Journalists given four weeks to beat each other to a higher “score” and keep jobs.
SYDNEY – Australian Broadcasting Corporation management came under fire on Monday for pitting journalists against each other to fight for jobs, in what staff have internally called “a sick version of The Hunger Games”.
BuzzFeed News has obtained documents showing the public broadcaster has put reporters into competitive "pools" and asked them to prove their "merit" to the organisation, challenged to hit benchmarks against their colleagues, or face the sack.
The ABC launched the radical process after Managing Director Mark Scott announced 400 people would lose their jobs following the Government's strident budget cuts.
"The morale right now? Zero," one ABC News Sydney reporter told BuzzFeed.
"People knew cuts were coming but we had no idea how bad it would be or that managers would be this sociopathic."
Dan Peled / AAP
Australia’s public broadcaster launched the radical process yesterday after Managing Director Mark Scott announced 400 people would lose their jobs following the Government’s strident budget cuts.
Britta Campion / AAP
Five regional newsrooms will shut and TV production is being scaled back. An even more brutal fate awaits 100 news reporters the ABC has announced it will cut.
ABC sources have told BuzzFeed News the dramatic events began shortly after Scott's speech to staff on Monday morning, with emails arriving in reporters inboxes telling them they had been placed in "pools" based on salary and expertise.
Each pool then had its own meeting and were told that members would be assessed against each other in a four week personal "skills audit". They would then be given, as one manager referred it: "a score on a ladder".
ABC 7:30
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