Labor is deeply disappointed by reports today of more news media jobs losses and further centralisation of news services to the eastern states.
The planned changes will see10’s Adelaide weekday evening news bulletin presented from Melbourne, with Brisbane and Perth bulletins to be presented from Sydney.
While today’s announcement suggests the Adelaide bulletin will remain locally produced and continue to employ local reporters, news crews and operations staff, 10 has told employees there will be redundancies in those departments.
Labor is concerned this means that Melbourne presenters are just the start of a bigger shift away from local South Australian news, reported, produced and presented by local teams that know their state and prioritise stories relevant to South Australians.
With more and more print, online, television and radio news being syndicated from the eastern states, South Australia’s local news content is under threat.
Labor’s thoughts are foremost with employees of the 10 network who face losing their jobs during a global economic crisis and in a time of great uncertainty.
While we understand that the media market has not been immune to the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe local news has never been more important.
Australians in every state deserve to be kept informed of the latest local news of greatest relevance in their communities.
If news operations continue to be ‘centralised’ to Sydney and Melbourne, South Australians will miss out.