“Journalism’s success in the future depends a lot on how we respond to technological change around us and the growing pressure from governments, organisations and corporations to restrict at every possible moment our access to information.”

Ferguson’s passionate call to arms was delivered at the 2015 A.N. Smith lecture on journalism at Melbourne University last night. 

She said Australia should pay careful attention to the threat facing the BBC in the United Kingdom.

“If the world’s first and most powerful public broadcaster is in danger of having its wings clipped, what about its poorer cousin Down Under?” — ABC reporter Sarah Ferguson

“The BBC is facing perhaps the biggest challenge in its history and it comes from the government led by media friendly, moderate, liberal-minded Tory MP David Cameron. A man, it should be said, in the same mold as our new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull,  philosophically aligned as they are on climate change, gay marriage and innovative capitalism,” Ferguson said.

“If the world’s first and most powerful public broadcaster is in danger of having its wings clipped, what about its poorer cousin Down Under?”

The Four Corners correspondent and sometime current affairs anchor said former Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s hostility towards the ABC, which included a ban on ministers appearing on the program Q&A following an interview with former terrorism suspect Zaky Mallah, was “the latest in a long series of assaults by the then-Liberal leader, who had accused ABC journalists of being unpatriotic, of taking everyone’s side but Australia’s, of lacking basic affection for the home team”.

But she said the future of the ABC and the profession of journalism was no clearer following the “great switcheroo at the top of our national politics” — from Tony Abbott to Malcolm Turnbull.

“What the ABC’s critics failed to understand is that it is not the ABC’s job to project the country according to their tastes,” Ferguson continued. “Nor is it the ABC’s role to boost or spruik for Australia, in peace or in conflict. 

“No one at the ABC looks for thanks from the government but is it unreasonable to expect the government to have some understanding of a major institution whose existence the public so overwhelmingly supports?”

Ferguson said there was an increasing desire for corporations and politicians to control and disseminate their story on their own terms, unlike past leaders Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard who let the ABC present their stories of the 2013 leadership spill in the documentary The Killing Season.

“Will the political series continue or will our future leaders — enabled by technology — choose to package and disseminate their history on their own terms? Will our future politicians accept the ABC’s role in curating their history?”

Ferguson said the government had effectively kept journalists out of the Nauru and Manus Island detention camps. She said the Australian media was able to track down a Syrian refugee named Eyad who was given $2000 by the Australian government to return to his war-torn home.

“It is deeply ironic that reporters, unable to penetrate the veil of secrecy that hangs over the offshore detention centres in Nauru and Manus, were only able to contact Eyad to get his story after he had returned to the middle of the world’s most brutal conflict,” she said.

“What the ABC’s critics failed to understand is that it is not the ABC’s job to project the country according to their tastes . . . Will our future politicians accept the ABC’s role in curating their history?”

Ferguson also spoke about her latest investigation into domestic violence for which she has been living in a women’s refuge. One woman had urged Ferguson to tell her story, no matter how dangerous it was, so that other women women living in toxic relationships could know that they had to get out.

She said this was in stark contrast to some of the domestic violence organisations she dealt with who had asked that the ABC sign a filming agreement that gave them veto over what was published.

“This is something that we have to push back against together as journalists.”

In her lecture, attended by around 300 at the Sidney Myer Asia Centre, Ferguson also touched on the role of public broadcasting in the wake of advanced technologies such as the “Occulus Rift” – a virtual reality headset that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg says he wants to adapt for news dissemination.

She said that the ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, had asked staff to consider how they could use new technology to make news.

Ferguson said that while the possibilities might be exciting, she was confident that the fundamentals of rigorous reporting would not change.

“A well-funded public broadcaster will seek out the story that a commercial broadcaster may not pursue, or certainly not at length.”

“If you the consumer or viewer are walking through a virtual reality refugee camp in Syria, don’t you still want an intelligent person as your guide, a curious person who is going to seek the trust, who is going to look for true human feelings beyond sentiment, who is going to probe for anomalies, who is going to understand the context of what you’re experiencing narrow and broad?

“Whatever the tools, whatever the platform, whether it’s virtual reality or augmented reality, or the many unimagined tools that are yet to arrive, the key is still the same: our ability to find an original, compelling story and tell that story in a way that enables the audience to trust what they see.

“A well-funded public broadcaster will seek out the story that a commercial broadcaster may not pursue, or certainly not at length.”