The ABC is an organisation known intimately to every Australian and about which every one of us has an opinion. The letters pages of newspapers contain a steady stream of bouquets and brickbats for the public broadcaster. Yet according to pollsters, with around 80 per cent support, the ABC is the most trusted media organisation in the country by a very wide margin. It is one of the few organisations to maintain trust when confidence in institutions everywhere has declined.

Programs like Gruen would be under threat if the ABC only produced material the commercial channels won't touch.

This trust has been hard-earned over the ABC’s 86-year history. But as some in the banking community have learnt recently, that trust can be eroded very quickly. Some people delight in undermining trust in public broadcasting because they’d rather darkness where we shine light, or because their commercial interests are served when Australians have less media diversity and choice.

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The commercial television networks and some newspapers peddle an ever more urgent message that the ABC is hurting their business and should be held back. They take delight in reviews into the broadcaster’s efficiency and business practices, hoping they will coalesce into a full-blown revision of the ABC’s Charter that relegates the public broadcaster to a "market failure" function limited to programming about fine arts, science, education or philosophy. This would likely spell the end for popular programming like Four Corners, Australian Story, Gruen or Sea Change because, the argument goes, these programs could be produced by commercial media and taxpayers would save millions. But this argument misses two points.