Inside Story

Making the news

With a federal election looming, Peter Clarke talks to the director of ABC News, Kate Torney, about the challenges facing the corporation’s news-gatherers

Peter Clarke 2 July 2013 222 words

All about information flow: ABC news director Kate Torney. ABC



WITH a federal election looming, the ABC will be under intensified pressure to deliver what its critics see as impartial and balanced coverage of parties and politics. In the hot seat is the corporation’s director of news, Kate Torney. Peter Clarke talked to Kate not long after her appointment in 2009, and caught up with her again recently for this extended conversation about the challenges facing ABC News on TV, radio and online.

In part 1, Kate Torney talks about issues including the ABC’s relationship with social media, news-gathering in the digital age, the role of ABC News 24, and decisions about the deployment of ABC resources overseas. In part 2, she discusses the ABC’s approach to reporting the 2013 federal election, the ABC’s new fact-checking unit and the possibilities opened up by continuing technological change.

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Mentioned during the interview…

Inside Story’s November 2009 interview with Kate Torney

Jay Rosen on The Future of Context

• Peter Clarke’s analysis of Leigh Sales’s March 2013 interview with Julia Gillard

• Reports from the Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald on the ABC’s fact-checking unit.