The broadcast – Report on International Women’s Day on Paradigm Shift (4ZZZ Fridays at noon) – has been widely misunderstood. Station management claims there have been many complaints about the program and so went on air to publicly apologise soon after Paradigm Shift. I resigned from 4ZZZ on the principle that this broadcast contained factual material and honestly held belief and so should not have been taken down.
However I do regret putting the show to air because the reaction against a small part of the program has been so strong that it does not advance women’s struggle.
Strong reaction to International Women’s Day broadcast
I underestimated the bias against socialist ideas at the station and among subscribers generally. It seems identity trumps humanity. The humanity that underlies socialism seems to have evaporated with each groups desire to have their identity paramount. This individualism is typical of western consumerist countries where individuals of all ages get their information form social media.
Few people would be aware that International Women’s Day came from the collective struggle for socialism in the early part of the 20th century. Liberal capitalist countries like the US, Australia and Britain did not even recognise the day until 1977 when it became part of the United Nations calendar.
How 4ZZZ de-programmed the Report of International Women’s Day ’21
I was trying to login into Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA)’s music pages (amrap) to re-enter deleted playlists of shows played on Paradigm Shift on (4ZZZ on Fridays at noon) from 26 Feb till 26 March 2021 .
I couldn’t. I had been excluded from making any changes. My username had been deleted.
So I wrote to the CBAA asking: “Can you please explain why the (Paradigm Shift’s) playlists have been deleted?
I received the following reply from the CBAA on 1 April 2021:
“Thanks for reaching out to the CBAA about 4ZZZ’s Paradigm Shift Amrap Pages account. It appears that each episode from Fri March 5 onwards has not been ticked to be publicly viewable. I have attached a screenshot (below), you can see the checkbox at the top of the page needs to be ticked to be visible by the program maker.
Andrew Morris, Manager, Online Products & Services“
Changes to Paradigm Shift’s Amrap page by 4ZZZ management
Screen shot of Paradigm Shift Amrap Pages account.
The CBAA does not have any published policies on Dispute Resolution.
Their website says this is under development. So much for fairness in bureaucracy.
Shooting the messenger
4ZZZ station management made no attempt to engage or discuss with me how this should be resolved or even why they wanted the broadcast to be taken down. They did however issue me with a series of written ultimatums that I should take the material down. When I spoke to management over the phone, they resorted to process refusing to discuss the substantive matter of why they wished to take the shows down.
I have been associated with the station since its inception so, given the circumstances, I had little choice other than to resign.
– Raymond Evans in The Future
Ian Curr
4PR – Voice of the People
3 April 2021
