Why Australia’s cuts to news services in the Indo‑Pacific are a failure of soft diplomacy

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/53580563

Op-ed by Alexandra Wake, Professor, Journalism at RMIT University in Australia.

Archived

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Since the second world war, Australia has provided news services across this geopolitically significant region [...] Over the years, successive governments, and sometimes ABC management, have cut international news services. At times the region has been left with few services.

And yet, each time our Indo-Pacific neighbours seek assistance elsewhere, we act outraged, while continuing to hold inquiries into the importance of engaging with Asia.

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At the same time, other countries, including China and Russia, have filled the void: the former with its own brand of news, and the latter with online disinformation designed to destabilise the region.

China has been very active in the media space. It takes journalists on “training” trips to China, offers incentives to newsrooms, and shows off what it calls the world’s largest newsroom through its broadcasting services.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong should be applauded for renewing the ABC’s Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy, in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) budget papers. That funding has allowed a range of initiatives.

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But the DFAT funding continues to come through her department, not communications. In other words, support for journalism across the region remains limited to a select number of countries at the whim of the foreign minister of the day.

The funding has been renewed for just two years instead of five. This creates uncertainty for program participants and adds to the costs of administration.

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Supporting media diversity, including local news outlets, is an easy way to show the region we have shed our colonial past and are genuinely seeking to be partners.

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