GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 7
24 APRIL 2009
NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK
This week Nancy was just so impressed with the work of both former Liberal Party leader John Hewson and Guy Rundle, the on-going comedy writer and one-time editor of the leftist magazine Arena. Consequently, there is a dead heat for today’s pick of the week. Very dead.
In this morning’s Australian Financial Review, Dr. Dr. Dr. Hewson’s weekly column is headed “Moral leadership lacking”. The learned Doctor commenced his column with the word “I”. In the first four paragraphs, Hewson used the personal pronoun “I” on no fewer than ten occasions – while invoking all of us to embrace the “moral dimensions” of “some key policy issues”. Nancy was particularly taken by Hewson’s comma-laden paragraph four, which is as follows:
I raise this not to promote myself as any sort of moralist, or even as particularly virtuous, but, perhaps because of my religious upbringing, I have a pretty clear idea of what I feel is right or wrong, ethical or unethical, good or bad, just, fair and so on, and I quite frankly despair at times at how these “value issues” are so easily ignored, or dispensed with, in the public debate.
Nancy reckons that with such values it will not be too long before John Hewson explains his role in the collapse of Elderslie Finance Corporation. The now morally charged Doctor resigned as chairman of Elderslie shortly before the company went cactus and has yet to explain his role in its collapse. See MWD Issue 3.
Nancy was also taken by the effort of the garrulously challenged Guy Rundle. In Crikey last Monday, the part-time comedy writer went in to bat for, wait for it, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rundle reckons that Ahmadinejad’s speech to the Durban II conference in Geneva was really just fine and only a touch paranoid. Rundle’s line is that the Iranian president is not anti-semitic or even a little bit mad. According to your man Rundle, Ahmadinejad is “pretty similar” to a Western politician. Like Kevin Rudd, perhaps. Or, maybe, Angela Merkel. This sounds like a Rundle comedy script, but he is serious. Some scribblers will do almost anything to get Nancy’s attention.
NON-NEWS UPDATE – JONATHAN HOLMES AND PAUL CHADWICK
It’s good to see that ABC 1’s Media Watch (presenter Jonathan Holmes, executive producer Jo Puccini) is really into the big issues. On 13 April, Holmes got stuck into the editor of the Grafton Daily Examiner for lack of gender awareness in a comment he made about a female cricket broadcaster in South Africa. Big story, eh?
Then, last Monday, Holmes revealed that Media Watch’s sleuth-work had resulted in a certain Sophie Fowler being sacked by The Sunday Examiner in Launceston for plagiarising material for her “Yours sincerely with Sophie Fowler” column. Now we’re on to something. What’s next? Perhaps a Holmes/Puccini scoop on split infinitives in the Holy Name Monthly [Are you sure this is still extant? Editor].
One of Ms Fowler’s indiscretions was to pinch some jokes from the internet for future use. How times change. That’s exactly the same source the late and much admired former ABC and Channel 9 star Paul Lyneham used when he was much renowned for his wit while a key player in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Canberra over a decade ago. Mr Lyneham used to use the (collected) humour for the paid talks he gave on Australian politics.
Last week Media Watch also revealed that Paul Chadwick, the ABC’s Director of Editorial Policies, is running a quality assurance project aimed at examining the work of 7.30 Report presenter Kerry O’Brien and Lateline presenter Tony Jones. So much so that Chadwick attempted to get two overseas broadcasters – David Dimbleby in Britain and Peter Mansbridge in Canada – to assess a small sample of O’Brien’s and Jones’ interviews. What a daft idea. It comes as no surprise that, on reflection, both Dimbleby and Mansbridge have decided not to participate in the project. For starters, neither was offered remuneration. Moreover, maybe they were worried about the precedent involved.
As a rule, MWD does not make predictions. But MWD would be enormously surprised if Chadwick’s quality oversight activity came down with any adverse findings against either of ABC’s star presenters. After all, last year Chadwick effectively cleared 7.30 Report political editor Michael Brissenden who committed the journalistic sin of revealing the details of an off-the-record, or at least background-only, conversation he had with Peter Costello in 2007. (The sorry saga is documented in The Sydney Institute Quarterly, Issue 34, December 2008). Chadwick’s ruling in this instance – which was sanctified by the ABC Board – means that ABC journalists can make promises to politicians about the confidentiality of private conversations and then break their word with the full backing of the ABC. You’ve heard about the Chatham House Rule. Well, the ABC has introduced the Chadwick Rule – it means never go off-the-record with an ABC journalist.
The fact is that, during his time at the ABC, Chadwick has developed a track record of supporting ABC personnel on almost every issue. No surprise really. Chadwick is on record as praising the ABC 1 Media Watch program – despite it having only had leftist or left-of-centre presenters in its two decades of existence. Chadwick is a bit of a leftist sandal-wearer himself – with a background on The Age (Melbourne’s very own “Guardian-on-the-Yarra”) and with the left-of-centre Communications Law Centre in Melbourne. In 1989 Chadwick invited the leftist nun/academic Veronica Brady to write the introduction to his book Media Mates. Dr Brady was appointed to the ABC Board by the Hawke Labor government despite the fact that she did not watch any television. But Dr Brady did ride a bicycle at the time.
So what is Paul Chadwick on about? Here’s a suggestion. Mr Chadwick runs the ABC Editorial Policies bureaucracy within the larger ABC bureaucracy. Bureaucracies have to do – or pretend to do – something. It seems that Chadwick has decided to rationalise the use of his $850,000 annual budget by preparing quality assurance projects which are subsequently published. One such project involves the you-beaut idea of commissioning two fashionable journalists in the Northern Hemisphere to assess the work of two fashionable ABC journalists in the Antipodes. This entails that Mr Chadwick will have an important sounding Quality Assurance Project 8 to supplement his quite worthless previous seven such projects. But it sure beats counting paper clips during office hours.
BREAKFAST AT AUNTY’S – GAEL JENNINGS, VIRGINIA TRIOLI, JOE O’BRIEN AND FRAN KELLY
If Jonathan Holmes’ Media Watch and/or Paul Chadwick want to examine some journalistic indiscretions within the public broadcaster, they might have a look at the following behaviour. Starting with breakfast.
▪ Lost in the Gael
On Monday 20 April the ABC’s very own Dr Gael Jennings was invited on to the ABC2 News Breakfast program to discuss the morning papers with presenters Joe O’Brien and Virginia Trioli. Gael (called me Doctor) Jennings did not bother much with analysing what was in the news. Rather, she chose to editorialise at large about policy – focusing on the tragic explosion on, and subsequent sinking of SIEV 36 and the expulsion of radical priest Peter Kennedy from St Mary’s Catholic Church in Brisbane.
On the asylum seeker issue, Dr Jennings supported the position of the Rudd Labor government and bagged the former Howard Coalition government for its approach to a similar issue some years ago. She also criticised Western Australian Liberal Party premier Colin Barnett.
In a confusing stream-of-consciousness moment, Jennings referred to “this time last time” and alleged: “This was what really got the Howard government in last time, again really”. Well not so “really”, in fact. The children overboard controversy was an issue in the 2001 election but not in 2004 – which was John Howard’s last victory. Dr Jennings is employed in ABC documentaries and she is currently working on the asylum seeker issue. She seems to be part of the ABC documentary tradition which is not too troubled by, er, facts.
Then Dr Jennings turned to the Fr Kennedy matter. Here again she got with the intellectual fashions and praised Kennedy and bagged the Catholic archdiocese of Brisbane. Gael Jennings declared that Kennedy “would be excommunicated” from the Catholic Church – despite the fact that she had no evidence to support this particular prophecy. The case put by the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr John Battersby, was not even mentioned on News Breakfast that morning.
Virginia Trioli and Joe O’Brien did query some of Jennings’ comments on the SIEV 36 tragedy. But they were in communion with her, so to speak, on the St Mary’s controversy. It was bit like a conversation, over skim latte, at a fashionable coffee shop in fashionable inner city Brunswick in Melbourne where one leftist guest is somewhat garrulous but everyone basically agrees with everyone else. So you let her/him do a my-conscious-is-nobler-than-yours rave and order another skim latte.
Here’s an idea for the national newspapers segment on ABC News Breakfast. Why not insist that the likes of Gael Jennings actually discuss just what is actually in the papers?
▪ Let’s-Have-The-Last-Say Tactic
On Tuesday 21 April, in the lead-up to the 8 am news segment, Joe O’Brien and Virginia Trioli interviewed Climate Change Minister Penny Wong. Just before the top of the clock, Trioli asked Senator Wong about asylum seekers. The question was outside of the Minister’s area of responsibility and, predictably, she ran the government’s line on the evils of people smuggling.
You would have thought that News Breakfast viewers were capable of making up their own minds about the appropriateness of Wong’s response. But no. The presenters saw the need to editorialise about the Minister’s comment. Trioli proclaimed that Wong had “merely ducked” her question. Then O’Brien supported his co-presenter, declaring that Wong had “definitely batted away” the issue. Thanks for telling us. By the way, Senator Wong had no right-of-reply to the O’Brien/Trioli on-air editorials.
▪ The-Interviewer-As-Interviewee
Sometimes, listening to ABC Radio National Breakfast, you get the impression that presenter Fran Kelly should have a go at interviewing herself. This might stop her from lacing her questions with suggested responses. Fran Kelly invariably has trouble when interviewing politicians and others who do not agree with her on such matters as Iraq, national security, David Hicks, asylum seekers, climate change, gay rights, reconciliation and so on. She is more interested in telling listeners what she believes rather than finding out what her guests believe. And she has developed the tactic of stating her opinion followed by a question on a slightly different topic in order to ensure that she has the last word. Ms Kelly used this tactic again this morning when interviewing Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey.
So it was on Monday 20 April when Fran Kelly interviewed Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull on asylum seekers. Kelly interrupted a Turnbull claim that the increase in asylum seeker activity was not principally due to the “push” factor but could be explained by a relaxation in border security in Australia following the election of the Rudd Government in 2007. Let’s go to the transcript:
Malcolm Turnbull: ….Iraq in many respects, in fact in almost every respect, is a much more peaceful place, relative to what it was four or five years ago.
Fran Kelly: [interrupting] I don’t think the same could be said for Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. And if you’re going to quote the IOM you should also acknowledge the UNHCR says there are more people on the move right now because of push factors. But just before going down that debate, we should stick with what we need to do here in this country and I want to ask you directly about the cover-up claims in a moment, but just finishing on temporary protection visas….[Emphasis added. By the way, the IOM is the International Organisation for Migration].
You get the drift. First Kelly interrupted Turnbull’s response. Then she stated what the Opposition leader “should” say. Then she declared that the interview “should stick to what we need to do” in Australia. Later on Kelly suggested that the Liberal Party, which left office in late 2007, was somehow responsible for the increase in asylum seekers in mid 2009. And then she editorialised that it did not matter as to how the fire started on the SIEV 36. And then she asked Turnbull a leading question – proposing that the Opposition should wait for the official version of what caused the fire on SIEV 36 before leaping ahead with its own conclusion. And then she declared:
I suppose what I’m saying is, it is valid for them [i.e. the Rudd Government] to say “we’re waiting for the police”.
Sure, this was precisely what Fran Kelly was saying, in her barracking way. It’s just that she is employed to ask the questions, not to editorialise or, indeed, barrack.
MICHELLE GRATTAN’S CONFESSION
Fran Kelly is not the only member of the Canberra Parliamentary Press Gallery to state her opinion every day on Radio National. The Age’s very own Michelle Grattan has a daily opinion spot on RN Breakfast where she states her views, which are very familiar to readers of “The Guardian-on-the-Yarra”.
On Tuesday 22 April Ms Grattan made a surprise true confession when interviewed by Deborah Cameron on ABC Radio 702 in Sydney. Grattan told Cameron that “large sections of the media” welcomed Labor’s “changes to detention policy and allied issues”. Ms Grattan went on to criticise the various “sandals and outrages” concerning the treatment of asylum seekers during the time of the Howard Government. However, she did not get around to mentioning that mandatory detention – including for women and children asylum seekers – was introduced by the Keating Labor government. How convenient.
NANCY RECOMMENDS
For those with an ipod or some such, it is worth viewing Leigh Sales’ interview with Joshua Cooper Ramo, the manager director of Kissinger Associates, on Lateline last Friday. In a one-to-one interview with Ms Sales, Mr Ramo managed to get through virtually an entire conversation without specifically mentioning anybody or anything. Only in his final response did he name any name – he briefly referred to Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Colin Powell before rejecting their views. Otherwise it was all mere words and sound. Most impressive was Ramo’s belief that “what we are facing isn’t a financial crisis but an existential crisis”. Okay then. Let’s pour millions of taxpayer dollars into the creation of an Existential Institute. Perhaps it could be headed by Paul Chadwick.
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That’s all until next time.