Religious reporting ‘important to ABC’

Sydney
25 August 2002

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Religion needs and deserves more than 30-second grabs in the electronic media and sensational headlines in print, says ABC chairman Donald McDonald, “Otherwise our whole society will be further impoverished”. Mr McDonald (pictured) told the Australasian Religious Press Association conference that the ABC “considers its religious reporting to be important, indeed essential”.

It broadcasts seven programs – over six hours a week – on radio and TV. And it has a website, The Sacred Site, the gateway to religion online.

“Not only can you catch the live broadcasts, but if you miss them, both the transcripts and audio files are available online,” the ABC chief said, “a significant body of published work examining and sometimes refreshing our shared faith.

“And it is available to anyone in any part of the world with an internet connection.

“Some of the programs from time to time touch on the post-modern pluralist mush that travels under the name spirituality,” he said, “what might be described as the faith you have when you’re not having a faith.” Yet overall, he said, they are a great living resource and an archive of intelligent discussion for all who are interested in the Church and society, who do not want Australia to lose its religious memory.

“When Pope John Paul II described the mass media, on World Communications Day 1999, as ‘a friendly companion for those in search of the Father’, the first thought of many would have been ‘that really says something about Christian forgiveness’,” Mr McDonald said. “But perhaps he’d been watching and listening to the ABC.”