Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down their second budget on 9 May. The budget brought a modest boost to the ABC – with annual funding of $1.1 billion. However, the national broadcaster has announced a restructure that could see some jobs lost. SBS is funded to the tune of $334.9 million annually. Both ABC and SBS will receive an additional $72 million over four years, although ABC Alumni notes the ABC’s operational budget remains $90m short due to indexation halts in previous years. AAP did well out of the budget: it will receive $5 million over two years.
Also amongst the budget announcements was more funding to ACMA for fighting scam calls and texts and $7.9m over the next four years to combat misinformation and disinformation. It is likely to go towards staffing a dedicated team to manage ACMA’s responsibilities under new regulatory powers mooted by Michelle Rowland in January. ACMA has also noted that they will be monitoring platform measures to combat misinformation on the Voice.
In today’s edition, Derek writes about the Coalition’s Budget in Reply speech, in which Opposition leader Peter Dutton proposed a ban on gambling ads during the broadcasting of games. Derek explains how the proposal tightens some of the restrictions we already have in place, such as the Commercial TV Industry Code of Practice that prohibits broadcast of gambling ads during a certain time slot.
Next, we move to my piece on a special report by a leading international press freedom watchdog. The report found that the Israeli military took no accountability for journalists they had killed over the past two decades. Last week, I wrote about the 2023 Press Freedom Index, which had disturbing findings on decreasing press freedom and an increase in threats to journalists’ safety. The count of journalists killed in 2023 has already reached double digits, as more continue to be attacked, arrested and killed for doing their job across the world. Just this month, a popular Mosotho radio presenter was fatally shot in front of his radio station in Lesotho; a Colombian journalist was killed by unknown gunmen; and a Bosnian-French video journalist was killed in a rocket attack near the Ukrainian city of Chasiv Ya.
In AI news, the European Parliament has moved a step closer to a full-on ban on facial recognition in public spaces and other harmful AI systems. On 11 May, the Parliament’s Civil Liberties and Internal Market committees jointly adopted the text by large majority. In her piece, FASS PhD candidate Emma Clancy highlights some shortcomings in the text.
In more AI news, Shaun Davies, a UTS FASS master's student, sheds light on how AI hallucinations make GPT an unreliable research assistant.
Read our newsletter in full here.
Ayesha Jehangir, CMT Postdoctoral Fellow