TURC Shirk

Managing Director and self-appointed “editor-in-chief” of the ABC Mark Scott, who spends a good part of his working day sharing interesting tidbits on Twitter, is a source of sometimes quite remarkable information. Thoroughly up to speed on the latest news about the internet’s reach and spread, he marvelled in a recent tweet at the many locations around the world from which people like himself share their 140-character insights.

Good work if you can get it — especially on a rate of pay that runs to $2076.87 per day — but all that tweeting might just have its downside. While Scott keeps his finger on the pulse of those six billion tweets, he has perhaps not noticed how his minions are collating their coverage of matters much closer to home. — matters like archived coverage of the Trade Unions Royal Commission, which has been generating quite a few headlines of late.

Anyone curious to catch up with what the ABC has been reporting, limited though it has been, and turning for enlightenment to the search function on the national broadcaster’s website will be disappointed. Enter the search term “trade union royal commission” and the top entries are somewhat out of date:

Try the acronym “TURC” and this is what you get, one entry:

Just to be fair, it should be noted that more results can be obtained if the curious visitor goes to the trouble of specifying particular time periods, the last two weeks for example. But surely, given the ABC’s billion-dollar annual budget, it could find the small change to install a better internal search engine than the one currently featured. Or perhaps it could find a nerd who can tickle the search engine’s back end so that results are assembled with the most recent on top. Failing that, Scott could post a notice in ABC lunchrooms to advise that there is an IT vacancy available to be filled by the spouse, partner, lover, soulmate or child of any current employee in need of additional income. Family ties seem often to figure in ABC recruitment.

Until the search engine is improved, the suspicious may just be inclined to the view that, when it comes to covering the TURC revelations of unions’ mischief, the ABC isn’t all that energetic. But don’t expect Mark Scott to tweet about that. There are more important things demanding his attention:

Roger Franklin, editor of Quadrant Online, is available to fill Mark Scott’s shoes — and cash pay cheques of similar size — when the managing director’s term expires