GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 44
5 MARCH 2010
STOP PRESS
PHILLIP ADAMS BURIES THE IMPARTIAL
MWD has always acknowledged that Late Night Live presenter Phillip Adams has a large and efficient staff – who thoroughly prepare the ABC’s Man-in-Black’s script for each program. However, at times, typos are made and words are misread.
Last night Phillip Adams had (yet another) discussion about a recently departed leftist. The discussion centred on Dorothy Green (1901-1991) and Willa McDonald’s book Warrior For Peace on the said Green.
Phillip Adams asked the BIG (mis-typed) QUESTION and Willa McDonald provided the answer to the Man-in-Black’s evident confusion:
Phillip Adams:….It’s amazing, over the years, how many people I’ve discussed on the program were influenced to some extent by the philosopher John Anderson. And at Sydney Uni he inspired her [Dorothy Green] to live by, and I quote, “disinterred philosophical inquiry”. What the bloody hell is that?
Willa McDonald: I think it’s meant to be “disinterested”. I think that might be a typo. I think the idea was free thought…
Yeah. Right on.
GREAT (MEDIA) U-TURNS OF OUR TIME – CONTINUED – FEATURING MARK WESTFIELD AND PETER ROEBUCK
Mark Westfield on Why the Coalition Cannot Win the 2010 Federal Election under Tony Abbott’s Leadership
Under Tony Abbott’s leadership a minority [of the Liberal Party], in effect, is holding the moderate majority hostage. It is an unsustainable situation which will be resolved with a likely heavy defeat of the Coalition parties at the next election….An expected hot summer and more bushfires will make Labor’s job at the next election arguing for action on climate change an easy one.
– Mark Westfield “Calculated Treachery”, Business Spectator, 16 December 2009.
Mark Westfield on Why The Coalition Could Win the 2010 Federal Election under Tony Abbott’s Leadership
The plunge in Kevin Rudd and Labor’s opinion poll figures, and the corresponding recovery of the Tony Abbott-led Coalition has caught most pundits (including this writer) by surprise. It has been the speed of the Labor fall from grace that has been most surprising – triggered by the insulation batts fiasco, but due also to a number of slow-burn policy failures – rather than closing of the poll gap itself, which was widely expected on both sides of politics as we move towards an election. Tony Abbott finds himself in a fortunate position, courtesy of Rudd’s many failings. But then the Opposition knew it was only a matter of time before voters wised up to Rudd, though the wait has been frustratingly long….A Coalition win is unlikely, but it should not be ruled out.
– Mark Westfield, “Abbott is a chance as Rudd runs out of the clock on reform”, Business Spectator, 2 March 2010.
If only Mr Westfield had looked into his crystal ball in mid-December and seen not bushfires in Victoria but, rather, floods in Queensland he might have come up with a different prognosis the first time around.
* * * * *
Peter Roebuck On Why John Howard Is Not Qualified To Be President of the International Cricket Council
Cricket Australia’s decision to nominate John Howard as its candidate for the top job at the International Cricket Council is as pitiful as it is disrespectful. Howard’s knowledge of cricket is more characterised by enthusiasm than depth or imagination. Plain and simple, he is not qualified for the job.
– Peter Roebuck, “Howard choice is the wrong way to go”, The Age, 22 January 2010
Peter Roebuck On Why John Howard Is Qualified To Be President of the International Cricket Council.
Although political enemies will disagree, the appointment is hardly a calamity. Only the most churlish will deny Howard his experience and acumen. This was a contest between heavyweights. Howard may be captivated by the bright lights of cricket but he is also familiar with the dark arts of manipulation. Better him than a hundred sweet-talkers.
– Peter Roebuck, “Howard can bring purpose to the fraught and fractured game”, The Age, 3 March 2010
NANCY’S PICK OF THE WEEK
Christopher Pyne – Boned on Breakfast
Remember the olden days in ABC news and current affairs? [they’re not that old, surely – Ed]. You know, the kind of discussion where everyone agreed with everyone else – in a leftist kind of way – and a fine ideological time was had by all. Well, they’re back.
Early on the ABC Radio National Breakfast last Tuesday, presenter Fran Kelly announced that, later in the program, there would be a “discussion” on the national history curriculum – which Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard had released the previous day. The distinguished historian – and continuing leftist – Stuart Macintyre headed the team which wrote the draft curriculum. Here’s what happened:
▪ The segment commenced at around 7.47 am and ran up to the news at 8 am.
▪ The first minute of the segment contained introductory comments by Fran Kelly and a 30 second grab from Opposition spokesman Christopher Pyne on the history curriculum. Mr Pyne’s position turned on the point that the curriculum focused too much on Australia’s indigenous background and too little on the influence of Britain and the Westminster tradition of parliamentary democracy.
▪ Then Fran Kelly introduced Professor Stuart Macintyre. He was effectively invited, first up, to have a go at Mr Pyne – which he well and truly did.
▪ Then Fran Kelly called in Paul Kiem of the History Teachers’ Association of Australia. He was involved with the advisory panel which reported to Professor Macintyre on the history curriculum. Mr Kiem also criticised Mr Pyne.
▪ Then Fran Kelly called in the Queensland indigenous academic Chris Sarra. He also criticised Mr Pyne.
▪ The discussion continued with Professor Macintyre essentially agreeing with Mr Kiem who essentially agreed with Dr Sarra who essentially agreed with Professor Macintyre. Some “discussion”, to be sure.
▪ Fran Kelly commenced the segment by describing Stuart Macintyre as “one of the country’s most eminent historians” and ended it by describing Professor Macintyre as a “prominent Australian historian”. That’s a fair description of Professor Macintyre’s academic qualifications.
I don’t suppose that Ms Kelly managed to mention (i) that Professor Macintyre is a former member of the Communist Party, (ii) that he addressed the ALP National Conference in 1994 as a guest speaker where he identified with Paul Keating and Labor’s true believers and fawned over the late leftist guru Manning Clark and (iii) that Stuart Macintyre’s The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 4, 1901-1942 (OUP, 1986) contained not one mention of the Nazi Soviet Pact of 1939-1941 which effectively sparked the Second World War. [Not on your nelly, I suspect – Ed].
In correspondence with MWD, RN Breakfast’s executive producer defended the choice of guests as follows:
One of my jobs is to get talent central to the story so Macintyre was on because he wrote the draft history curriculum. Kiem was on because he is a member of the advisory panel and a history teacher. And Chris Sarra because he is an indigenous educator.
Okay. But, then, this intellectual love-in should not be described as a “discussion”. It would more accurately be described as a chorus.
The RN Breakfast executive producer also advised MWD that Christopher Pyne would “have more to say” on Wednesday 3 March “as he is on every week”. So what happened to Mr Pyne when he appeared in the program’s regular Wednesday politician’s forum with his regular political opponent – Financial Services Minister Chris Bowen? Well, nothing that would constitute balance.
The national history curriculum was raised at the end of the Bowen/Pyne debate. First up, Fran Kelly asked the searing question: “Christopher Pyne – did you read the history curriculum?”
For the record, Kelly did not ask the question to the Financial Services Minister. Chris Bowen obviously thought that the Kelly approach was a good political tactic. So he also asked Pyne whether he had read the curriculum. Whereupon Ms Kelly returned to her original line of enquiry and asked: “Christopher Pyne…have you had a look, a close look, and read the history curriculum?”
The implication in Kelly’s two questions was pretty clear. Namely, that Mr Pyne could not have read the national curriculum – because if he had read it he surely would have agreed with The Thought of Professor Macintyre. Or something like that.
Christopher Pyne replied that “of course” he had read the report and described Fran Kelly’s implied suggestion as “juvenile”. Fair enough. After all, Pyne was citing the report when criticising aspects of it. Moreover, the national history curriculum runs for a mere 44 well-spaced pages and is not a time-consuming read.
FRAN KELLY FORMAT ALL THE RAGE AT AUNTY
Fran Kelly’s idea of a “discussion” seems all the rage at the public broadcaster of late. Consider the following examples:
Michael Brissenden Can’t Find A Conservative in the Whole of America
▪ On the 7.30 Report on 15 February 2010 ABC TV’s North American correspondent Michael Brissenden did a piece on the conservative right-of-centre Tea Party movement in the United States. Fair enough. The Tea Party types have created considerable interest in the US over the past year – especially when Sarah Palin addressed their convention in Nashville on 6 February.
Mr Brissenden chose to interview the two American “experts” on the Tea Party movement. And who do you think he chose? Why, of course, New York Times writer Sam Tanenhaus and American Enterprise Institute fellow Norm Ornstein. No problem here – both have views which are worth hearing. It’s just that neither is conservative or right-of-centre. Mr Ornstein is a long-standing supporter of the Democratic Party and Mr Tanenhaus is a long-standing critic of American conservatism. In the whole of the US, Michael Brissenden could not find even one conservative or right-of-centre commentator to put a different view on the Tea Party types for the 7.30 Report viewers. Not one.
News Breakfast Cannot Find A Conservative In The Whole of Australia
▪ On 21 January 2010 the ABC2 News Breakfast program covered the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration as president of the United States – along with the news that Republican Scott Brown had won the Senate vacancy in Massachusetts following the death of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. Scott Brown’s victory was widely regarded as a political blow for President Obama and the Democratic Party.
So, what did News Breakfast do? Well, reporter Marie Scoutas chaired a panel (over breakfast) of – wait for it – three members of the Democrats Abroad Australia organisation. Namely fundraising adviser Dr David Kennedy, secretary Shannon Knapp and vice-chair Paul Lafreniere. Needless to say, the panel reckoned that the President and the Democrats were doing okay. Clearly Ms Scoutas did not see the need to ask the view of an American conservative in Australia.
Geraldine Doogue Cannot Find Etc
▪ And the, of course, there was the Geraldine Doogue segment on Australian politics in 2009 which aired on the Radio National Saturday Breakfast program on Saturday 19 December last year. What was the make-up of Ms Doogue’s balanced panel? Well it comprised a group of lefties – angry sneerer Mungo MacCallum, former Arena editor and contemporary comedy writer Guy Rundle and gorgeous cartoonist Fiona Katauskas. [MWD must cover this next week when the promised segment on Mungo M – which has been held over due to popular demand – will get a run. Ed]
FIVE PAWS AWARD
John Styles Provides The Answers For the Q&A Gig
While on the topic of balance on the public broadcaster – or, rather, lack thereof – this week’s Five Paws Award goes to John Styles for his piece on the ABC 1 Q&A program in today’s issue of The Australian Spectator. Mr Styles’ work is most compelling when he documents how the retired Gough Whitlam groupie Mungo MacCallum was given a soft run by presenter Tony Jones on Q&A earlier this year while the conservative John Roskam was allowed no liberties at all.
The strength of John Styles’ analysis turns on the fact that it is evidence based – he has trawled through past Q&A programs to document his case that the left gets a soft run on Q&A. Five Paws.
HISTORY CORNER
Read All About It:
How Malcolm Fraser Saved the Falklands and Preserved the NATO Alliance
In MWD Issue 42, Malcolm Fraser’s memory about the events of 11 November 1975 was queried. MWD expressed doubt about Mr Fraser’s claim – first made in 1987 – that he had been phoned by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr at about 10 am on the morning of 11 November 1975. Fraser claims that Kerr asked him whether he would abide by certain conditions pertaining to a caretaker government if Gough Whitlam’s Labor government were to be dismissed by him later that day.
The story is told in Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (MUP, 2010) which was launched by former High Court judge Michael Kirby in Melbourne yesterday and which is written by Malcolm Fraser and academic/journalist Margaret Simons. It’s just wonderful to see Michael Kirby stepping up to the plate on this one – since MWD suspects that, circa 1975, your man Michael was a member of the “Shame Fraser Shame” Club. Ms Simons is also something of a left-of-centre sandal-wearer although her main political commitment seems to be to her garden when in compost-sexual mode. See Issue 23.
MWD is currently working through the 853 page Fraser/Simons tome and was prompted to dart into Chapter 14 titled “The World” following an article on the ABC’s The Drum website last Wednesday by Mark Colvin titled “The day Fraser may have changed history”. Well, at least the word “may” was used – both in the heading and in the text.
The story is told at pages 482 and 483 of Malcolm Fraser: The Political Years and again in The Drum of 3 March 2010. It goes like this. In April 1982 George H.W. Bush (i.e. Bush Senior) visited Australia. He was vice-president of the United States at the time. To cut a long story short [Thank God, Ed.], Fraser met with Bush in Canberra and told him to ensure that President Ronald Regan’s administration backed Britain in the looming conflict over the Falkland Islands. It was known that Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the United Nations at the time, was inclined to support Argentina.
According to the Fraser/Simons version, the meeting took place over dinner at the Lodge on Friday 30 April 1982. Fraser told Bush that the US should be supporting Britain in its stand-off with Argentina over the Falklands and, if it did not, the US would be condemned by (then) British prime minister Margaret Thatcher – so much so that the US “might end up without NATO”. In other words, Mrs Thatcher might be so angered by US support for Argentina that Britain would drive the US out of NATO. [How would the Brits do this? – Ed.]
According to the Fraser/Simons account, Bush left the dinner party for an hour and a half while he phoned the US National Security Council in Washington DC. Bush returned and gave Fraser a thumbs-up and declared if he had not made the call then Kirkpatrick would have won the argument at the National Security Council in ten minutes and the US would have supported Argentina in the Falklands conflict. Well done Malcolm Fraser.
In his interview with Mark Colvin, which Colvin reported in The Drum, Fraser said that Bush left the Lodge dinner party to call Washington at “about four minutes to seven o’clock”.
Margaret Simons seems to have completely accepted Malcolm Fraser’s account of his role in the Falklands War and Mark Colvin, at the very least, gave it credibility. Neither expressed any doubts about the accuracy of Mr Fraser’s memory some three decades after the event he was describing. Both Ms Simons and Mr Colvin seem to have overlooked the following points:
▪ At 7 pm on Friday 30 April in Canberra it was 5 am the same day in Washington D.C. Fraser’s account of what Bush did that evening in Canberra can only have credibility if the National Security Council commenced its meeting in Washington on Friday 30 April 1982 at 5 am local time. Possible, but unlikely. Neither Simons nor Colvin seems to have raised this matter of timing with Mr Fraser.
▪ Mrs Thatcher was quite capable of putting Britain’s position on Argentina to President Regan and did not need Mr Fraser’s intervention on the matter.
▪ Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s stance in the Reagan administration on Argentina was opposed by Alexander Haig, the US Secretary of State at the time. Mr Haig did not need Vice-President Bush or even Mr Fraser to explain to him the importance of the US-UK alliance to both nations.
▪ Secretary Haig did announce the US was siding with Britain in the Falklands on 30 April 1982. However, this decision followed a meeting of the National Security Council at which Secretary of State Alexander Haig reported that Argentina had refused to accept his compromise plan over the Falkland’s conflict. In other words, Haig announced the US support for Britain after the breakdown of US negotiations with Argentina. There is no report that the Regan administration was influenced by the position taken by George H.W. Bush on this issue.
▪ Malcolm Fraser has never claimed previously that he ensured Britain’s victory in the Falklands War or secured the continuation of the NATO Alliance. It’s not in Philip Ayers’ Malcolm Fraser: A Biography (Heinemann, 1987) – despite the fact that Ayers had access to all Fraser’s official records and personal papers. And there is no mention of any 1982 Bush/Fraser discussion in Malcolm Fraser’s book Common Ground (Viking, 2002).
In concluding his piece in The Drum, Mark Colvin commented:
Where you stand on this one obviously depends on what you think of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. But it’s proof that in history, sometimes the footnotes are well worth reading as the main body of the text.
Er, not really. Where you stand on this one really depends on how much you value Malcolm Fraser’s memory of an event which happened close to three decades ago.
There is no reason to doubt that some conversation took place along the lines depicted by Fraser. After all, in 1982 Malcolm Fraser was a strong supporter of Margaret Thatcher and the NATO Treaty. However, it is not clear that George H. W. Bush needed to be told what to do by Malcolm Fraser – nor is there any evidence that he contacted the National Security Council very early in the morning of 30 April 1982 (US time).
Endnote On That Other Famous/Infamous Phone Call – The Malcolm Fraser/John Kerr Conversation On The Morning of 11 November 1975
There has been no response from Malcolm Fraser or Margaret Simons to last week’s MWD “History Corner” which queried Mr Fraser’s memory of some key events surrounding the dismissal of Gough Whitlam as prime minister.
The coverage of this matter in MWD “History Corner” was preceded by email correspondence between Margaret Simons and Gerard Henderson. Ms Simons sent this correspondence to Crikey – where all the emails up to Margaret Simons’ note of 24 February appeared. In case readers want to follow the entire correspondence, it is available here.
Until next time.