October 2, 2023
Earlier this year, the ABC drew a sackful of journalistic derision when it decided to make its award-winning political editor Andrew Probyn and veteran producer Brihony Speed redundant.
The ABC’s management, led by David Anderson and Justin Stevens, thought the Canberra bureau was “top heavy” and the political editor position “old fashioned”. Besides, it believed letting Probes go could free up budget funds to hire younger, cheaper workers who make content for social media platforms such as TikTok.
So how many TikTok journalists are now at the ABC? The broadcaster has disclosed in Senate estimates questions taken on notice that Aunty hires the equivalent of “8.5full-time equivalent positions whose primary role is producing content... that is published through ABC TikTok accounts”. The vertical video team also makes content for Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
For every Probes and Brihony – who break stories, interview politicians and mentor younger journalists – the ABC gets a little fleet of content makers editing and slicing up AP footage on FinalCutPro. Their salaries and “associated costs” together are “less than $1,000,000”. Take that legacy journalism!
Senator James Paterson, the app’s hater-in-chief, called the Probes-for-TikTok trade as“ simply bizarre”.
But more interesting is the way the ABC’s TikTok team has to navigate the curly problems with producing news for a China-owned app. The way TikTok processes user data has raised legitimate questions about the safety of the app, and 25 government departments and agencies already ban it from official devices.
To get around it, the ABC’s TikTok team has “standalone devices” to make and upload its videos. It also tells staff not to use TikTok on their devices, which are linked to the ABC’s cloud systems “like email, Teams and iCloud”.
Right, then, ABC believes TikTok is that much of a worry that it needs a bunch of phones, unhooked from its network, to post content to the app.
Yes, we have concerns about how TikTok might infiltrate our systems, but the China datamining operation needs fresh content. Hey Speersy, chuck us one of the TikTok burners, I have a great idea for a way to make you go viral.
