Making the news

WITH a federal election looming, the ABC will be under intensified pressure to deliver what its critics see as impartial and balanced coverage of parties and politics. In the hot seat is the corporation’s director of news, Kate Torney. Peter Clarke talked to Kate not long after her appointment in 2009, and caught up with her again recently for this extended conversation about the challenges facing ABC News on TV, radio and online.In part 1, Kate Torney talks about issues including the ABC’s relationship with social media, news-gathering in the digital age, the role of ABC News 24, and decisions about the deployment of ABC resources overseas. In part 2, she discusses the ABC’s approach to reporting the 2013 federal election, the ABC’s new fact-checking unit and the possibilities opened up by continuing technological change.Listen her