Seems like a well argued essay to me.

Four brief paragaphs from my favorite Philosopher describing the condition of the dreadfully sane every-person being "entertained" by the commercial media. The message of commercial media is of course that the purpose of life is to be a satisfied consumer, and to become self-righteously angry at any and every one who in any way obstructs, and even questions that imperative.

The modern everyman of consumer society is a propagandized individual, participating in illusions, and, effectively, self-destructing.

The modern "everyman" is being created by the power system of the world, because it is in the interests of that power system for there to be consumer egos who are self-invloved, self-seeking, and stupefied.

At present, a culture of total war, a culture of death, is ruling, while the people are engrossed in consumerism.

THE POWER OF INDUSTRY AND MONEY HAS ACTUALLY BECOME SENIOR TO THE POWER OF GOVERNMENTS, AND IS NOW CONTROLLING THE ENTIRE WORLD.

As things currently stand, and presuming that both TV and radio still have an essential role to play in informing the citizen of the health and well-being of the collective body-politic, the ABC is the only such media outlet in the land of Oz that still provides resources which question the corporate created status quo.

It seems to me that although they oft times pretend otherwise our new government is the "faithfull servant" of the money and industry that now controls the world.
The new highly secret Trans Pacific "Partnership" Agreement being a vector to facilitate the anti-democratic consolidation of such corporate power.

I can see the day, after decades of liberal governments at state and federal, an ABC dominated by rightwing group think talking heads. Our education institutions will have been transformed into teaching arithmatic spelling reading writing mathematics grammer comprehension and an ability to think.
Degrees in journalism and other cadet type offerings will disappear as will the muddleheaded academia funding that promotes unthinking allegience to anything not Australian or western.

Where will ABC find it's progressives then. The unions? Yeah sure.

Cohenite every item you purchase, includes the cost of advertising that product.
Then you knew that! didn't you !!

Sure Kipp, advertising; remember those shows about the best adverts? They were great. Anyway, I don't have to watch ads and I don't have to pay for them if I don't watch them or use the products being advertised. And ads can assist our choice and competition for the choices of consumers lowers prices.

I think YEBIGA's rant is really to the point; he is a snob; like all the arguments for the ABC he thinks the hoi polio are idiots and losers while those who watch the ABC are superior folk who wish to remain undistracted from the crass commercials so they can go about their superior business of saving the world/ immigrants/ aboriginals/ gay rights or whatever confected cause is occupying their superior sensibilities at the moment.

It really annoys me that ABC supporters demand the rest of us should fund their indulgence. If you want it pay for it yourself.

Actually I think YEBIGA's rant is taking the mickey; consider this:

"A malignant sickness has attached itself to australian culture - its trajectory can be tracked and traced, every foundation of civility and fairness is being discarded as a petty nuisance, one step at a time, to be replaced by an adolescent naive hubris, supported by an ideology of pure myth and rapacity."

That is as good a definition of the left/greens as you could find.

Patricia,
Not sure I understand you here. You give three examples where government media organisations are allegedly being threatened by the their governments (the BBC, Japanese NHK, and the ABC),
and yet you offer no full proof methods as to how such govt. media can operate independently of government (in fact, hard to see how you could, considering that politicians both decide what funding the organisations will get as well as appoint their boards).

You quote an erstwhile BBC director declaring “independence [of the media] rests on being influenced by the public, not politicians”. Ergo, one assumes this means commercial media, where the public, in the form of the viewers, very much influence the ratings, and thus the revenue, of the channels with their remote controls.

But after all that you finish off by saying that public broadcasting is the only way to go?

The title of the article reveals the answer.
Which is a resounding yes!
The ABC grew out the early times of a brand new medium - radio.
Prior to this, the main source of information(news), learning, and entertainment was newspapers.
People were able to read only what the publishers permitted much of which depended on the knowledge, capability, and political integrity of a handful of people.
The few, therefore, told the many what to think. (Not unlike today's radio shock jocks.)
Think about what life would be like without the ABC.
We would be dependent totally upon media which was dependent upon a relatively small number of corporations for its funding.
In its origin, we adopted the fiercely independent style of the BBC and to it added the consumerist motivation of American radio.
What we have today is a valuable choice of discretionary information and entertainment.
The ABC is a valuable counter to the bogan broadcasters.