GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 710

6 December 2024

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  • LINTON BESSER’S APPARENT SILENCE ON THE CRITIQUE OF HIS JOURNALISM BY MILTON COCKBURN

And so it came to pass that Paul Barry stepped down as ABC TV Media Watch presenter on Monday 2 December. As Media Watch Dog readers are well aware, there is neither viewpoint diversity nor debate on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s media show.  For over a decade, Barry has delivered sermons from his secular pulpit.  In the United States, however, Howard Kurtz presents the MediaBuzz program on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News each week. Unlike Barry, Kurtz does not constantly sermonise. Moreover, he allows for different and contesting viewpoints to be heard.

Since its inception in 1989, the ABC’s Media Watch has had a succession of left-of-centre or “progressive” presenters – as befits a Conservative Free Zone.  Namely: Stuart Littlemore (1989-1997); Richard Ackland (1998-1999); Paul Barry (2000); David Marr (2002-2004); the late Liz Jackson (2005); Monica Attard (2006-2007); Jonathan Holmes (2008-2013) and Paul Barry (2013-2024).

Linton Besser, who takes over Media Watch in 2025, will not change this.  Comrade Besser is one of the ABC’s left-of-centre family.

As MWD pointed out in the previous issue, Besser went along with the Trump antagonist position adopted by his comrades in the lead-up to the 5 November US presidential election.  Boring – but true.

On 21 November, your man Besser put out a pretentious statement in which he declared that he would attempt to do something about what he said was contemporary mistrust of the media. He also claimed that Media Watch is “Australia’s best guardrail against bad behaviour of the press”.  Really.

Milton Cockburn, a former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald,  recently wrote The Assassination of Neville Wran (Connor Court, 2024).  In the 3 December 2024 issue of Quadrant Online, he documents the difficult task he had in getting his book carried in Independent bookshops or reported by such mainstream media as the ABC and Nine’s newspapers The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. However, the book had been covered in The Australian  and The Australian Financial Review. It was reviewed by Gerard Henderson in The Sydney Institute Review (November 2024) – see here.

The “cancelling” of Cockburn’s book seems to relate to the fact that he refutes, with evidence, the allegation that former NSW Labor premier Neville Wran was corrupt.  And, in the process, he criticises some prominent Australian journalists who ran the Wran-is-corrupt line with respect to the former premier or his ministry.  Including the Sydney Morning Herald’s Kate McClymont and – wait for it – the ABC’s Linton Besser.

In Chapter 10 of The Assassination of Neville Wran, Cockburn critiques the book He Who Must Be Obeid (Vintage Books, 2014) written by Kate McClymont and Linton Besser.  Cockburn documents that allegations by the co-authors against several members of Wran’s ministry – namely, Eric Bedford and Paul Landa – cannot be proven.  Both men were dead when He Who Must Be Obeid was published. Cockburn refers to the anonymous political smearing engaged in by the authors and their acceptance of fanciful evidence.

Towards the end of his Quadrant Online article, Milton Cockburn refers to “very prominent journalists whose reporting on Wran [and the Wran government] is shown in the book to be lazy, unprofessional and, in some cases, fictitious”.   Cockburn adds: “Interestingly not one of those whose journalism has been criticised has responded; all seem to have made an individual decision to keep their heads down and not give the book any oxygen”. Cockburn concluded his piece as follows:

Of course, all are assisted in limiting their embarrassment by the automatic protection mechanism inbuilt in the Australian media. A blanket of silence descends over publications which dare to criticise the work of Australian journalists.

If Linton Besser is to have credibility as the only media critic on the ABC TV’s Media Watch program he should exhibit the intellectual courage to address the criticism of his scholarship with respect to the Wran government in Milton Cockburn’s The Assassination of Neville Wran. Besser’s silence (so far at least) is telling.

  • KIM WILLIAMS CLAIMS HIS CRITICS ARE “DEMONIC”

In his Weekend Australian column on 30 November, Gerard Henderson referred to Kim Williams’ address to The National Press Club on Wednesday 27 November.  The speech was delivered by  Williams in his capacity as ABC chair and turned on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.  Especially the ABC’s request for additional money from the Commonwealth government.

As Media Watch Dog readers will be aware, your man Williams strayed from the topic somewhat when ABC journalist Jane Norman asked him whether the ABC should be going about capturing the kind of audience that the American podcaster Joe Rogan has in the United  States.  Norman stated that Rogan had “three billion listeners”.  A significant exaggeration.  Rogan had over 50 million listeners to his recent interview with Donald J Trump in the lead-up to the US presidential election. But these are very big numbers.

As is well known, Mr Williams initially replied to Norman’s query by stating that he was “not the right person to respond to these questions”.  He added that he was neither a consumer nor an enthusiast about Mr Rogan or his work. However, he could not resist responding – despite his knowledge deficit with respect to Rogan.

When the Williams fanging of Rogan became international news, Rogan responded on X as follows: “LOL WUT”.  That’s all. And Elon Musk commented: “From the head of Australian government-funded media, their Pravda”. An exaggeration to be sure, but an amusing one.

Rather than let the story die, Kim Willams agreed to interviews with Raf Epstein (ABC Radio Melbourne) and Tom Elliott (3AW Radio Melbourne) on Thursday 28 November.  Let’s go to the transcript where Williams chooses to respond to his critics via the ABC Radio Mornings Melbourne program:

Raf Epstein: The world’s richest man has accused the organisation you lead of being Australia’s Pravda. That’s Elon Musk.

Kim Williams: I read that, and I, I thought, why, where is this super sensitivity deriving from? You make a comment in response to a legitimate question from a journalist. You answer it concisely, and give an honest answer in terms of what your own perception of Mr Joe Rogan is. And, suddenly, I get this huge pile-on from people in the most aggressive way. Saying that I have a warped outlook on the world, that I am an, I am an embarrassment to our nation. That I am in some way unhinged, that that I am a supreme example of arrogance and disconnection with Australian society and all manner of things. I have to say to you, Raf, I just don’t get it. I don’t get it.

Raf Epstein: Do you think they’ve got glass jaws?

Kim Williams: I don’t think they’ve got glass jaws. I think they’ve got glass corpus in toto. I mean, their whole body is made of glass. How can people react in such a, such a frankly demonic fashion? I really stand back in disbelief.

What a load of absolute tosh.  Williams threw the first (verbal) punch when he described Rogan as “malevolent”.  Williams did not refer to Musk at all.  Rogan responded with a Laugh Out Loud message. And Musk made an irreverent and somewhat hyperbolic reference to Pravda (which was the Soviet Union’s official newspaper).

Neither Rogan nor Musk specifically criticised Williams. But Williams maintained that his critics have glass jaws – even though they had not criticised him and perhaps not even heard of him until he criticised them. And after, once again, swallowing a copy of Roget’s International Thesaurus.  Hence the reference to “glass corpus in toto”- whatever that might mean.

Moreover, Kim Williams – speaking in his capacity as ABC chair – described his critics as “demonic”. How hyperbolic can an ABC chair get?  And here’s another question?  Can You Bear It?

  • ABC CHAIR DEFENDS (SECRET) REQUEST FOR TAX PAYER FUNDED HANDOUT

In addition to speaking to Raf Epstein on ABC Radio Melbourne – Kim Williams found time to talk to Tom Elliott on Melbourne Radio 3AW. Let’s go to the transcript when discussion turned on the ABC’s attempt to get an extra handout from the Commonwealth government – in addition to its current annual $1.1 billion handout:

Tom Elliott: Well, how much do you want? I mean, you must have, you must you must have a figure in your head. Is it twice as much?

Kim Williams: Well, I’m not going to negotiate with government and have a discussion about the requisite investment [sic] in the ABC through your, your good program. I’m not going to do that, and you surely don’t expect me to.

Tom Elliott: Well, I have to ask.

How about that?  ABC journalists are constantly asking governments about their spending priorities.  However, the ABC chair maintains it is inappropriate for a journalist in commercial radio to ask ABC management about its spending wishes with respect to what he calls an “investment”.  Can You Bear It?

  • NINE’S NIKI SAVVA TELLS THE PM & THE RBA GOVERNOR WHAT THEY “SHOULD” DO

Media Watch Dog just loves it when columnists tell politicians and others what they SHOULD do.

On Thursday 5 December, writing in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, Nine columnist Niki Savva told Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that he SHOULD step down.  Here’s how her column – which was headed “PM should step aside even if he wins” – commenced:

If Anthony Albanese wins the next election to govern either in majority or minority, he should, after a decent interval, retire so Labor can regenerate.

Albanese succeeded brilliantly, certainly beyond his wildest imaginings and that of his friends, to become leader then prime minister. He should count his blessings, then gracefully relinquish the job.

This is a benign view. The more drastic, which has been bubbling away inside the wider Labor family, is that he has lost his mojo, his judgment has deserted him and if he can’t summon the discipline to shape up, he should ship out before the election to allow someone else to take on a rampant Peter Dutton.

Now here’s some advice to Comrade Savva from Media Watch Dog.  She SHOULD cease and desist from the usage of such clichés as he/she has lost his/her “mojo”.  But MWD digresses.  The Nine columnist also advised the prime minister that “he should promote Anika Wells into cabinet”.  And she had this advice for Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock:

One other single act can influence next year’s election – a cut in interest rates. Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock should not follow the example of her predecessor and baulk at moving rates either through stubbornness, a misreading of an economy clearly on life support, or fear that acting would be seen as politically driven. Not acting is as much a political act as acting.

So there you have it.  Comrade Savva believes that Mr Albanese should step down as prime minister even if he wins the 2025 election.  And that Ms Wells should be in the cabinet now. And that Ms Bullock should reduce rates now.

Niki Savva also suggested that the Coalition faces problems in its seats of Bradfield in Sydney and Menzies and Deakin in Melbourne.  This is the very same Niki Savva who had to change the proposed title of her book on the 2019 election initially titled “Highway to Hell: The Coup that Destroyed Malcolm Turnbull and Left the Liberals in Ruins” to Plots and Prayers: Malcolm Turnbull’s Demise and Scott Morrison’s Ascension (2019) – since the original proposed book’s title assumed that the Coalition – under Scott Morrison’s leadership – would lose the 2019 election. It didn’t – and the Liberal Party was not left in ruins after the election.

But now Comrade Savva – who claims to be a conservative leftie, or is it a leftie conservative? – is back in the business of advising prime ministers and Reserve Bank governors what they should do and warning the Liberal Party about the possibility of losing seats. Can You Bear It?

  • THE LEFTIST AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE’S COMRADE BENNETT MOCKS RIGHT-WING ALP CONCERNS ABOUT JOBS IN TASMANIA

While on the topic of the 2025 election, wasn’t it great to see the Australia Institute/ABC Entente back in action on ABC TV News Breakfast? The date was 5 December and the occasion was the “Newspapers” segment. None of the conservative/right-of-centre Institutes get a gig analysing the print and online newspapers on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.  But Ebony Bennett, deputy director of The Australia Institute in Canberra, is a regular.

As is well known in the labour movement, the left faction along with the green left has no time for their social democrat (or right-of-centre) colleagues. Given the opportunity to comment on a story in The Australian on 5 December 2024 titled “Adani Moment 2.0: wise elders of ALP warn on trading jobs for Green votes” concerning the alleged threat to the Maugean skate due to pollution from salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour, Comrade Bennett decided to bag former Tasmanian Labor premier Paul Lennon. Mr Lennon was a member of Labor’s right-wing.

Here’s how The Australian’s “exclusive” by Geoff Chambers and Sarah Ison commenced:

Tasmanian Labor elders Paul Lennon and Dick Adams – who famously sided with John Howard in shielding forestry jobs at the 2004 election – have warned ­Anthony Albanese to “act with conviction” and put salmon workers ahead of chasing votes in soft green seats.

Swinging in behind Tasmania’s $1.36bn salmon industry and more than 5100 fisheries workers, Mr Lennon urged the government against repeating the election-losing mistakes of Mark Latham and Bill Shorten who alienated the forestry and mining sectors in 2004 and 2019.

The intervention by the Tasmanian ALP statesmen comes amid rising community fears over two reviews into the endangered Maugean skate, triggered by environmental activists and overseen by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, which threaten salmon fisheries in Macquarie Harbour.

Paul Lennon is one of numerous Tasmanians concerned that any significant reductions in salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour would adversely affect jobs in North West Tasmania. Rather than discuss this issue, the Canberra-based deputy director of the Australia Institute decided to attack both The Australian and Lennon in a condescending manner. Let’s go to the transcript:

Ebony Bennett:  They’ve [The Australian] found the former Premier of Tasmania, Labor premier Paul Lennon to say: “Watch out Labor, if you try and save this endangered species at the expense of jobs, you’ll be in electoral trouble”. The science clearly shows salmon farming poses the largest threat to avoiding the extinction of the Maugean skate. And why they’re [The Australian] going to Paul Lennon for advice when he left parliament and resigned as premier when he had about 17 per cent approval rating as preferred premier, I’m unsure. But the science is clear on this one.

For his part, Ellie’s (male) co-owner is unsure what Mr Lennon’s approval rating when he was premier of Tasmania nearly two decades ago has to do with the salmon industry in contemporary Tasmania.  But Comrade Bennett’s comfortable Canberra view dismissing the concerns of Tasmanian workers was not challenged by ABC TV News Breakfast co-presenter Michael Rowland.  Yet another example of the Australia Institute/inner city ABC Entente in action. Can You Bear It?

  • AMERICAN COMMENTATOR AND TRUMP ANTAGONIST E. J. DIONNE DISMISSES DONALD J. TRUMP AS A “LAME DUCK”. REALLY.

The primary problem with ABC News and current affairs is not just that so many of its journalists/contributors are biased and/or activists – as ABC chair Kim Williams appears to believe. But, rather, that the taxpayer funded public broadcaster lacks viewpoint diversity among both its journalists and contributors.

The Australia Institute’s Ebony Bennett deserves to be seen and heard on the ABC.  But so should some conservatives.  It’s the same with the ABC’s coverage of United States politics.

E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Washington Post columnist, appears regularly on ABC Radio National. No problem here. Your man Dionne is worth listening to. But he is a liberal in the American sense of the term and a Democratic Party supporter – whereas the taxpayer funded public broadcaster needs more conservative voices to present different viewpoints.

This is what Dionne had to say about the US presidential election when interviewed by Patricia Karvelas on RN Breakfast.  The date was 22 November 2024:

E. J. Dionne: I think there’s one significant thing about the Trump presidency that we can’t underrate. Which is that he [Trump] is, as we say, a lame duck. He cannot succeed himself. Our Constitution prohibits someone from being elected president more than twice. And I think at least some Republicans are going to be looking to the future. Not only to the mid-term elections two years from now, which is normal, but also to the fact that Donald Trump will be gone in four years.

And a lot of the politicians in Washington want to be around a lot longer than four years. And I think that while Trump has exercised pretty much an iron control of his party – there’s a lot of fear of what he can do to a politician if he turns on them in the Republican Party. I think some of that will be tempered by the fact that they know he’s gone [in early 2029].

What a load of absolute tosh. Donald J. Trump is no lame duck president.  Indeed, the fact that he is not dependent on winning the next presidential election in 2028 gives him more authority than would otherwise be the case.

In any event, even when E.J. Dionne appeared on RN Breakfast on 22 November, it was evident that Trump was all but the de facto president. How else to explain the visitors to Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida? – which has continued apace since then.

Sure, President-elect Trump will be gone from US politics by 20 January 2029.  But if he remains in good health, Trump will still be an influential figure in US politics – particularly with respect to the Republican Party.

Yet PK (as Karvelas likes to be called) did not challenge Dionne’s assertion that Trump will be a lame duck president when he succeeds President Joe Biden on 20 January 2025 – and no other viewpoint was heard. Can You Bear It?

As avid Media Watch Dog readers are aware, this occasional segment is inspired by the Irish humourist Brian O’Nolan (1911-1966) – nom de plume Flann O’Brien – and, in particular, his critique of the sometimes incoherent American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972). By the way, your man O’Brien also had the good sense not to take seriously Eamon de Valera (1882-1975), the Fianna Fail politician and dreadful bore who was prime minister and later president of Ireland for far too long.

The Flann O’Brien Gong for Literary or Verbal Sludge is devoted to outing bad writing or incomprehensible prose or incoherent oral expression or the use of pretentious words – or a combination of all of the above.

  • PHILIPP BLOM’S STREAM-OF-UNCONSCIOUSNESS ON LATE NIGHT LIVE ABOUT TONY ABBOTT’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE END OF THE EARTH AS HUMANS KNOW IT

Did anyone hear the ABC Radio National Late Night Live segment on 28 November titled “Our never ending desire to subjugate the earth”. David Marr was in the presenter’s chair and his guest was Philipp Blom author of Subjugate the Earth: The Beginning and End of Human Domination of Nature (Polity, 2024).  This is how the Late Night Live [aka Late Night Left] team’s producer Catherine Zengerer described the meaning of the Marr/Blom exchange:

Historian Philipp Blom argues that the human need to dominate and subdue the natural world can trace its origins to ancient Mesopotamia. This was perpetuated through the Judeo-Christian notion that God charged man to be fruitful, fill the earth and subdue it. The Enlightenment age reinforced the notion of human dominance over all creatures. Blom says this idea was relatively harmless until technology developed to the point where we are now destroying the planet. So we now need to urgently change our thinking – or perish.

Believe it or not [I believe it. – MWD Editor], David Marr drew a link between the (likely) End of the World As We Know It with – wait for it – former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott. Let’s go to the transcript as the segment commences:

David Marr: At a forestry industry dinner in Canberra in 2014 Tony Abbott explained why he was stripping World Heritage listing from 74,000 hectares of Tasmanian forest. “You intelligently make the most of the good things”, he said, “the good things that God has given us”. Questioning that deeply held view, Christian in Abbott’s case, that the environment is meant for man and not the other way round, is the purpose of my next guest’s book. Philipp Blom is an historian, a journalist, radio presenter, documentary filmmaker, and his many books cover politics and history and philosophy. His latest has a splendid title, “Subjugate the Earth, the beginning and end of human domination of nature”. It traces the origins of the notion that we humans are the dominant species here to tame nature, and he chants the deep damage that that attitude is inflicting on the planet and on ourselves. Philipp Blom has been on Late Night Live before talking about previous books. He joins us now from Vienna. Philipp, welcome.

Philipp Blom: Hi, David. Nice to be here.

David Marr: Philipp, let’s go back to ancient Mesopotamia and the Uruk vase as you invite us in the book.

And he did.  There followed an all but incomprehensible discussion about a vase from Mesopotamian times and kings and cutting “lots of enemies heads off”, and slaves and the Five Books of Moses and a pre-gender way of talking about humanity and Zzzzzzzz. What’s the point?  But the learned author persisted:

Philipp Blom: And what the Bible does here is it sort of shatters an animist world view. The Bible says, “No, this world has hasn’t got a voice, hasn’t got a presence. There’s nobody there. It’s dead dust, (much like Tony Abbott found) and you can do with it what you want”. And incredibly patriarchal way, because this dead Earth, this passive earth, you can penetrate it, you can fertilise it, you can harvest it. You can rent it out. You can buy it, you can possess it. And here we see the ancient roots of a worldview of domination, of hierarchy and also of patriarchy, which isn’t all that strange to us today.

You don’t say.  It was all a bit hard to follow. But the author seemed to be looking forward to a time where no humans inhabited the Earth – and Tony Abbott’s wish to subjugate the Earth had failed. Or something like that.

Literary  Criticism

By Flann O’Brien

of Ezra Pound

My grasp of what he wrote and meant

Was only five or six %

The rest was only words and sound —

My reference is to Ezra £

Literary Criticism

By Ellie

of Philipp Blom

My grasp of what he said or meant

Was only four or five per cent

All that vase stuff with such aplomb

The reference is to your man Blom.

 

  • HOW COMRADES BRYANT, KARVELAS AND KELLY MISREAD THE UNITED STATES ELECTION ON THE PARTY ROOM PODCAST

Lotsa thanks to the avid Sydney-based Media Watch Dog reader who drew the attention of Ellie’s (male) co-owner to The Party Room podcast which aired on Monday 4 November 2024 – shortly before the United States presidential election.

The Party Room usually involves ABC Radio National’s Patricia (“Everyone calls me PK”) Karvelas talking to ABC Radio National’s Fran (“I’m an activist”) Kelly about international and national politics.  But, on this occasion, the view of another ABC left-of-centre or “progressive” type was considered necessary. Enter Nick Bryant – who will be presenting ABC Radio National’s Saturday Extra program in 2025. And so the ABC as a Conservative Free Zone lives on.

This is how The Party Room podcast of 4 November 2024 was described in the official ABC blurb:

The US election race is still too close to call, but a shock new poll suggests Democrat candidate Kamala Harris will win Iowa – which was previously considered a safe Republican seat [sic]. And as women outpace men in early voting, the Democrats are hoping the voting gender gap could see Kamala Harris get over the line. But will the “bro vote” that Republican candidate Donald Trump has been cultivating come out in force on polling day? Nick Bryant, former US correspondent for the BBC and author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict With Itself joins Fran Kelly and Patricia Karvelas on The Party Room.

Lara Heaton was the producer and Cathy Van Extel the executive producer.

As the blurb indicates, The Party Room team was impressed by the poll which had Vice-President Kamala Harris ahead in Iowa which was not considered to be a battleground state.  If the poll was correct – it was likely that Kamala Harris would prevail over the Republican Party’s Donald J. Trump – because if Iowa went to the Democrats it was likely that the nearby states Wisconsin and Michigan would do likewise. This caused some (unrealistic) excitement among the PK/Kelly/Bryant trio.  In fact, Trump prevailed over Harris in Iowa and the poll was  hopelessly wrong.

Early on, Comrade Karvelas said that perhaps there was a late momentum towards Harris but conceded that the outcome was too close to call.  Comrade Bryant commented that “the late poll suggests” that the Democrats “seem to be getting late breakers”. Then the discussion focused on the Iowa poll. Bryant declared that Ann Selzer – who conducted the Iowa poll –  “is one of the most respected pollsters”.

Bryant declared that he would “much prefer to be on the women’s side of the gender divide [i.e. Harris’ side] of the gender gulf at the moment than the men, because women vote more than men”.   Bryant continued that, on the other hand, “the bros are kind of these guys who just sit on the couch often and kind of, you know, online keyboard warriors that don’t necessarily vote on election day”.  Then there was this:

Fran Kelly: There is one point about Iowa that is worth pointing out that since that that poll that shows her unexpectedly ahead, Kamala Harris unexpectedly ahead. The abortion law came into effect in Iowa at the end of July. So that’s a big change –  if women are going to vote on that, that might have been a motivating moment, yeah, for her vote.

Nick Bryant concurred.  Let’s go to the transcript:

Nick Bryant: Look, I think so much attention in this election has been focused on what happened in Washington on 6 January 2021. And afterwards, I wonder whether we’ll be talking even more about what happened on 24 June 2022. What happened that day? The Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade. That was a galvanising moment for women in America, and it was also a key moment for Kamala Harris. Many people think that’s when she found her voice as vice-president. She hadn’t been a very strong vice-president up until then, she’d been associated with [unlawful] immigration. After Roe, she came to be associated with reproductive rights. She found her voice, and that was a key turning point for her, and it was a key turning point in this election.

Patricia Karvelas: And I found it really fascinating the way she’s dealt with gender in this campaign…. I think she’s run a very slick campaign.

Bryant then compared the Harris campaign in 2024 favourably with Barack Obama’s successful campaign in 2008.  Really.

Then Kelly claimed that Harris seemed “to be doing better with white women…college and non-college educated in these battleground states at the moment”.  She also believed that Harris was doing better with the Latino vote after the insensitive “joke” about Puerto Rico delivered by the comedian at the Republican rally at Madison Square Garden.  This led to the following exchange:

Nick Bryant: J -Lo, helped, you know, with Puerto Ricans.

Patricia Karvelas: But J-Lo standing up, and I thought that was an incredible address by J-Lo, can I say. Looking at that crowd and talking about being a Puerto Rican, that was a powerful intervention by a celebrity that wasn’t wasted, in my view. Because she pointed at them and talked about Trump’s view on Puerto Ricans. Do you think that will be a definitive shift moment in this campaign?

Fran Kelly: The J-Lo moment, or the garbage moment?

Patricia Karvelas: The garbage, and then capitalising it by having people like J-Lo talk about it.

Nick Bryant: There has been a momentum shift in this election. We’ll be talking about the Madison Square Garden rally for years to come. That was a huge error by Trump. It was this triumphalism, he put all his bros on stage who were coming out with this vile, racist, misogynistic, ugly stuff.

And then there was this about former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney who was a Trump antagonist and a Harris supporter:

Patricia Karvelas: Okay, so lots of controversies in the last couple of days of the campaign, as often happens, I think one of the most, well galling in my view, moments was when Donald Trump referred to Liz Cheney – essentially what was that?

Fran Kelly: Called her a war hawk and said he’d like to see her face nine gun barrels, which people have interpreted as a firing squad.

Nick Bryant: I think one of the superpowers of Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney is they bring out the worst of Trump. And I think that Liz Cheney just gets under his skin. And how bizarre is it that we are talking about how a Cheney could actually swing the election for Kamala Harris. And I think Liz Cheney is a really significant figure in this campaign.

What nonsense. Trump never said that Liz Cheney should be put before a firing squad. This was Kelly’s fake news.  And it was delusional for Bryant to say that Ms Cheney “could actually swing the election for Kamala Harris”.  She had no impact on the campaign.

The Party Room concluded with Kelly, Karvelas and Bryant conceding that the state of the US economy favoured Trump.  However, most of the discussion focused on the strong possibility of a Harris victory.  In fact, the Vice-President ran an awful campaign.  Declining to do media conferences and doing few interviews.  Also, Harris had no coherent message as to why she should be elected President.

So there you have it.  Three of the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s best-and-brightest were influenced by what they should have known was likely to be a flawed opinion poll about voting intentions in Iowa.   It was widely known that Harris’ polling was behind that of Hillary Clinton in 2016 (who narrowly lost) and Joe Biden in 2020 (who narrowly won). The implication was clear – Harris was unlikely to win and a victory for the Republican Party was not only likely but could be substantial.

Clearly, the Bryant/Karvelas/Kelly trio  were influenced by the fact that they wanted Harris to win and, more importantly, wanted Trump to be defeated.  What was missing from the panel was a conservative who understood that Trump had a chance of winning and who was untroubled by this.

No one on The Party Room podcast anticipated even the possibility that Trump would have a comfortable victory in the Electoral College or that he would not only prevail in the popular vote but also win seats in the US Senate.

The Bryant/Karvelas/Kelly Trio overlooked the fact that cost of living and border security were the key issues in the 2024 election campaign – not women’s rights or the fact that a comedian at a Republican rally told a tasteless joke about Latinos in general and Puerto Ricans in particular.  As for Liz Cheney, Nick Bryant’s claim that Liz Cheney would be a really significant figure in the 2024 campaign was mere wish fulfilment.

  • SO, IT’S FAREWELL TO PAUL BARRY’S MEDIA BITES AND HIS PUPPETS

With Paul Barry’s departure from Media Watch, it is farewell to Media Bites – the shorter, online only addition to Media Watch, intended to appeal to younger audiences. Were younger audiences crying out for the 72-year-old Barry to overact and put on silly costumes? Who knows. In the final episode of Media Watch this week, Barry announced that Media Bites would not be returning next year under new host Linton Besser. Perhaps your man Besser is not as interested in playing dress-up for the camera as Barry was.

To commemorate its final episode, Media Bites put out a highlight of the “best of” online. Attached is a warning that it is rated MA 15+, a wise idea, as the juvenile style suggests it is intended for much younger audiences. It includes highlights of some of the costumes Paul has donned since Media Bites beginnings in 2017 – including Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and a guy with a metal bowl on his head.

Barry wears many hats

In another highlight, Barry reads a story about the Herald Sun to some puppets:

Paul Barry: What do you think will happen next? Will the bad Herald Sun be punished? Sadly not.

To end Barry’s final episode, he was joined by the large Media Watch team. As MWD has pointed out previously, Media Watch has a total staff of around ten for a 15-minute weekly program. It is not clear whether the cast includes a comedy writer for Comrade Barry’s dress-up as Messrs Johnson, Trump and the like – or a polisher for Barry’s metal headwear.

DOCUMENTATION

  • ANOTHER LOOK AT HOW THE ABC’s US ELECTION “EXPERTS” ARE DOING POST-ELECTION – STARRING RORY STEWART, ANN SELZER & ALLAN LICHTMAN

In recent weeks MWD has reviewed the ABC’s coverage of the US election and, in particular, the array of alleged experts brought onto the public broadcaster prior to the election. Invariably these pundits and pollsters were Trump antagonists who confidently predicted a Kamala Harris victory.

In a previous issue, MWD reviewed the election night excuses offered up by one of these experts, British MP turned podcaster Rory Stewart, whose prediction of a Harris win was played on the 27 October edition of Insiders. For any who don’t recall your man Rory’s explanation of his wrong call, he claimed that he was only wrong because he is “an optimist” and making “a bet on the American people”. He also made sure to assure his audience that he is not patronising. What a relief.

So how have some of the other experts marshalled by the ABC prior to the election grappled with their wayward predictions?

Ann Selzer is a well-known American pollster, who runs polls of the state of Iowa for the newspaper The Des Moines Register. In the days before the 2024 election, she released a poll showing Kamala Harris winning a narrow victory in the state. This would have been a shocking result given Trump’s comfortable wins in Iowa in 2016 and 2020. In fact, Trump not only won the state but recorded the largest of his three victories there.

Selzer’s poll received widespread coverage on the ABC prior to the election, including an interview with Selzer herself on RN Breakfast, and analysis based on the poll on 7.30, The Party Room podcast and the ABC News website.

Since the election Selzer has announced that she will be stepping back from political polling, a decision she insists is unrelated to the failure of her final poll. She has acknowledged that the poll was a “spectacular miss” and has written that “polling is a science of estimation, and science has a way of periodically humbling the scientist”.

For his part, on November 17 Donald Trump referred to the poll as “A totally Fake poll”, said that Selzer “knew exactly what she was doing”, accused her of “possible ELECTION FRAUD” and said that “An investigation is fully called for!”. In typical Trump fashion he did not offer any more details, and it is not clear if the president-elect was calling for some kind of criminal investigation.

In future US elections, the ABC would better serve its audience by discussing polls by a wider range of pollsters, not just those showing the Democrat Party winning.

Then there is the case of Allan Lichtman, a political scientist from American University in Washington DC who became a political pundit based on his “The Keys to the White House” model for predicting presidential elections. Lichtman was featured on the 10 October edition of 7.30 where he was introduced as having a “near perfect” record predicting presidential elections. Unsurprisingly he predicted a Kamala Harris victory (just as he had predicted Joe Biden was on track to win prior to his exit from the campaign).

In previous editions MWD has discussed how Professor Lichtman’s “model” amounts to little more than an educated guess based on Lichtman’s own subjective assessments of questions – such as whether each candidate is charismatic. By the way, former TV star Donald Trump is rated by Lichtman as uncharismatic. MWD has also covered Lichtman’s attempts to somewhat inflate his reputation for accuracy. None of these questions about Lichtman’s methodology were mentioned during his 7.30 appearance, nor in a related article that appeared on the ABC News website.

Lichtman has not taken his failed prediction well. He has claimed that his model assumes a “rational, pragmatic electorate” – translation: the American public has gotten too stupid for the enlightened professor to predict.

He also blames the spread of misinformation – or maybe disinformation, Lichtman uses the terms interchangeably – telling The Guardian that: “Many people are living in an alternative universe”. A little rich coming from a man who spent the last year assuring Democrats that first Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris, were destined to win.

Lichtman also made a memorable 20 November appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, where he got into a shouting match with fellow left-wing panellist Cenk Uygur. Let’s go to the transcript:

Cenk Uygur: Look, I debated Professor Lichtman before. I told him his theories about the keys were absurd. I was right, he was wrong. I’d said he’d lose his keys. Couldn’t find them before the election.

Allan Lichtman: No, you were not right, and I was not wrong. And that’s a cheap shot and I won’t stand for it.

Cenk Uygur: Well, who won, brother?

Allan Lichtman: You should not be taking cheap shots at me. If you want to make your point, make your point but don’t make it personal.

Cenk Uygur: Who won? You live in a total world of denial. [Uygur makes a “crazy” motion with his finger and whistles]

…

Allan Lichtman: Make whatever point you want, don’t make it personal.

Cenk Uygur: You don’t know anything. You don’t know anything.

Allan Lichtman: You attacked me personally.

Cenk Uygur: You are so deluded.

Allan Lichtman: Oh right. I’ve only been a professor for 51 years, published 13 books. How many books have you published? No, because you’re personally attacking me again. Say whatever you want but I’m not going to stand for personal attacks. Say whatever you want.

Cenk Uygur: Brother, you got it wrong. You were preposterously and stupidly wrong.

Allan Lichtman: Don’t call me stupid.

Cenk Uygur: Can I just finish a god damn thought ever on this show?

Allan Lichtman: No, not if you’re personally, I admitted I was wrong. I don’t need you to call me stupid.

…

Allan Lichtman: I will not sit here and stand for personal attacks, for blasphemy against me. You don’t need to do that.

Cenk Uygur: Blasphemy against you? Who the hell are you? Are you Jesus Christ, you loser?

Professor Lichtman certainly makes for an interesting guest on a fiery political panel show. But perhaps it’s best if he does not make any more appearances on 7.30, which styles itself as Australia’s leading current affairs program.

Cenk Uygur & Allan Lichtman

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Until Next Time.

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