Hundreds of ABC journalists – including some of the broadcaster's most high-profile presenters – are lobbying the ABC board not to axe premier current affairs program Lateline.
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7.30 host Leigh Sales, investigative journalist Sarah Ferguson, radio presenter Mark Colvin and newsreaders Juanita Phillips and Ian Henderson are among the estimated 350 ABC staff who have signed a petition to keep Lateline on air.
Lateline staff and most of the ABC's top foreign correspondents have also signed the petition.
It has been circulated among the entire ABC News division and will be presented to the ABC board before they meet on Wednesday.
The ABC is considering axing Lateline and the state-based editions of 7.30 which air on Friday nights. The broadcaster is also considering cuts to radio current affairs programs such as PM and The World Today.
There is debate within the broadcaster about the need for a stand-alone, late-night news program following the advent of ABC News 24, with some questioning whether the program's ratings justify its resources.
The petition reads: "Lateline has a proud 25-year history of breaking stories, hard-hitting, exclusive interviews and setting agendas. It's a program regarded as compulsory viewing by political and business leaders.
"Do not let this important creative team be disbanded at the very time Australia needs strong, independent media, with newspapers declining and critical reporting under challenge!"
The petition notes that Lateline's reporting helped trigger the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse, revealed poverty and abuse in indigenous communities and exposed the mistreatment of Vivian Solon, who was unlawfully removed to the Philippines by the Department of Immigration.
"There is a lot of internal dissent – people are very upset," an ABC reporter said.
Activist group GetUp! is expected to launch a public petition this week in a bid to keep the program on the air.
Veteran current affairs journalist and foreign correspondent Peter Lloyd has won plaudits within the broadcaster for a response to the petition, in which he mounts a strong defence of the importance of radio news and current affairs.
"Radio News is not an old relative that gets in the way of the groovy new digital kids. It kills me to hear these Sophie's Choice debates about who gets to limp on and who walks the plank with a Luger in the back," Lloyd wrote.
"The mythmakers and self servers tell us that a strong defence force keeps us safe. A strong ABC is the centurion that guards this country too. I've spent too many years living in, working in and reporting on broken and rorted countries not to learn this: the common denominator is a weak media sector. All of us keep the bastards honest, and beware the politician. Every one of them benefits when we lose a second on air, or a soldier in the trench. This is not (a) career. It is a vocation; and it's time the army spoke out.
"This prospective diminishment in our ranks is a surrender of terrain. It's an attack on the places where craft skill is honed, and the ethics and values are put to the first test, and applied. But most of all, it's just f---ing dumb. And Australia can't afford that, anymore than it can a less educated population. Or a smaller army."
ABC NSW newsreader Juanita Phillips replied: "Thank you Peter for your passionate defence of the ABC. It brought tears to my eyes."
The proposed programming cuts are being driven by the spectre of federal government budget cuts expected to be detailed in the mid-year budget update later this year, but also a view within senior management that the ABC's programming and structures are out of date.
In a speech last month ABC managing director Mark Scott said: "We must accept that, in the fierce contest for audiences, where old alliances no longer work and where friends can become rivals, the ABC has to robustly review its programming and services, find new ways to keep the audiences we have and to attract new ones.
"We will make the investment necessary to deliver quality programming. But it will be prudent and we will need to make careful judgments about the audience return."
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has flagged further cuts to the broadcaster following $35.5 million cuts over four years announced in the May budget. The $120 million Australia Network international broadcasting service was also axed.
