Four Corners is an excerpt from the TV Current Affiars program Four Corners 40th Anniversary episode produced in 2004. Four Corners is produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and this excerpt is used with the permission of ABC Content Sales. This video clip is included in the website From Wireless to Web produced in 2005.

The interview with Tim Bowden was recorded for the website. Tim Bowden is a broadcaster, radio and delivision documentary maker, oral historian and author. You can view his full biography at From Wireless to Web.

The website is a selective history of broadcast media in Australia. Decade by decade, from radio and newsreels to TV and the internet, this history shows how the Australian broadcast media developed and shaped the way Australians see themselves.

From Wireless to Web is a Film Australia production in association with Roar Film.

During the 1960s many Australians dissented from the conservative social agenda that had dominated the politics of the Menzies government for many years. People took to the streets to protest – about the war in Vietnam, the role of women and the treatment of Indigenous Australians, who were still not classed as Australian citizens.

Current Affairs
The ABC’s Four Corners – arguably Australia’s premier current affairs program – first went to air on a Saturday night at 8.30pm on 19 August 1961. The program was presented by Michael Charlton and was the first of 17 episodes to be presented live.

The first item was an interview with an American astronaut, Scott Carpenter. Next followed a story about the end of World War II and the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945. Interviews with musician Larry Adler and swimmer Jon Konrads concluded the program.

Several weeks later, Four Corners’ producer Bob Raymond and Michael Charlton took cameras to an area that few white Australians had ever seen – Box Ridge Aboriginal reserve near Casino in northern New South Wales. An elderly man living on the reserve made the observation that they weren’t living in a democracy: “An Aboriginal kiddie born here is not a citizen of Australia”, he said. (ABC)

The program delivered a powerful political punch. The NSW Government discussed it at a specially convened Cabinet meeting two days after the program aired. Four Corners has been part of the national story ever since, exposing scandals, triggering inquiries, firing debates, confronting taboos and interpreting fads, trends and sub-cultures.

One of Four Corners’ most memorable programs was the broadcast of ‘The Moonlight State’ on 11 May 1987, which included footage of illegal booze joints, prostitution and gambling dens in Queensland, the existence of which had long been denied by Queensland’s conservative government under Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The subsequent inquiry saw senior police officers go to jail and the Government voted out.