GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NUMBER 1
6 MARCH 2009
THE MONTHLY – A DEBATE FREE ZONE
The Monthly – editor Sally Warhaft, publisher Morry Schwartz, editorial board chairman Robert Manne – is a rarity in publishing. It is one of the few serious journals in the English speaking world which does not publish a letters or correspondence page in its print edition. This means that those who write for The Monthly are protected from criticism or correction in the published edition. It also entails that there is no debate or discussion in the magazine’s print edition about the articles which it has published previously.
The February 2009 issue The Monthly carried a lengthy essay by Kevin Rudd titled “The Global Financial Crisis”. The Prime Minister’s article attracted considerable national, and even some international, attention – criticism and praise alike. However, there were no follow-up letters-to-the-editor in The Monthly’s March 2009 issue – since it is the magazine’s policy not to publish the opinions of its readers.
Clearly Ms Warhaft does not see the point of printing views other than the ones she commissions for publication. Yet in the March 2009 issue she gave her editorial board chairman Robert Manne some six pages to analyse both Mr Rudd’s original essay and the various responses to it. This reflects a trend whereby The Monthly is morphing into The Manne. Professor Manne used the occasion to give some gratuitous advice to the Prime Minister and then bagged anyone who had criticised Mr Rudd’s essay.
Increasingly The Monthly is resembling a church where sermons are delivered on a regular basis by in-house clerics and where so-called “error” has no right of reply. In fact a greater diversity of views can be heard on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News than can be found in the pages of The Monthly.
Professor Manne is the high priest of The Monthly’s church and he sermonises at will – without fear of criticism or correction in the print edition. Yet the very same Robert Manne demands – and receives – a right-of-reply in the print edition of such publications as The Australian and The Sydney Institute Quarterly. It’s called a double standard.
On 4 March 2009 Gerard Henderson wrote to Sally Warhaft drawing attention to an error by Robert Manne in his six page article in the March 2009 edition of The Monthly. Neither Ms Warhaft nor Professor Manne (to whom a copy was sent) replied but the Prime Minister’s Office did acknowledge receipt of a copy of the letter. An abridged version of Gerard Henderson’s email to The Monthly’s editor is set out below:
I know that there is no way for anyone to have a right of reply in The Monthly’s print edition. However, for the record, I wish to draw your attention to the following false claim made by Professor Manne in his article titled “Neo-Liberal Meltdown: The Response to the Prime Minister’s Essay”. At Page 26 of the March 2009 issue of The Monthly, Robert Manne makes the following claim:
….Gerard Henderson argued that because his wife had been successful in business, Rudd’s criticism of extreme capitalism and market fundamentalism constituted hypocrisy of the most egregious kind. There was not one word in Rudd’s essay that suggested he was opposed to entrepreneurial activity.
This statement is both undocumented and untrue. It is notable that Professor Manne’s citation is not accompanied by any direct quotes from me. The fact is that I have never accused Mr Rudd of “hypocrisy of the most egregious kind”. What’s more, I have never suggested that the Prime Minister is “opposed to entrepreneurial activity”. This is mere verballing by a university professor who should know better.
The comment to which Professor Manne refers comes from my weekly column which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 3 February 2009. Before acknowledging that the Prime Minister had made some valuable points in his February 2009 Monthly essay, I made the following comment:
The Prime Minister’s dalliance with theory has been inconsistent. Writing in The Monthly in November 2006, shortly before he became Labor leader, Rudd used the term “brutopia” – which he linked to Howard – to refer to what he variously termed free-market fundamentalism, neo-liberalism and unrestrained market capitalism. Yet it was never clear what he had in mind.
Rudd is rightly proud of his wife’s achievements in business. Yet Therese Rein’s business success essentially resulted from the privatisation of formerly government-run employment services. And Rudd chose to sound off against capitalism in The Monthly, which is run by the wealthy property developer Morry Schwartz.
This is a serious point. The privatisation of government services was a significant part of what Robert Manne and others now refer to as “neo-liberalism”. And the property market is at the fore of what some now describe as “extreme capitalism”.
Is Professor Manne seriously suggesting that no one should be able to state that Ms Rein’s brilliant business career benefited by the privatisation process which was ignited by Margaret Thatcher in Britain in the early 1980s? I supported the privatisation of the Commonwealth Employment Service in Australia – and I still do. Yet the fact remains that if privatisation is part of neo-liberalism – then it is only reasonable to ask whether the Prime Minister regards opposition to privatisation as part of his critique of contemporary capitalism.
Rather than debate the issue, Professor Manne has condemned me for a personal criticism of the Prime Minister which I never made. And Professor Manne will get away with it – due to the fact that the chairman of The Monthly’s editorial board is protected from criticism or correction by The Monthly’s refusal to publish correspondence in its print issue or to employ a fact-checker.
Yours sincerely
Gerard Henderson
cc: The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP
Robert Manne
All this aside, didn’t Sally Warhaft put in a stunning performance on ABC1’s Q&A program last night? You bet – even if, at times, her contributions were all but incomprehensible, for example her monologue on executive pay.
Ms Warhaft even managed to publicise on live television The Monthly’s campaign to have Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull write an article for her magazine. At the end of Robert Manne’s six pager in the current piece, the following comment appears:
Since November 2006, Malcolm Turnbull has been repeatedly invited to contribute an essay to this magazine – including a reply to Kevin Rudd’s essay for this edition. He has not yet responded. (Ed.)
How about that? Perhaps Mr Turnbull has other priorities. Or perhaps he does not see the point in writing for The Monthly. Or perhaps he does not want to write an article which will be followed-up by a six page analysis by Robert Manne to which he would have no right-of-reply in a letters page in the print edition. Or whatever.
In any event, there are ample media outlets for the Opposition leader to present his views. But this is not Ms Warhaft’s position. In urging Mr Turnbull to write for The Monthly on Q&A, she declared: “I don’t want to live in a one-party state.” This will surprise those who understand that Australia is a democracy where the Rudd Government does not have a majority in the Senate and where a vibrant debate takes place in the media – with the exception of The Monthly, where a number of fashionable leftists fill up the pages of most editions. If you have any doubts, just check out the contents page of the current issue.
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THE AUSTRALIAN’S (AHISTORICAL) DEMAND
Julie Bishop, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, addressed The Sydney Institute on Monday 2 March 2009. Lex Hall from The Australian got to ask a question during the discussion period which followed Ms Bishop’s formal address. Here it is:
Congratulations on a good speech. I noticed you quoted Niall Ferguson and Paul Johnson and you carefully referenced that. I just wondered how stung you were by accusations of plagiarism and how much input you had into the speech tonight?
Now it is true that Julie Bishop – or rather, one of her staff – failed to fully source an article which she wrote for Peter van Onselen’s edited collection Liberals & Power: The Road Ahead (MUP, 2008). This led to an accusation of plagiarism along with criticism that she had allowed a staffer to draft her chapter. However, the critique soon got out of hand and now the Deputy Liberal leader is expected by many in the media and elsewhere to write her own speeches and articles.
This was Lex Hall’s line at The Sydney Institute last Monday. It has been around for a while. On 28 October 2008 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Professor van Onselen felt that Julie Bishop had shown a lack of respect for him by allowing a staff member to draft her chapter in Liberals & Power. Shucks. A seemingly hurt Peter van Onselen reflected:
I have an enormous amount of respect for Julie Bishop. I am disappointed she didn’t show similar respect to me by submitting a chapter she had written rather than one written by her chief of staff. I certainly would not have published the article if I knew her chief of staff had written it.
Come off it. Are the likes of Lex Hall and Peter van Onselen seriously suggesting that all politicians should write all their own speeches and articles? Or is this just a standard to be met by Julie Bishop?
Journalists and academics should know that politicians in contemporary democracies engage speech writers. This is the case even with such obviously articulate types as Barack Obama and Tony Blair. Kevin Rudd has speeches written for him. During the end period of his prime ministership, John Howard’s written speeches were drafted by John Kunkel. The likes of Bob Hawke and Malcolm Fraser had speech writers. Graeme Freudenberg became famous as a speech writer for Gough Whitlam as did Don Watson when he worked for Paul Keating. Even John Curtin’s famous newspaper article of 27 December 1941, where he wrote that Australia was turning to the United States “free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinships with the United Kingdom”, was drafted by his press secretary Don Rodgers. Last week it was revealed that Dennis Glover is contracted by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to write speeches for Julia Gillard. And so on.
But Julie Bishop is expected to write all her own material – according to the likes of Mr Hall and Dr van Onselen. For the record, Ms Bishop did write her own speech to The Sydney Institute. Let’s hope this does not become a precedent. Senior politicians should make inputs into their speeches/articles. But they do not have the time – nor necessarily the skill – to write 3000 to 4000 word pieces. That’s what speech writers do.
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CATHERINE DEVENY ATTACKS THE AGE
Once upon a time Catherine Deveny was a stand-up performer on the Melbourne comedy circuit. Then, per courtesy of the (now sacked) Age editor Andrew Jaspan, she obtained a gig as a sit-down columnist for The Age. Ms Deveny’s fact-free verbal sludge has been analysed in Issue 32, Issue 33 and Issue 34 of The Sydney Institute Quarterly which are available on-line.
This year, under The Age’s new editor Paul Ramage, Ms Deveny’s weekday column has been moved from the Opinion Page to Metropolis at the back of the first section. CD’s re-located column resumed in 2009 on 12 February when she wrote how her six year old son had just started school. Big story, that. It only took a month before Ms Deveny exploded about her treatment under The Age’s new management. Towards the end of a column on International Woman’s Day, CD opined:
This newspaper itself reflects the ingrained gender imbalance in media. It’s not uncommon for the opinion page to feature a middle-aged, middle-class white man in a suit, followed by another middle-aged, middle-class white man in a suit, followed by another middle-aged, middle-class white man in a suit, followed by Peter Costello. Of the last 69 pieces, only 13 have been written by women. And when women’s voices are heard, they are less likely to be writing opinion and more likely to be “sharing experiences” than men.
The Sydney Morning Herald has a number of influential female columnists as does the Herald-Sun in Melbourne. Catherine Deveny had a chance to blaze a trail for women in The Age’s Opinion Page but, alas, she blew it by an overdose of experience sharing self-indulgence – which included attacking Age (or perhaps ex-Age) readers who happen to live in the suburbs. Inner-city CD’s contempt for Age readers, and others, in the suburbs was demonstrated in her column on 6 August 2008 when she wrote:
I can’t tell you how often I seriously wish I were living in some outer suburb content with signed and framed football jumpers on the wall, no book-shelves and a coffee table covered in remote controls, happy to read romance novels over my Cup-a-Soup. At least I’d have some peace.
Andrew Jaspan thought that such dross was worthy of a place on The Age’s Opinion Page. Clearly, his successor believes otherwise. And Catherine Deveny is very angry. So much so that she has shared her experience on this matter with readers of the Metropolis section. Ms Deveny’s next column is eagerly awaited.
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That’s it – until next time.
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