viral. While echoing the melancholic majesty of a classic ABBA song title, the hashtag #lastnightinsweden actually referred to…
Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

All hail Trump, the great transgressor!

For a president who has transgressed so many of the conventions which make our democracies civilised and decent, respect is not an entitlement. It must be earned.
AAP/Mick Tsikas

When politicians become pundits

It is the mark of a healthily diverse media that politicians of all persuasions, not just those who echo the views of the proprietor, should be given a platform to express their views in our key media of record.
Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin

Putin, the political technologist

President Trump will approach political communication in the same way as he ran his campaign – according to the Putin playbook of political technology.
Gilbert & George

Surviving 2017 – a user’s guide

At the peak of post-Soviet triumphalism in the west, amid all the hype about a New World Order and the end of history, historian Eric Hobsbawm rained on the parade somewhat by suggesting that we were in…
EPA

The empire strikes back

Just five short years after (literally) eating humble pie live on national TV for presiding over the most corrupt, criminally minded, bin-raking, sleaze-mongering crowd of press hacks ever to spread their…
ABC News 24

After objectivity?

As the results of the 2016 election came in, the mainstream media in America and around the world demonstrated their inability to cope with the challenge of a president Trump within the conventional paradigms…
Reuters/Rick Wilking

Clinton triumphs over a trio of Trumps

While Hillary was in the Situation Room with Obama, she pointed out, overseeing the demise of Bin Laden, Trump was on Celebrity Apprentice.
Sky News

The democratic paradox

Last night ABC’s Q&A scored its usual high ratings. Not for the first time, the ABC’s flagship public access current affairs program gave primetime commercial TV a run for its money. It’s not without…
The long peace is over but we don’t yet know what will come next. Andrew Kelly/Reuters

When terror goes viral it’s up to us to prevent chaos

Digital media has the power to inform, but it is also helping some to spread hate. Have we reached the tipping point between order and chaos at the global level?
Screenshot/BBC News

Europe endless, or Europe ending?

I came to live and work in Australia six years ago, having spent most of the previous 50 living within the collective embrace of two unions – the United Kingdom and the European Union. I was then, and…
Who took the points in the first leaders’ debate of the 2016 campaign? AAP/Tracey Nearmy

Turnbull and Shorten face off in leaders’ debate: experts respond

The Conversation’s experts respond to the first Turnbull-Shorten debate with an eye across key policy areas and the leaders’ performances.
Annabel Crabb dines with senator Jacqui Lambie for Kitchen Cabinet. Supplied

Whose kitchen rules? Annabel’s, of course!

Kitchen Cabinet is a good example of the hybridisation of political media we see in much of Australian TV today.
Reuters/Peter Nicholls

The Conservatives and the BBC – falling in love again?

We who love and cherish the BBC, even from afar – and I am unashamedly one of them – have been awaiting with some anxiety the UK government’s white paper on the future of the corporation. The culture secretary…
In this man’s day, Cooma had a thriving newspaper. Now it is gone – could the ABC step into the breach? State Records NSW/flickr

Memo to Michelle Guthrie: as local newspapers die, might the ABC help out?

The 130-year-old Cooma-Monaro Express is the latest newspaper casualty in a time of industry turbulence. Yet with local news more important than ever, could the ABC use its resources to bolster this key journalism sector?

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