GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 24
21 AUGUST 2009
NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK
▪ Josh Gordon’s Secret Scoop
This week Nancy was just so impressed by the Sunday Age – otherwise known as “The (Sunday) Guardian on the Yarra”.
First up, there was a page one scoop by Josh Gordon – who reports Federal politics for The Age. The heading set the tone for the piece: “ALP set for early, post-Turnbull poll”. Gordon’s big-story was that Alister Jordan, the chief of staff in the Prime Minister’s Office, had invited some 30 ministerial staff to Canberra – on Saturday – to give them a talk titled “Complacency is death in politics”. The occasion was described as a “secret election planning meeting”. So secret, in fact, that the story broke within less than 24 hours.
It so happened that Josh Gordon obtained a copy of Mr Jordan’s speech at the “secret” meeting. How about that? The theme was that there is a real possibility that either Joe Hockey or Tony Abbott will replace Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Party leader before the next election – and that the new leadership would improve the Coalition’s chances. Josh Gordon ran the Jordan line that Labor needs to be on its game since winning the next election will be “very, very tough”. Oh, yeah.
Nancy believes that The Sunday Age should dispense with the idea of Josh Gordon pretending that he has a leak from an Alister Jordan “secret” speech and just give Mr Jordan a column of his own to state his case. This would give Josh Gordon time to consider whether ALP operatives are the most reliable authorities about whether the Liberal Party will change leaders before the next election.
▪ Guy Rundle Advocates a Snowtown Detour
Then Nancy turned to The Sunday Age’s Opinion page. This week’s SCOOP was that Guy Rundle (self-proclaimed Brighton Grammar graduate, one-time editor of the oh-so-boring neo-Marxist Arena Magazine and daily commentator for the Crikey newsletter) has come out against gay marriage. Just when you thought that “The (Sunday) Guardian on the Yarra” had a big story – it was soon revealed that Comrade Rundle was opposed to all marriages. Straight. Gay. The lot.
The heading contained the message: “Marriage or death. Spot the difference.” Comrade Rundle went on to link marriage with both “Snowtown” and “the state of Iran”. The former is the site of the bodies-in-the-vault murders in South Australia. And the latter is, well, the state of Iran with the mullahs and all that.
It seems that Mr Rundle is not the marrying kind. Which raises the question: Does anyone care? Apart, that is, from the editorial team at The Sunday Age.
FAWN (YET) AGAIN – PETER MANNING PROFILED
While on the topic of marriage – or Snowtown or Iran – consider the case of one-time journalist and now academic Peter Manning. MWD hears that, when a young man at Sydney University, Manning was a supporter of the anti-communist Democratic Labor Party and that he has spent much of his adult years attempting to atone for his political anti-communist past. So much so that these days Manning is something of a hero of the left – especially for his stance on Israel.
Not so long ago Peter Manning was the subject of a fawning profile by Yasmine Mahmood, which can be found on the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) website. Ms Mahmood revealed that, when just 10 years old in 1956, young Master Manning wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph protesting about the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary. Let’s go to Mahmood’s profile:
Peter Manning was only ten years old when his name first appeared in a national newspaper. It was 1956, and the teachers at his Catholic school were warning the students every day about the communist threat to their Catholic faith. So, a furious Manning decided to do something about it. “I wrote to the Telegraph, how terrible it was that the Soviet Union was invading Hungary,” says Manning. “And…what about the Catholics who were going to be prosecuted [sic], and this was an outrage and I didn’t agree with it,” he laughs.
Much to his surprise, the letter was published with “Peter Manning, aged 10,” written at the bottom. But little did anyone know that this young Catholic boy would one day become one of Australia’s top media personalities. In fact, Manning’s 40-year career is a dream of any aspiring journalist.
Gush on. Apparently, today Mr Manning is somewhat embarrassed about his anti-communist past. Perhaps, to him, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary was not such an outrage, after all. However, MWD became somewhat emotional when Ms Mahmood revealed just what a toll journalism had taken on Peter Manning’s personal life – from the time he commenced at The Bulletin as a young man:
I would like to say yes you can have a private life, and a family, but I think for the first 10 to 15 years it’s difficult, it’s a very hard working job,” he [Manning] says. The price of making it in journalism took its toll on his family life. “I’ve had two marriages, and it’s been incredibly difficult, and I’m sure some of the hours that I’ve worked and my own workaholic tendencies contributed,” he says.
So there you have it. It seems that Mr Manning may only have partaken of just one, rather than two, of what Guy Rundle refers to as the Snowtown/Iran experience were it not for the pressure of work, long hours and all that.
By the way, if there are any naïve impressionistic young students out there who would like to write a fawning account of the life and times (and Snowtown experience) of MWD – just give us a call. Moreover, if anyone in the Mrs Manning No 1 or Mrs Manning No 2 camps would like to provide a less than fawning account of living with a journalist workaholic, just let MWD know.
SHANE WRIGHT’s (HYPERBOLIC) STAR RISES
Meanwhile MWD cannot be too praising of The West Australian journalist Shane Wright’s performance on the Sky News PM Agenda program last Wednesday. He was in a panel discussion with presenter David Speers and Daily Telegraph journalist Malcolm Farr (who made a number of telling points).
▪ Shane Wright declared that “The political half-life of whoever came up and said ‘I’ll have the first nuclear power reactor in my backyard’ would be about three minutes.”
▪ Shane Wright asserted that in his address to The Sydney Institute on 18 August 2009, AWU national secretary Paul Howes had spoken about “stacking up nuclear against coal” and “forgot to mention gas” [MWD says: If Shane Wright had bothered to read Paul Howes’ speech, he would have known that Mr Howes referred at some length to the importance of gas for domestic power generation and export.]
▪ Shane Wright suggested that NSW Treasurer Eric Rozendaal needed to look at “the voters of New South Wales as his axis” of evil. This followed Mr Rozendaal’s referral to Western Australia and Queensland as the “axis of evil” over their stances on the distribution of GST revenues.
▪ Shane Wright referred to the “tears of petulance in the eyes of the Opposition” (including Liberal MP Barry Haase) as Labor announced the Gorgon gas development in Western Australia. According to Mr Wright: “You could see Barry Haase saying: ‘It’s ours, give it back, I put that gas there, men and ladies of this country’.”
Mr Wright’s capacity for hyperbole suggests that he is channelling Bob Ellis.
THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT ALMOST WAS
In a week of media highlights, the following were picked up by MWD (and its readers).
▪ Bob Ellis Blames Uncle Sam For AIDS
Monday 17 August. On the ABC Unleashed website, False Prophet Bob Ellis asserted that, this millennium, “America’s leadership…has killed 20 million children with AIDS, bad water and cluster bombs”. So there you have it. The United States, according to the False Prophet, is responsible for deaths from not only AIDS but also water. All this brought to you by the taxpayer funded ABC.
▪ Damaged Psyches – But Sensible Soles
Monday 17 August. Academic Sharon Beder gets her familiar whinge about almost everything published on The Age’s Opinion Page. She leads off with life-is-nasty-brutish-and-long piece by describing a morning in the life of children Amanda, Andrew and Angie:
Amanda’s parents gave her an mp3 player for her 13th birthday. She had been nagging them for an iPod for months but they didn’t understand, as her peers did, the importance of the iPod brand. So they got her another brand that they thought offered better value for money. Instead of being delighted, she was depressed. It was the same with everything she had. Her mobile was two years old yet her parents couldn’t understand the importance of having the latest model. She was sure that it was because she had second or third-rate versions of everything that she was not popular at school.
Her brother Andrew was in the bathroom vomiting. He had a test today and he didn’t do well in tests. Music classes were the only part of school that Andrew liked. Otherwise he hated school. They never studied anything that he could relate to and it was all so repetitive. Andrew’s poor test results were likely to affect his ability to get into a good secondary school.
His little sister Angie was having a tantrum in the kitchen because Mummy wouldn’t buy the sugary cereal with Shrek on the packet that she saw on television. Amanda thought it wouldn’t be long before Angie would be taking those little white pills that so many kids at school took when she was in primary school. In her school some of the older kids traded them along with other drugs to get high.
It is not clear whether Amanda, Andrew and Angie actually exist or are a figment of Beder’s imagination. [Don’t set your standards too high – she’s yet another leftie writing for the “Guardian on the Yarra”. Ed].
In any event, Beder blamed the (alleged) plight of the (purported) children on, wait for it, the “corporate capture of childhood”. She also maintained that “the rapid decline in children’s wellbeing has largely been caused by corporate interference in their lives”. According to Beder:
The consequence of this corporate capture of childhood has been a generation of children who have been manipulated, shaped and exploited as never before. Not only have they lost the opportunity to play and develop at their own pace, their psyches have been damaged and their view of the world distorted.
By the way, Sharon Beder is a visiting professor in Wollongong University’s School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication. The good news is that enough children recover from corporate interference, damaged psyches and the like and enroll in taxpayer subsidised institutions like Wollongong University – thus making it possible for Professor Beder to receive steady income and become accustomed to the designer sandals of her choice.
▪ Apocalypse Now
Monday 17 August. Christian Kerr does the “Canberra Babylon” slot on the Radio National Late Night Live program. Let’s go to the audio tape:
Phillip Adams: Christian, I noticed Ken Henry looking gloomy, grumpy and somewhat gaunt as he strode a corridor of power today. What’s he on about? Why isn’t he happy?
Christian Kerr: Well. He’s being vaguely apocalyptic Central bankers, I think, always like things to be a bit more clean cut than they might be turning out at the moment. He’s saying it’s too early to declare victory against the Global Financial Crisis…
Dr Ken Henry may, or may not be vaguely apocalyptic. But he is not even vaguely a central banker. Rather, Ken Henry is Secretary of Treasury. Christian Kerr may have misspoken – but there was no correction from Phillip Adams.
▪ There’s Waleed
Wednesday 18 August. Monash University academic Waleed Aly makes a return to analysing the morning papers on the ABC 2 News Breakfast program – his first appearance since suggesting that Jemaah Islamiyah had nothing to do with the recent suicide-homicide attacks in Jakarta. See Issue 21.
For Dr Aly at least, the main news for the morning turned on the fact that he was back on the telly. Let’s go to the video:
Virginia Trioli: Waleed. Good morning
Waleed Aly: Good morning
Virginia Trioli: What’s first on your list?
Waleed Aly: It’s been a while – hasn’t it?
Virginia Trioli: It has, yes.
Waleed Aly: I know. That’s what I was saying.
Yeah, we know. And what else did Waleed Aly say of significance? Not much. Except that he did manage to suggest that a projected rise in food prices of 5 per cent, consequent upon the introduction of an emissions trading scheme, would create “a big problem” for, believe it or not, Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition.
▪ Mark Latham and the CIA Conspiracy
Thursday 20 August. Former Labor leader, and Australian Financial Review columnist, Mark Latham uses his column to bag another former friend. This time it’s Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard – whom Latham implies changed her erstwhile leftist mind on foreign policy following what he described as “a study tour of the US, sponsored by the American government in 2006”. Which raises the question. Did Mr Latham ever accept a similar trip – which sections of the ALP jokingly refer to as the “CIA Tour” – when he was an MP? Mr Latham claimed that Julia Gillard was “brainwashed” by the experience and quoted correspondence in which she referred to the CIA. Horror. But what about Latham himself? Did he ever partake of CIA tour? Also what is Mark Latham going to fill his column with after he has bagged all his one-time Labor mates? First it was Gough Whitlam followed by Joel Fitzgibbon and now Julia Gillard. MWD suggests that Mr Latham should consider an AFR column bagging himself.
HISTORY CORNER
On Q&A last night actor and producer Anthony LaPaglia emerged as an authority on East Timor in general and the killing of the six journalists from Australia there in late 1975. Presenter Tony Jones and the panelist Maxine McKew knew something about the matter but no one emerged to take on LaPaglia in any detail. He simply dominated the program.
Robert Connolly’s film Balibo – in which Anthony LaPaglia plays Roger East – presents itself as a “true story”. It is anything but. Some of the key errors have been identified by Hamish McDonald (Sydney Morning Herald 15-16 August 2009) and Paul Cleary (Sun-Herald 16 August 2009 and Eureka Street Online 20 August 2009). Neither McDonald nor Cleary is supportive of the stance taken by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who is a target of the film – they are just annoyed by the film’s historical howlers. Whitlam’s position on East Timor was defended by Gerard Henderson (Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August 2009) which also cited historical errors in the film.
Here is a snap of some significant errors of commission or omission in Balibo.
▪ Colonel Dading Kalbuadi, the senior Indonesian commander of the Balibo operation, did not kill the journalist Brian Peters. He was not in the vicinity at the time of Mr Peters’ death.
▪ There is no evidence of any kind that Indonesian General Benny Murdani was close by when Roger East was killed and observed his death.
▪ Balibo does not mention that Jose Ramos Horta and his Fretilin movement fought a bitter civil war with the UDT organisation before the Indonesian invasion. Likewise the film does not acknowledge that the six deceased journalists were all Fretilin barrackers.
▪ Jose Ramos Horta later conceded, Fretilin in 1975 did pass itself off as – or did allow itself to be passed off – as a communist movement in the period leading up to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Mr Horta has also regretted Fretilin’s role in East Timor’s civil war. There is no reference to either matter in Balibo.
▪ Balibo glosses over the vacuum created in East Timor which resulted from the grossly irresponsible action by Portugal in junking its responsibilities and walking out on its colonial territory. Portugal’s culpability is simply not addressed in Balibo which targets the military regime in Indonesia and the democratic government in Australia at the time.
STOP PRESS
Last week RN Breakfast presenter Fran Kelly complained to MWD that she was getting too many mentions in this newsletter. MWD explained, politely of course, that Ms Kelly is treated the same as anyone else and therefore she must provide more copy than most.
Perhaps Ms Kelly enjoys her mentions in MWD. Which explains why she tries so hard to get in. MWD is always a sucker for Kerry O’Brien or Fran Kelly style interviews where the presenter asks the questions and provides the answers – sometimes at the same time. Fran Kelly also has the habit of making an editorial comment at the end of an interview. She was at it again on Wednesday when, following a discussion with Paul McGeough on Afghanistan, Fran Kelly editorialised: “Which brings us to the question of what on earth are we all doing here.” The only problem was that there was no time for an answer.
Which brings MWD to ask: What on earth is Fran Kelly doing finishing off interviews by expressing her own position?
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Until next time.