GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 32
16 OCTOBER 2009
NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK
▪ Long Live Social Exclusion
Nancy is a great admirer of Julia Gillard – the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister for Education and Minister for Social Inclusion. Nancy was not all that disappointed that she missed out on an appointment to the DPM’s Australian Social Inclusion Board. However, Nancy personally advised the DPM that, if the Rudd Government was intent on creating a Social Exclusion Board, then she would very much like a gig. You see, Nancy would like to exclude quite a few types.
It’s possible, just possible, that Nancy’s time has come. Julia Gillard will be a key speaker at the sixth Economic and Social Outlook Conference which will be held at the University of Melbourne on 5-6 November 2009. The conference, which is jointly sponsored by The Australian and the Melbourne Institute, is tilted “The Road to Recovery”.
On 6 October 20098 The Australian ran an advertisement for “The Road to Recovery” conference listing some key speakers and their topics. There is Ms Gillard on “Social Policy Challenge” and her parliamentary secretary, Ursula Stephens, on – wait for it – “Social Exclusion”. Nancy’s time has come. Perhaps.
▪ Paul Barry: A Believer In Resurrection
Not all Christian clergy believe in God. Some tend to regard Jesus Christ of Nazareth as just another circa 10 BC sandal-wearer who went around urging that his followers should love one another, hold hands, make peace and so on. [Would you be referring to the Brisbane Catholic priest and media tart, Father Peter Kennedy – much beloved by the ABC – who queried Christ’s divinity when reading the gospel on the Q&A program on 19 March 2009? Ed]
In any event, most Christians who believe in God – and Christ, his son – maintain that the latter died and rose from the dead on the third day. Christ is the only figure in history who is believed to have passed over to the other side of the Jordan River and caught the boat back again – so to speak. Except, apparently, for the late – and then the later – Kerry Packer (1937-2005).
During one of his (oh-so-many) interviews on the ABC last week plugging his unauthorised biography of James Packer – son of Kerry Packer – author Paul Barry made the following comment on Radio National Breakfast last Monday:
Here was someone [ Kerry Packer] who terrified politicians – who, you know, who rose from the dead to assault his own cameraman; who would terrify journalists as well…
Kerry had been on the verge of death for seven or eight years. He’d died briefly in 1990. So for 18 or 19 years, sorry for 15 years, he had been brushing with death and on his last legs a lot of the time. He had nevertheless continued to run the business and continued to stop James doing a whole of the things he wanted to do.
Nancy is from the old school. She believes that you only live once – and you only die once. The fact is that Kerry Packer did not “die briefly” in 1990. Rather, he died permanently in 2005. Kerry Packer may have lapsed into unconsciousness in 1990 but he was never brain dead. As to the allegation that Mr Packer rose from the dead to assault his cameraman, well…
NEW FEATURE – VOICES FROM THE GRASSY KNOLL
When Robert Blamed Sally (Continued)
Following the huge success of MWD’s recent segment on how the gorgeous Eleanor Hall and the not-so-gorgeous Richard Fidler had signed on to the J.F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory (see Issue 30), MWD has decided to focus on conspiracies from both home and abroad.
Step forward (La Trobe University academic) Robert Manne. It’s not so long since MWD’s favourite editor Sally Warhaft was dismissed as editor of The Monthly by Black Inc commissar Morry Schwartz and Robert Manne (the chairman of The Monthly’s editorial board). Ms Warhaft was replaced by the young Ben Naparstek.
It so happened that Mr Naparstek thought it would be a you-beaut idea to commission Christine Wallace (who is writing a biography on Julia Gillard) to review Jacqueline Kent’s The Making of Julia Gillard (Viking, 2009). Wallace declared that she, too, was writing a biography of the DPM and then set about her analysis. Her conclusion? Well, according to Wallace, Kent’s biography “provides a plain-vanilla account of Gillard’s progress as seen from Gillard’s point of view” and is a case study in “description without analysis”. Otherwise, it’s a learned tome and a rattling good yarn.
Needless to say, all hell broke loose – which was reported in Crikey on 2 October. Ms Kent bagged Mr Naparstek’s choice of reviewer as did Viking’s Ben Ball. No surprise there. And Naparstek and Wallace defended the decision. No surprise there.
But MWD was surprised by the intervention of Professor Manne – who saw a conspiracy. Manne told Crikey that Warhaft was a friend of Ball and that she had launched Kent’s book. Manne added: “Crikey should try to find out who is trying to undermine Ben’s editorship and why”. Really. Gosh. And so on.
So there you have it. Forget about the fact that the publisher and the author had a legitimate cause of complaint. Just focus on the fact that Sally Warhaft is a friend of the publisher and launched the author’s book. Just blame the Grassy Knoll.
MARK SCOTT, AUDEN AND THE FALL OF RUPERT
MWD believes that, under chairman Maurice Newman and managing director Mark Scott, the ABC has its best leadership team in eons. However, Mr Newman seemed to take his eye off the game last week which saw Mr Scott drop the ball. Let MWD explain:
It’s just over a year since MWD accepted an invitation from ABC chairman Maurice Newman AC and News Limited chairman John Hartigan to hear the inaugural talk in the 2008 Boyer Lectures by Rupert Murdoch AC. The date was 2 November 2008 and the topic “A Golden Age of Freedom” and the event was held in the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre.
It was a memorable event. Mr Murdoch was introduced by a gushing Geraldine Doogue and thanked by an admiring Maurice Newman. The lecture was filmed and recorded by the ABC and widely reported in the News Limited newspapers in Australia the following day. After Rupert Murdoch’s thoughtful inaugural Boyer Lecture, there were drinks and canapés at the Opera House overlooking Sydney Harbour – mainly attended by ABC and News Limited types. ABC presenter Tony Jones even spoke to MWD. It was that kind of occasion.
Shortly before the 2008 Boyer Lectures, Mark Scott addressed the National Press Club in Canberra. The date was 10 September 2008. The ABC managing director was fulsome in his praise of Rupert Murdoch. Mark Scott reflected on “the colourful pageant of distrust, misery and dashed hopes” of the contemporary media industry but saw Mr Murdoch as a possible saviour. Spoke Mark Scott:
Through all the turmoil, within [the] Australian media industry, there is only one print mogul who has diversified his portfolio enough to offset the costs of quality journalism against profits made elsewhere in the business. And yes, that last, best hope for newspapers is Rupert Murdoch. The world will be listening as he presents the 2008 Boyer Lectures on the ABC later this year.
That was then. Last Wednesday Mark Scott delivered the 2009 A.N. Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism at the University of Melbourne titled “The Fall of Rome: Media After Empire”. Mr Scott, who studied Arts at Sydney University, commenced his lecture with a recital of W.H. Auden’s poem The Fall of Rome. Pretty impressive. Then Scott told his audience that he wanted to talk about “media empires” and “the media Caesars”. Soon there were references to a man named “Rupert”. Just Rupert. At page 4 Mr Scott said:
Rupert is in a category of all his own. We had better come to Rupert later on.
And he did. At page 7 – where Mark Scott declared: “For newspapers, the last great hope now seems to be something called Waiting for Rupert.” It sounded like irony. Then, soon after, there was a reference to “Murdoch”. Mark Scott then commenced to bag Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch. It seems that the managing director of the (taxpayer funded) ABC is annoyed by Rupert Murdoch’s proposal that consumers should pay for some of News Corporation’s online content. Let’s hear from Mark Scott:
When Rupert Murdoch bought The Wall Street Journal, he indicated he would look to drop the paper’s paid website. But now in the saddle, he looks to transplant that paid content model to all his newspapers. And he is keen for other newspapers to fall into line.
And as his son James said recently in the UK, those pesky public broadcasters, who would seek to provide quality content to the public for free should be pulled into line. The Murdoch push is fascinating. You sense this rage at the injustice of what the online world is doing to his traditional print business model. Murdoch has always been willing to cross-subsidise his print passions. Papers like The Times of London, The New York Post and The Australian endured years of losses and survived, because he said so. And because he had The Simpsons there to soak up the red ink. And, ironically given his current plans, one of his strategies was always to cut the price of content – to cheap and almost uneconomic levels – to put his competitors under the gun.
But now, the man who just four years ago said he wanted to “make the necessary cultural changes to meet the new demands of the digital native” says he’s not going to respond to the demands of these digital natives. Instead, they – who have never in their lives paid for news online – will be asked to respond instead to his demands and start paying. The argument seems to be that people once didn’t pay to watch television but now many do. We fought against timed local calls but now make them every day on our mobiles. Some of us might pay for recorded music we might once have illegally downloaded. And because we want to read and see this great content so badly, now we will pay for that.
It strikes me as a classic play of old empire, of empire in decline. Believing that because you once controlled the world you can continue to do so, because you once set the rules, you can do so again. Acting on the assumption that you still have the power that befits the Emperor. And while it is always dangerous to underestimate Murdoch, the assumptions that underpin the Murdoch plan seem wistful, and perhaps, wishful….
So there you have it. In September 2008, according to the ABC managing director, Rupert Murdoch was the “last, best hope for newspapers”. Yet in October 2009 there is a sneering reference to Waiting for Rupert as “the last great hope” for newspapers along with the claim that News Corporation’s chairman and chief executive officer presides over “an empire in decline”.
MWD wonders whether Maurice Newman cleared Mark Scott’s A.N. Smith Memorial Lecture before it was delivered. MWD asked the ABC yesterday whether this occurred but, at the time of clicking the mouse today, the ABC has not answered this question. [That’s interesting. I thought Mr Scott signed up the ABC to the Right to Know Coalition – Ed].
MWD has commented previously about Maurice Newman (the doyen of free enterprise in Australia, who sponsored Milton Friedman’s Australia tour in the early 1970s) heading off to Canberra – cap in hand – seeking more government hand-outs for the public broadcaster. See Issue 5. Now Mr Newman is the chairman of a taxpayer funded organisation whose managing director gives gratuitous lectures to Rupert Murdoch, one of the Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs, about how to run his business – without even a passing reference to News Corporation’s shareholders.
By the way, Mark Scott’s claim that Rupert Murdoch once believed that he “controlled the world’’ and “can continue to do so” is pure hyperbole normally associated with the condition known as “Murdoch-phobia”. The evidence suggests that Mr Murdoch has been more a follower, rather than a setter, of political fashion – in Australia, Britain and the United States.
LEGAL TEAM OUT TO (LEGAL) LUNCH
It’s possible that Mark Scott’s work on his A.N. Smith Memorial Lecture prevented him from focusing on what the Hungry Beast has been up to of late. For the record, this is the “joke” that ran at the end of the Hungry Beast first edition on 30 September 2009.
Next week on Hungry Beast, a man tells his tale of being coerced into group sex with the Australian Netball Team.
Man: At first it was just me and [name of prominent Australian female netball identity deleted by MWD]. And that was fine. But then, one by one, they all appeared and they all started clapping and cheering her on. And then they each tried a weird position.
Interviewer: What kind of weird position?
Man: Wing defence, eh centre, goal attack – I’m sorry.
That’s next week on Hungry Beast.
This isn’t-rape-funny? “joke” was a supposed send-up of a real interview where a woman told Four Corners that she had consensual sex with a Rugby League player and then was raped by other men who entered the room.
ABC management withdrew the Hungry Beast send-up from the ABC website. But the Hungry Beast team did not apologise for the defamation involved or for attempting to make humour out of violent crime. Instead at the top of the Hungry Beast program, which went to air on 7 October, there was a voice-over with an “Apology” visual.
Tonight’s story advertised at the end of last week’s Hungry Beast, about group sex with the Australian Netball Team, will not be shown because it was a joke, and actually never existed. To avoid confusion and assist in identification of humour in the future, we will be emitting the following noise [joke horn] after anything that may not be true. [joke horn].
For the record, the Legal team on the inaugural Hungry Beast program comprised Lynette Houssarini, Vanessa Bateup, Marcus Fowler and Joe Patterson. Hungry Beast is an ABC co-production with Zapruder’s Other Films. The executive producers are Andrew Denton and Anita Jacoby. Hungry Beast’s credits for the inaugural edition included Amanda Duthie (ABC Head of Arts and Entertainment). The ABC’s executive producer was Sophie Zachariou, the director was Mark Fitzgerald and the supervising producer was Andy Nehl. Apparently none of the above objected to the rape “joke” before Hungry Beast went to air on 30 September or saw any likelihood that the woman named could sue for defamation. If this analysis is incorrect, MWD is willing to run a correction.
AS THE (GUARDIAN ON THE) RIVER FLOWS
No matter where you came from in Melbourne, it pays to live in the inner city in middle age. Certainly if your name is Catherine Deveny and you have a weekly column in The Age. For the reason that, from the inner city, you can sneer at those who live in the suburbs.
Ms Deveny usually writes about herself (see MWD passim). So it came as no surprise when The Guardian on the Yarra’s star columnist wrote about her childhood experiences growing up near the Northland Shopping Centre, East Preston.
It seems that young Catherine was surrounded by those she called “bogans”. InThe Age last Wednesday, Ms Deveny looked back in contempt on her fellow Northland shoppers. They (i) were shirtless and shoeless, (ii) spent child endowment cheques purchasing lay-bys from the discount department Fosseys store, (iii) were either skinny and smoked Winfields or fat and wore sportswear and (iv) were mostly without teeth. On reflection, Catherine Deveny believes that “the amount of fat people in runners and tracksuits on any given day [at Northland] meant blow-ins could easily be excused for thinking there was some kind of Obese Olympics being held in the vicinity”.
Which raises the question. How many copies of The Age are sold in Northland?
HISTORY CORNER
Last Tuesday Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared: “I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for taking a hard line on illegal immigration to Australia.”
It’s not that long ago that the likes of Julian Burnside QC used to complain that John Howard incorrectly referred to asylum seekers as illegal immigrants when, in fact, they are unauthorised arrivals. Or, perhaps, unlawful immigrants.
So what did Julian Burnside QC say about the Prime Minister’s “illegal immigrants” remark when he appeared on a panel on The World Today on Wednesday 15 October? Answer – absolutely nothing. Zip.
STOP PRESS
Followers of fine dining, good manners and all that will welcome the fact that failed businessman John Elliott will make a return appearance on Q&A next Thursday.
Who can forget Mr Elliott’s performance on Q&A on 16 April 2009 (see Issue 6) when he gave viewers a lecture on manners, etiquette and how to use your knife and fork – and perhaps silver spoon (now alas, pawned) – when dining with Prince Charles at Sandringham. MWD just can’t wait. BYO Debrett’s.
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Until next time.