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A year ago, the last government torched its plan for a joined-up public broadcaster more like Australia's one. But the ABC is a billion-dollar beast that's also been a political football. Mediawatch asks its outgoing boss where it - and David Anderson himself - is heading. The ABC's boss David Anderson answers questions on ABC TV last month about his decision to step down at the end of the year. Photo: screenshot / ABC TV news "To speak truth to power, news media have . . . to be big enough and strong enough that politicians and other holders of power can't afford to ignore them. Without that, we're in trouble," warned Gavin Ellis, former editor of the New Zealand Herald. In a recent talk entitled 'The Day the News Dies', Ellis went on to say commercial news media companies here we...

By Samuel Rillstone The Wild Robot is the latest movie from Dreamworks Animation. Photo: Dreamworks Dreamworks' latest movie has a stellar cast, gorgeous animation and a heart-warming story at its core. Is it a school holiday movie that all the family will love? RNZ visual journalist Sam Rillstone takes a look. What's this movie about? The Wild Robot is based on the book series of the same name by Peter Brown. The story follows Roz the robot, who is shipwrecked on an island full of wildlife. Building relationships with the native animals, Roz is thrust into being a parent to an orphaned gosling named Brightbill. It's written and directed by Chris Sanders, of Lilo & Stitch fame. Who's in it? There's a strong cast: Lupita Nyong'o voices Roz, Pedro Pascal is Fink the Fox and Kit Co...

US President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Carter turns 100 years old on 1 October, by far the longest-lived American president. Photo: AFP / File Analysis - Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived American president, and as he turns 100 years old, it turns out he was also pretty much the last of his kind. Growing up in California, I was just a kid when the former peanut farmer from Georgia became an unlikely president in 1976, aiming to wipe away some of the disillusioned taint of the Nixon years. He's the first president I have memory of, smiling away from the tiny TV in our kitchen. He turns 100 years old on Tuesday, 1 October, and despite his single term, he will never quite be the footnote of other presidential one-termers like Millard Fillmore. Carter is the last living American president from ...

By ABC Middle East correspondents Eric Tlozek, Toby Mann and Basel Hindeleh Photo: AFP / Patrick Baz Analysis: The death of Hassan Nasrallah is a monumental moment for the Middle East. The leader of the region's most powerful militia and Iran's strongest ally is gone and Hezbollah, the group he led, has been decimated by intense Israel attacks. It's a very different outcome to the last time Hezbollah fought Israel. "Nasrallah wins the war", the Economist magazine declared when Israel and Hezbollah signed a ceasefire after a 34-day war in 2006. The leader of "The Party of God" had miscalculated, provoking an Israeli invasion when he ordered the kidnapping of soldiers in the Golan Heights, but still claimed victory despite dire Lebanese casualties and infrastructure damage. Nasrallah...

By Tim Reid, Reuters Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers remarks at the Prairie du Chien Area Arts Center in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, on 28 September 28, 2024. Photo: KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP Donald Trump on Saturday deployed some of his harshest rhetoric against immigrants who have crossed the border illegally and committed crimes, especially against young women, while he also escalated his personal insults against Kamala Harris. In the battleground state of Wisconsin, Trump called Democratic Vice President Harris, who on Friday visited the US-Mexico border for the first time in her 2024 presidential campaign, "mentally impaired" and "mentally disabled". The Republican presidential candidate was flanked by posters of immigrants in the U...

By Simon Lewis and Michelle Nichols for Reuters Addressing the UN General Assembly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took aim at backers of Ukraine. (File photo) Photo: AFP Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has told the United Nations that it is senseless to ignore alternatives to Ukraine's peace proposals, warning the West of the danger of trying to "fight to victory with a nuclear power". Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Lavrov took aim at backers of Ukraine who support Kyiv's peace proposal. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Nine months later Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced a 10-point peace plan to bring a just end to the war on the basis of the founding UN Charter and international law. Moscow rejected the plan. "I'm not going to...

By Joshua McElwee for Reuters Pope Francis at a meeting with students and members of the Catholic University of Louvain on 28 September. Photo: Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP Pope Francis has been sharply criticised by one of Belgium's Catholic universities over his stance on the role of women in society, in a strongly worded press release issued just moments after the pontiff spoke at the college. Professors and students at UCLouvain, where the 87-year-old pontiff had made a speech on Saturday afternoon, said they wanted to express their "incomprehension and disapproval" about the pope's views. "UCLouvain GǪ deplores the conservative positions expressed by Pope Francis on the role of women in society," said the statement, in extraordinary language from a Catholic university about a pope. Fra...