New media access is breaking editorial control by Big Media corporate hegemony. As those commerical models are broken there is still a great need for public square media light or heavy content. The ABC is one viable model. Crikey is another. Dead tree media is probably not in the long run.

So the question becomes why should other poorer countries nearby miss out on a viable big media public square model as the wheels fall off their own traditional media after web 2.0? We are approaching the ubiquitous $100 laptop world including in poor countries. Think of it as transfer of know how, content. Of course there will be self interested soft diplomacy involved.

The more troubling aspect probably would be to what extent ABC will empower and spread capacity flat/meritocracy as distinct from nepotistic-hierarchical and gatekeeper. The latter style is the careerist empire building approach that essentially delivered us the GFC.

The former approach is as ethical as it is radical.

Why?

To serve what purpose?

Unlike the Brits, our voices are intelligible. Not just to second-language speakers, but to the first-language English speakers of South-East Asia and the Pacific. A listener can actually understand what is being said. This is in clear contrast to CNN, whose text appears to be so overwhelmingly trite that even the announcers try to decorate the delivery with a silly voice they learnt at school. Anglophiles might think it’s quaint, but to many it is just offensive. Unless snobbery is a major selling point, ABC could compete with CNN on its home ground.

However, we would have to make sure that the Poms who have infiltrated ABC and SBS do not infiltrate the new service. Does anyone remember an SBS interview by Gary McNabb in Singapore? Although the interviewee communicated as clearly to us as the boy next door, he was humiliated in public by failing to understand an interviewer from an Australian television station. We were supposed to think it was funny.

The other asset is the integrity of our investigative journalism. Unlike Yanks, our journalists do not have to worry about offending major commercial interests. The political postures, faces and voices of Australian anchormen are already familiar to PACRIM viewers from our tourists: cheerful, frank and equal. And speaking a familiar, international version of English.