The current bushfire crisis, which is probably the biggest bushfire event in the recorded history of the world, apart from being a political horrorshow, is a practical demonstration of why the ABC is very very very very important.
Despite the economic terrorist organisations of Sky News and the IPA calling for the abolition of the ABC, they offer no alternative proposal to replace the vital emergency warning and information broadcast system that the ABC provides as part of the ABC Local Radio network. Dare I say that they don't actually care that the country is on fire; choosing instead to run a propaganda campaign of barely credible lies.
ABC Local Radio, especially on the AM band, is in a lot of cases, the only reliable source of information. Mobile phone services and the internet aren't even viable in many instances, when the infrastructure needed to make them work has been destroyed due to fire.
I also note that News Corp and Fairfax have scaled back their news desks, as have Prime/7, WIN Television/9 and Capital/10, only the ABC has journalists on the ground to report in real time what is going on. Macquarie Radio in Sydney is running a similar propaganda campaign to Sky News, and networks like Austereo which don't really employ journalists, are running very weak vox pops as their best but feeble efforts.
AM Radio is also uniquely technically poised to offer an emergency service because unlike Digital TV and Radio which fails even in completely clear weather and which is affected by storms within the line of sight from the transmission tower, or FM radio which is also affected by the smoke and haze, AM radio is sufficiently low tech that it isn't really affected enough to be unheard. AM radio transmissions have an effective range of thousands of miles in some cases, and I personally can attest to having listened to ABC Adelaide, ABC Melbourne, ABC Brisbane, and even radio from New Zealand using only basic equipment in Sydney. As you move around Australia, quite often the only thing that you will be able to find on the radio is the ABC.
Mobile phone services are fine but you can't exactly be expected to live stream radio from your mobile phone for hours at a time. It may as well be non-existent if the network goes down. AM Radio on the other hand, only needs a rudimentary radio to receive the signal and given that that signal can be picked up from hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away. Unless Sky News or the IPA propose some other alternative, then quite frankly, these troll terrorist organisations need to get out of this country.
Only the ABC has the ability to run emergency broadcast services to anything like the scale needed and because they aren't motivated by the profit motive, the ABC actually bothers to act like a public service.
https://mobile.twitter.com/abcsydney/status/1213297070645235714
We have begun rolling emergency broadcasting coverage on ABC Radio Sydney. 5 fires burn at Emergency-level across NSW, including the Green Wattle Creek fire near Sydney. Listen to ABC Radio Sydney on 702AM, online or on app. If you’re elsewhere, check http://reception.abc.net.au
- ABC Radio Sydney, 4th Jan 2020.
For the 4th of January, ABC Local Radio in Sydney, completely abandoned its normal programming; instead choosing to focus on what was more important. Or rather, their AM service on 702 ran an emergency broad broadcast, while on digital they ran ABC Sydney as normal and an ABC Emergency station as a pop-up service. I imagine that this kind of thing has happened up and down the east coast especially across the nation to a lesser extent.
Part of the problem that this crisis has brought into sharp focus, is a distinct lack of care from people in power for the very people who they govern and in theory who they are supposed to serve. Sky News and the IPA are under no such illusions or pretenses and the only people who they serve are themselves. The idea that the people of the Commonwealth should share the wealth in common for the idea of peace, order and good government, is completely unknown to these organisations.
If these bushfires prove nothing else, it is that the attempts of Sky News and the IPA, as well as the badgering of Macquarie Radio and the complicit media companies to try to kill off the ABC, are insidious. I will confess that I am being radicalised online by Sky News and the IPA, to want to eliminate these economic terrorist organisations who don't even hide in plain sight.
The ABC is more important than ever and the current bushfire horrowshowcatasrophextravaganza makes that clearer than ever before.
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