Four Corners (TV series)

From Free net encyclopedia

Four Corners is Australia's longest-running and most respected investigative journalism/current affairs television program. Produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Australia, it premiered in 1961 and is still running. Founding producer Robert Raymond (1961-62) and his successor Allan Ashbolt (1963) did much to set the ongoing tone of the program.

Based on the Panorama concept, the program addresses a single issue in depth each week, showing either a locally produced program or a relevant documentary from overseas. The program has won many awards for investigative journalism, and broke many stories thaht had previously had no exposure in the Australian media. A notable early example of this was the show's epoch-making 1962 exposé on the appalling living conditions endured by many Australian Aborigines living in rural New South Wales.

In 1983, Four Corners aired allegations that former NSW Premier Neville Wran had tried to influence the magistry over the dropping of fraud charges against Kevin Humphries, charged with misappropriation of funds from the Balmain Leagues Club. Wran stood down and the Street Royal Commission, headed by Justice Lawrence Street, was set up to inquire into this matter. Street exonerated Wran of all allegations laid against him.

Together with articles in The Courier-Mail, a 1987 Four Corners report into police corruption in Queensland when Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Premier resulted in a royal commission. This inquiry, known popularly as the Fitzgerald Inquiry covered issues such as corruption in the police force and how Queensland became a police state amongst other things. The same programme has also investigated other cases of corruption in the New South Wales and Victoria police forces.