GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 208
15 November 2013
The inaugural issue of “Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch” was published in April 1988 – over a year before the first edition of the ABC TV Media Watch program went to air. Since November 1997 “Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch” has been published as part of The Sydney Institute Quarterly. In 2009 Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog blog commenced publication.
MORRY SCHWARTZ’S IMPOSSIBLE TASK OF BEING MORE LEFT THAN THE-GUARDIAN-ON-THE-YARRA
MWD received this morning an email from Morry Schwartz, Australia’s most socially aware multi-millionaire property developer, requesting that MWD “come with us for this ride”. The reference is to Black Inc’s decision to establish The Saturday Paper.
Black Inc’s current publications,The Monthly and Quarterly Essay, are leftist house journals where virtually everyone agrees with everyone else in a leftist-luvvie inner-city kind of way. Yet Mr Schwartz believes that The Saturday Paper will make up for a lack of “diversity in Australian journalism”. Fair dinkum.
It seems that your man Schwartz does not read The Age or The Saturday Age or The Sunday Age. Sure, they lack diversity. But not in a way which the leftist Black Inc can resolve. For “The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra”, in its various dimensions, is a left wing institution.
Take today’s edition, for example. Page 2 carries an article by Barney Zwartz along with a Tandberg cartoon. Both unfairly bag such traditional Age targets as Cardinal George Pell and Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Pages 4 and 5 run unrelenting criticism of the Coalition’s Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. There is more of the same in Julie Anne-Davies’ article on pages 16 and 17 titled “Abbott’s New World Order”.
Turn to the Letters Page. Under a photo of Cardinal Pell, four out of four letters bag the Catholic Church. Turn to the Comment Page. It’s a Conservative-Free-Zone with an article by former Labor MP Barry Jones and another by current Labor MP Anthony Albanese and another on the cricket. Get the picture?
Next week MWD will present a mock-up of how The Saturday Paper is likely to look under Morry Schwartz. Stay tuned.
MARK LATHAM BLAMES KEVIN RUDD (AGAIN) FOR LABOR’S 2010 ELECTION LOSS – BUT OVERLOOKS HIS OWN CONTRIBUTION
Guess what? Mark Latham has just written his 345th critique of Kevin Rudd (or is it his 346th?). It’s an exclusive in this morning’s Australian Financial Review – under the title “Kevin’s ‘two acts of bastardry’ legacy”. Here’s what the Lair of Liverpool had to say about Kevin Rudd (yet again):
History will not be kind to Rudd. He constantly put personal ambition ahead of the best interests of his caucus and party, obscuring the contribution this otherwise talented individual could have made to the nation. He will be remembered for two scarifying acts of bastardry. The first was to sabotage Julia Gillard’s 2010 election campaign with leaks to Laurie Oakes and Peter Hartcher. It takes a special kind of spite for a sitting MP to deny his party an election victory, but this is Rudd’s legacy, inflicting a hung parliament on colleagues. In his farewell speech on Wednesday, he should have apologised for this atrocity.
Hang on a minute. Mark Latham seems to have forgotten that he not only stalked Prime Minister Julia Gillard during the 2010 election campaign but also urged Australians to vote informal. It is all documented in your man Latham’s 60 Minutes special which aired on Channel 9 on 12 August 2010. Since any influence Mark Latham might have had on the 2010 campaign would have been on traditional Labor voters, it could be said that the Lair of Liverpool himself was at least partly responsible for denying Labor “an election victory”. After all, he attempted to unnerve Julia Gillard and he urged Australians not to vote for the Labor Party.
But don’t expect an apology from Mark Latham any time soon. Such an action would undermine his credibility as a columnist. And with a lousy taxpayer-funded superannuation hand-out of a mere $78,000 (fully indexed) – and with a wife, a house, three children and half-a-dozen bookmakers to support – Mr Latham needs to earn moolah from his new role as a media commentator.
AUNTY FLASH: LOTSA NUDITY WARNING – PER COURTESY OF CRAIG REUCASSEL
Nancy’s (male) co-owner turned on ABC 1 at 9.30 pm on Wednesday intending to watch the taxpayer funded broadcaster’s latest act of self-indulgence where the ABC commissions ABC types to examine the ABC on the ABC. Shock Horror Aunty in fact.
This time, the presenter and co-writer was none other than Craig Reucassel who boasts that he is the only one of The Chaser Boys (average age 371/2) who did not go to a private school. [Young Mr Reucassel, average age 371/2, sounds very special to me – Ed.]
Turning on the set, Nancy’s (male) co-owner noted that Shock Horror Aunty contained the following WARNING:
The following program is rated MA15+ for a mature adult audience. It contains drug use, sexual references, coarse language, nudity including female genital nudity and material that may offend some viewers. [Could the last reference be to the program’s evident self-indulgence? I find that pretty offensive – Ed.]
Nancy’s (male) co-owner got so excited with the warning that he felt the need for an immediate cold shower and a run around the block – with Nancy, of course. So he did not see Shock Horror Aunty – which apparently covered such usual ABC obsessions as nudity, Andrew Denton, homosexuality, sneers at Christianity, political extremists (only of the right-wing variety, of course), and The Chaser Boys (average age 371/2). It also contained interviews with such Aunty-friendly luvvies as Mike Carlton, Tim Ferguson, Wendy Harmer, David Hill and Phil Scott. Those who helped the Shock Horror Aunty’s producers included two of the Chaser Boys, namely Julian Morrow and Chris Taylor. [I assume they are both aged 371/2 – Ed.]
MWD hopes to bring its thousands upon thousands of readers a review of Shock Horror Aunty after next week’s (second) edition of the program. It’s just a matter of doing the cold shower/run around the block routine at around 9 pm in order to be shocked and horrified with Aunty at 9.30 pm.
When he became ABC managing director in 2006, Mark Scott used to mock what he regarded SBS’s obsession with sex by labelling the channel as “See Breasts Soon”. As in SBS. Now Nice Mr Scott is the editor-in-chief of a channel which scours through its archives in order to re-flash every tit and every bum – and more besides – which has ever gone to air on the ABC. Can you bear it?
MIKE (“I’LL POUR THE GIN”) CARLTON’S FALSE PROHECY ON KERRY O’BRIEN’S PAUL KEATING INTERVIEW
Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01 12 Nov
Kerry O’B’s first Keating interview ABCTV 8.30 tonite. The right wing nutters will go apeshit for the next week.
This was Mike (“I’ll pour the gin”) Carlton’s tweet before Keating: The Interviews went to air on ABC 1 at 8.30 on Tuesday. There are three more hour-long programs in the series.
It’s not clear why your man Carlton (who did not file his Sydney Morning Herald column last Saturday) believed that right-of-centre types would be upset by Paul Keating appearing on the public broadcaster. After all, when treasurer/prime minister, Mr Keating presided over the deregulation of the financial system, foreign bank entry, the scaling back of protectionism, privatisation and the partial deregulation of the labour market. Moreover, unlike your man Carlton, Paul Keating supported the United States led First Gulf War which drove Saddam Hussein’s Iraq out of Kuwait.
In fact, the most prominent critic of Keating: The Interviews was none other than Guy Rundle – MWD’s favourite Marxist comedian. Writing in Crikey on Wednesday, your man Rundle declared that “Red” Kerry O’Brien’s interview “teetered on the edge of hagiographic”. Right on. Guy Rundle also opined:
Perhaps Kerry was trying to tease out said particularities, but there were moments when the birth and growth of young PJK sounded like the North Korean propaganda ministry had got to it, having him hatched from a swan’s mouth during a thunderstorm. “You joined the ALP at 14?!!” “You listened to classical music as a teenager!!?” and so on. The goggling implication seemed to be that Keating was not so much a self-made man as a man-made self, an alien creature among the fibro, fabricated from an entirely different material. That is nonsense of course.
It seems that Whale Beach based Mike Carlton is about to challenge the Palm Beach-based Bob Ellis for the leading false prophet on Sydney’s northern beaches. Can you bear it?
RED KERRY – A WORKING CLASS LAD WITH A DAVID JONES FAMILY ACCOUNT
Nancy, being a canine of the mongrel kind, completely teared up when, on Keating: The Interviews, the former prime minister reflected on his working class background. This surprised Nancy since Mr Keating went to De La Salle College and his father ran a successful small business prior to his untimely death at 60 years of age.
Perhaps the Keating-as-a-working-class-type line was projected into the interview by Red Kerry as a form of identification. In the June 2012 issue of In The Black, Kerry O’Brien was profiled by Lynda Dugdale. Her story included an interview between Red Kerry and Alex Malley, the chief executive officer of CPA Australia. You see, Mr Malley is an accountant who appears close to the ABC. Here’s how the interview began:
Alex Malley: it all began in a working-class Catholic family, where you learnt many of your fundamental values. How do you reflect on your childhood?
Kerry O’Brien: We were more working class than middle class, I suspect, because of the incredible caution of my father who grew up as a child of the Depression. Dad’s parents were working class and I’ve got very strong memories of them.
I do remember we had the David Jones account and the Myer account. Every month, you’d hear the strangled cry from my father from his desk in their bedroom, asking his wife to come and explain some of the bills to him. There was that kind of air of conservatism in their lives. I had a close and robust relationship with my father. Every Saturday we would climb on the bus from Tennyson in the southern suburbs of Brisbane, then we would change from south Brisbane into the tram, then we’d trundle out to Bulimba where my grandparents had a tennis court. It was a great court…
As to the O’Brien working class status. Well, how many working class kids in Brisbane in the 1950s played tennis on their grandparents’ private tennis court? And how many belonged to families who had an account with not only Myer but also David Jones. Red Kerry working class? Can you bear it?
ANDREW HORNERY’S FOCUS ON ALAN JONES’ DINNER
There was a huge response to MWD’s coverage last week of reports by Mike Carlton and Anne Summers concerning the Prime Minister’s private dinner at Kirribilli House on 26 October 2013 to which neither was invited. Shucks.
It seems that this function is still fascinating some Sydney Morning Herald columnists. Here’s what Andrew Hornery had to say in his “Private Sydney PS” column in last Saturday’s Herald before concluding his piece whinging about Tony Abbott’s “wining and dining behind closed doors with selected media chums”. Mr Hornery declared:
Tony Abbott might be too busy to address some quarters of the media, but the Prime Minister has gone out of his way to make time for a few others, namely Alan Jones. PS hears Abbott, who celebrated his 56th birthday on Monday, was a dinner guest of Jones’s this week. PS approached Jones to find out how the evening went. Did he bake a cake? Did he jump out of one? To which Jones replied that he was ”unable to shed any light”.
This is all very disappointing for PS, which leaves us to speculate. Perhaps it was Abbott’s way of making up for the recent dinner at Kirribilli when he invited a gathering of like-minded media commentators, with a definite leaning to the right, over for dinner. Jones did not appear to be on the guest list for that one.
Really? According to Peter Munro, who broke the story of the Kirribilli dinner in Fairfax Media newspapers on 26 October 2013, Alan Jones was on the guest list. Moreover, does anyone really care where Mr Jones goes to dinner. Can you bear it?
MALCOLM FARR: RED SHIRTED TWEET
Nancy’s (male) co-owner just loves Malcolm Farr’s wardrobe of tight-fitting shirts which he uses whenever invited on to the ABC1 Insiders program. However, on occasions, it’s very much a case of the shirt out-performing the mind.
On 3 November 2013, Malcolm Farr (who has provided a generous endorsement for MWD) proclaimed from the Insiders couch the wonderment of the profession of journalism. In a red shirt. The implication was clear. Journalists, like Mr Farr, really understand what is news and what is not. Whereas non-journalists just haven’t got a clue. For a glimpse of Malcolm Farr’s journalistic insight, you need go no further than his brilliant tweet – from Canberra – last Monday. Here it is:
Malcolm Farr @farrm51 11 Nov Clive Palmer has boarded Brisbane flight for Canberra. He’s on hs way.
Gosh. Hold the front page. It’s Monday and Clive Palmer has boarded a flight in Brisbane and is on his way to Canberra. Wow. Just what would us non-journalistic mere mortals do without Mr Farr tweeting from Canberra that Mr Palmer has departed Brisbane bound for the national capital? Just what?
Congratulations to long-time MWD reader Lindsay Olney, of ABC 1 Q&A fame, who was the first to spot the John-Laws-Style Deliberate Mistake in Issue 207. Mr Olney is Q&A’s senior producer and is a senior member of the taxpayer funded program’s total staff – which amount to a mere three score.
MWD went out last week at around 2.35 pm. Your man Olney spotted that reference to “Red Kerry” O’Brien’s former Labor employers should have cited Gough Whitlam and Lionel (not Nigel) Bowen. Mr Olney’s email arrived at Nancy’s kennel-box at 3.33 pm. Due to a number of factors, the correction was not made until around 6 pm.
Since Mr Olney decided to load-up his correction with a gospel or two, Gerard Henderson replied. Those who like reading other people’s emails should turn immediately to the (ever popular) Correspondence section.
This segment takes its title from the chorus line in As Time Goes By – which was popularised in the film Casablanca. The aim of “You Must Remember This” is to remind readers that what someone says today is not always what they said yesterday.
MAXINE MCKEW ON KEVIN RUDD – NOVEMBER 2013
This is what Maxine McKew – the former presenter of ABC 1 Lateline who became the former Labor MP for Bennelong – said in the second edition of her book Tales From The Political Trenches (MUP, 2013):
Rudd’s return, as late as it was, certainly brought some alienated voters back to the party. But that still left two major deficits: a party structure that needed to be substantially re-engineered and, critically, an inconsistent and often unprincipled policy approach….
The puzzle, for those of us how know him [Kevin Rudd], was why he was so off his game [in the election campaign]. Where Tony Abbott was lively and light as air, with nightly images of his exercise-honed virility on display, Rudd, by contrast, looked bothered and burdened. His policy attacks on Abbott, instead of hitting the mark, often came across as narky….
He’d spent three years planning a return to the top job, but seemed exhausted rather than energised by the demands of leadership. With Abbott’s constant claims of Labor chaos, Rudd’s primary campaign task was to reassure and clarify. Instead he managed to create more confusion, critically around his own persona.
MAXINE MCKEW ON KEVIN RUDD – JULY 2013
This is what Maxine McKew had to say in her Australian Financial Review column on 30 July 2013, shortly after Kevin Rudd replaced Julia Gillard as prime minister and Labor leader:
Tony Abbott looks to have run out of time to re-boot his campaign. It is not unlike the position that his political hero, John Howard, found himself in by September of 2007…
For the moment Rudd is riding a wave of affection and interest, and Australians are at least prepared to think about giving him a second chance. For those struggling to understand the over-the-top love-ins in shopping malls and school assembly halls, I think it’s pretty simple. People feel that Rudd is on their side. They always have. As for the party that has spurned Rudd for the past three years, it now looks to be completely re-energized.
MAXINE MCKEW ON KEVIN RUDD – AUGUST 2013
Rudd lacks [Paul] Keating’s originality as a communicator but he is a very effective one, nonetheless. Australians like him. They think he’s smart and believable. In the debates, he will go for Abbott’s throat on the question of “job-destroying spending cuts” and if he gets the tone and the stories right, then Australians will listen. And like Keating, Rudd is both an unconventional and highly intuitive player.
Despite the huge negatives and mixed record that Labor carries into this election, Rudd has powerful assets to wield against an opponent who seems incapable of reprogramming his studied jaw-jaw.
* * * * *
So there you have it or not. According to Ms McKew, before the election, Kevin Rudd was with a real chance to win. Yet according to Ms McKew, after the election, Kevin Rudd’s performance was so bad – and the Labor Party so dysfunctional – that he never had a chance of winning.
Currently Ms McKew is Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the taxpayer subsidised University of Melbourne in Parkville. Not far away in Bundoora, Robert Manne is the Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the taxpayer subsided La Trobe University. [I seem to remember that you debated Ms McKew (presenter) and Professor Manne (guest) on the Lateline program on 6 October 2006. I note that they are both on the taxpayers’ drip while you – failure that you are – are still struggling away in the private sector. Why not get a non-job? – Ed].
SENATOR RHIANNON (B.SC HONS UNSW; DIP. INTERNATIONAL LENIN SCHOOL, MOSCOW) RAISES “IRON BOB” ALLEGATION
Yesterday Senator Lee Rhiannon (Greens, NSW and Senator Claire Moore (Labor, Queensland) moved the following motion:
That the Senate —
(a) notes that:
(i) 15 November 2013 is the 75th anniversary of the start of industrial action taken by waterside workers to stop pig iron being loaded on the Dalfram and shipped to Japan,
(ii) the strike was called in support of growing community opposition to Australia shipping resources that could be used as war materials,
(iii) the shipment was part of a contract for 300,000 tons of pig iron to be supplied to Japan Steel Works, which was producing military materials,
(iv) the Federal Government accused the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) of dictating foreign policy, arguing that, as the elected government, it had the sole right to decide what relationships were to be established with foreign powers, and
(v) on 24 January 1939, WWF General Secretary, Mr Jim Healy, met with government representatives and was informed that no more pig iron would be shipped to Japan; and
(b) congratulates the workers involved in the dispute in taking a stand for peace and acknowledges the sacrifices they and their families made during the nine week dispute when they were not paid.
Well, fancy that. Senator Lee Rhiannon (nee Brown) refuses to confirm or deny that she studied at the International Lenin School in Moscow in the mid 1970s when the heirs of Lenin and Stalin were still running the communist totalitarian dictatorship that was the Soviet Union. See MWD passim. But she stands proudly in the tradition of Jim Healy who joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1935.
Senator Lee Rhiannon’ parents were W.J. (“Bill”) Brown who joined the CPA in 1940 and Freda Brown who joined the CPA in 1936. Both were dedicated followers of Josef Stalin all their lives.
Yesterday by a vote of 36 to 28, Senators Rhiannon and Moore got the Senate to criticise the decision of the United Australia Party government, with Joseph Lyons as prime minister and Robert Menzies as attorney-general, to sell pig-iron to Japan in 1938. Their motion also supported the activities at the time of the communist dominated Waterside Workers Federation.
In 1938 there were no internationally imposed sanctions against Japan and Japan was not at war with any of the Western allies.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed on 23 August 1939. Under this agreement, Hitler and Stalin divided Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union – terminating the alliance between Hitler and Stalin.
Between mid-1939 and mid-1941, Bill Brown, Freda Brown, Jim Healy and more besides supported Nazi Germany’s war effort and attempted to sabotage the Allied cause.
Yesterday, Senators Rhiannon and Moore managed to get the Senate to condemn the Lyons government for an action which it took when Australia was at peace with Japan. But neither the Greens nor Labor senators mentioned that Jim Healy – with the support of Bill and Freda Brown – supported Nazi Germany against Britain and Australia during the second half of 1939, throughout 1940 and during the first half of 1941.
Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield obtained leave to make a one minute statement. He referred to the recently published book Australia’s Secret War : How unionists sabotaged our troops in World War II (Quadrant books, 2013) by Hal G P Colebatch which documents the destructive role of the CPA in general, and the WWF in particular, in attempting to sabotage the Australian war effort right up to VP Day in 1945.
History Corner will return to this topic next week – if readers so wish.
THIS TIME WITH Q&A’s LINDSAY OLNEY
This overwhelmingly popular segment of Media Watch Dog usually works like this. Someone thinks it would be a good idea to write to Gerard Henderson. And Nancy’s (male) co-owner, being the kind of guy he is, returns the compliment. Then, lo and behold, the correspondence is published in full in MWD.
Last Friday, Lindsay Olney (ABC 1 Q&A’s senior producer) wrote to Gerard Henderson drawing attention to the fact that an error had been made In Issue 207 concerning the first name of former Labor MP Lionel Bowen.
In fact, Mr Olney was the winner of this week’s spot the “John-Laws-Style-Deliberate –Mistake” competition. Well done – and so on. But, alas, Lindsay Olney went further. He pushed the switch to sneering and warned Hendo of the proverb that people in glass houses should not throw stones. Whereupon Nancy’s (male) co-owner walked out of his glass house and threw a brick at your man Olney. He also used the occasion to advise Lindsay Olney that Q&A has refused to correct an on-air howler by Tony Jones and that Q&A has refused to reply to Gerard Henderson’s letter (see here) about this matter.
Here is the correspondence. Now read, if you wish.
Lindsay Olney to Gerard Henderson – 8 November 2013
Dear Gerard,
Who exactly is Nigel Bowen? And how do you spell combative again? I could mention something about glass houses but I’ll just say that to err is human.
Cheers,
Lindsay O
Gerard Henderson to Lindsay Olney – 11 November 2013
Dear Lindsay
How wonderful it was to receive an email from you at 3.34 pm on Friday. I was at a wake in Melbourne at the time, with a flat phone, and did not notice your missive until I got to Melbourne Airport a couple of hours later. I made the correction about 6 pm – my phone having been empowered, so to speak.
And how wonderful that you have won Media Watch Dog’s “John Laws’ Deliberate Mistake Prize” – in so far as Issue 207 is concerned. Well done. It is a prestigious gong indeed. Last week, Mark Colvin beat James Jeffrey by a touch. Next week, who knows? Perhaps Nice Mr Scott himself.
I spoke to you and Peter McEvoy at my second (and last) appearance on Q&A in November 2011. As I recall, Peter told me that the taxpayer funded Q&A had a total staff of 60. MWD, on the other hand, has a total staff of two. I write it, and my PA types it – and, every now and then, outsiders advise about typos, “deliberate mistakes” etc. It’s called running a small business.
I dictated the Lionel Bowen reference from Warrandyte Cemetery. It may have sounded like “Nigel” – after all, the wind was blowing and grave-diggers were busy at work. Or perhaps, surrounded by the dead, I confused the late Labor MP Lionel Bowen (1922 – 2012) with the late Liberal MP Nigel Bowen (1911-1994). Who knows?
As to “combative”, which was in the same segment, thanks a lot.
As to your glass houses cliché – the fact is that I rarely if ever criticise journalists/commentators for printed or verbal typos or obvious misstatements as to names/incidents etc. We all make these and I don’t dwell on the typos of others.
In MWD I concentrate, instead, on historical errors and inconsistencies. Including howlers made on, yes, Q&A.
On 22 October 2013, I wrote to Tony Jones, with a copy to Peter McEvoy, concerning an inaccurate statement which Tony made on Q&A on Monday 21 October. I have attached a copy of my email. Briefly, Tony Jones said that the Vietnamese refugees who arrived in Australia in the late 1970s “came here on boats”. In fact, 3 per cent arrived unlawfully by boat. The remaining 97 per cent arrived in Australia lawfully by air with valid passports and visas, following off-shore processing, and moved immediately into re-settlement.
In view of the current political debate, this is an important point. Somewhat more significant, I would have thought, than getting the first name wrong of a deceased politician.
However, despite Q&A’s 60 staff, no correction has been made to the transcript. And neither Tony Jones nor Peter McEvoy even bothered to acknowledge the email.
I am not accusing you of throwing stones while living in a glass house – since I do not do clichés. Moreover, we all make errors. The record demonstrates that when I make an error I arrange to have it corrected. When Tony Jones makes an error on Q&A, he and Peter McEvoy go into denial.
Anyrate, it was lovely hearing from you again. Have a Happy and a Holy Christmas – along with Q&A’s traditional nine (or is it ten?) week Well Earned Break.
Keep morale high.
Gerard Henderson
* * * * *
Until next time. Keep morale high.
“The last time Gerard Henderson smiled was in 1978, when he saw a university student being mauled by a pitbull.”
– Ben Pobjie, via Twitter, 13 October 2013 [Editor’s Note: Mr “Why Can’t I Score an Invite on Q&A?” Pobjie is wrong. In fact, the year was 1977 and the dog was a blue-heeler – like Nancy]
“I think Henderson is seriously ill. There’s enough there for an entire convention of psychiatrists.”
– Mike (“I’ll pour the gin”) Carlton (after Pre-Dinner Drinks tweet to Jeff Sparrow), 8 October 2013
“Wrong, you got caught out, off to Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog for you!”
– Tim Wilson tweet to Jonathan Green and Virginia Trioli, 8 October 2013.
“Nancy as ever will be the judge”
– Jonathan Green to Tim Wilson and Virginia Trioli (conceding to the arbitral authority of Nancy), 8 October 2013
[Gerard Henderson’s analysis of the ABC] is absolutely simplistic.”
– ABC managing director Mark Scott talking to ABC presenter Jonathan Green on ABC Radio National Drive, 2 May 2013.
“Oh my God; you’re as bad as Gerard Henderson.”
– Dr Peter Van Onselen (for a doctor he is), The Contrarians, Sky News, 20 September 2013.
“The nation mourns Gerard Henderson. He’s in perfect health.”
– Phillip Adams, via Twitter, 2 July 2013 (favourited by Virginia Trioli)
“Old Australian saying. ‘He wouldn’t know a tram was up him unless the bell rang’. Wholly appropriate to Gerard Henderson”
– Phillip Adams, via Twitter, 7 May 2013
“I said publicly once that I thought that Gerard’s views on the ABC came not from his brain but from his spinal cord”
– Tim Bowden as told to Phillip (“I was a teenage Stalinist”) Adams, Late Night Live, 11 June 2013 – Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday.
“Gerard Henderson is a crank”
– David Marr at the 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival (as reported by Mike Carlton)
“The great Australian media nutter Gerard [Henderson is an] ungrateful bastard”.
– Mark Latham, Q&A, 10 June 2013.
“[Gerard Henderson] is a moral dwarf …Gerard, pull your head in”
– Professor Sinclair Davidson, 24 April 2013.
“[Henderson] You are mad. In the 18th century you would have been caged, with the mob invited to poke you with sticks.”
– Mike Carlton, 5.23 pm (Gin & Tonic Time) 25 March 2013
“I like to think of Gerard [Henderson] as the Inspector Clouseau of forensic journalism”
– David Marr, ABC News 24 The Drum, 21 March 2013.
“[Media Watch Dog is] not a moan, more of a miserable dribble”
– Peter Munro, 21 March 2013
“You are a fool, Henderson, a malicious and mendacious piece of shit… Now F_ck off”
– Mike Carlton, 11 March 2013 (Hangover Time).
“[Gerard Henderson is] an internet pest”
– Dr (for a doctor he is) Jeff Sparrow, 26 February 2013.
Jonathan Green: “Nancy, will be taking notes, I suspect”
Michael Rowland: “Nancy…yes. We’ll get a nice write-up on Friday. Good morning as well, Gerard. Thanks for watching, by the way.”
– ABC 1 News Breakfast, 18 October 2012
“Gerard [Henderson] is a complete f-ckwit”
– Malcolm Farr, via Twitter, 29 June 2012 (circa pre-dinner drinks)
“What a haughty flapping half-arsed buffoon he [Henderson] is”
– Bob Ellis on his Table Talk blog, 8 May 2012 (before breakfast)
“We’d better be careful what we say, just in case Gerard’s offsider pooch Nancy is keeping an eye on us for his delightfully earnest Media Watch Dog”
– Tom Cowie of The Power Index, Crikey 20 January 2012
“Henderson…What a pompous, pretentious turd you are.”
– Mike Carlton, Saturday 13 August 2011 (after lunch)
“Go to the Sydney Institute Media Watch Dog website to marvel at [its] work”
– Mark Latham The Spectator Australia 11 June 2011.
Media Watch Dog – “disgraceful”, “sick”
– Professor Robert Manne, April Fool’s Day 2011.
“Before going further can you write to confirm that these emails are private correspondence and not for publication”
– ABC News Radio’s Marius Benson, 11 March 2011. He did go further – see MWD Issue 86.
“I realise this makes me practically retarded, but until five minutes ago I thought Nancy was Gerard Henderson’s wife, not his dog.”
– Byronbache via Twitter, Monday 7 February 2011
“Gerard Henderson is big enough to take care of himself, but that doesn’t stop us worrying about him from time to time. Lately it’s Hendo’s tendency to self-harm that has us losing sleep. For example, peruse the correspondence he’s published in his latest Media Watch Dog blog… There’s a part of us that just wants to ask: “Hendo, are you OK?”
– James Jeffrey’s “Strewth!” column, The Australian, 8 November 2010.
“Media Watch Dog on Fridays…is a sort of popular read in the Crikey office”
– Crikey’s Andrew Crook on ABC 2 News Breakfast, 24 September 2010.