GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 38

4 DECEMBER 2009

Media Watch Dog, in accordance with contemporary Australian media best practice, will go into the kennels over the forthcoming Festive Season. It is anticipated that MWD will be de-kenneled around Australia Day 2010.

The final issue of MWD in 2009 was intended to disperse what journalists like best – namely, Awards. The taxi industry does not hand out gongs for, say, the “Best Ride, on a Rainy Night, from the Airport to the CBD”. But journalists just love gongs for doing their job. So much so that competition for inclusion in MWD’s awards has been intense – and is continuing. In view of the surge of interest towards the end of the calendar year, it has been decided to delay the awards for 2009 until the beginning of 2010 so as not to prevent any late entrant during the looming Funny Season from having a tilt at a place on the podium – so to speak.

ABC Radio National Breakfast’s Fran Kelly is the only journo to complain about her coverage in MWD this year. Amends will be made – and moves are under way already to see that Ms Kelly and her colleagues are formally rewarded by MWD for their efforts in 2009 when our gongs are announced next January. Or thereabouts. Meanwhile, it’s back to business.

STOP PRESS

The 7.30 Report, with Kerry O’Brien in the presenter’s chair, has not quite worked out what it is. Is it current affairs? – where Kerry O’Brien interviews politicians by asking long questions while dressed in coat and tie. Or is it literary review? – where Kerry O’Brien takes off his tie and directs long questions at authors, actors and so on. Or is it comedy? – as occurs each Thursday evening where comedians John Clarke and Bryan Dawe bag Labor and Coalition alike, but always from a leftist perspective.

Last night’s sketch – the final segment for the year – enacted what Kerry O’Brien described as “the behind-the-scenes look at this week’s Liberal Party meltdown”. The sketch concluded with a Tony Abbott figure (played by Clarke) declaring:

Can I just point out that I have got explosives strapped to myself. And if I don’t like the way this discussion’s going, I’m capable of taking this whole bloody studio out.

The sketch ended with the Tony Abbott’s figure engaging in a suicide/homicide attack which resulted in a large explosion.

Pretty funny, eh? John Clarke is now into murder as comedy. Around the time that the 7.30 Report was going to air, a real suicide/homicide bomber murdered 19 civilians – including three Somali government ministers – during a terrorist attack on a medical graduation ceremony in Mogadishu.

Murder may be suitable material for comedy at the ABC Studio in Sydney’s Ultimo. But terrorism is not a suitable topic for humour in Somali.

NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK

▪ Laura’s Labor Sauce

Nancy is aware, from personal interaction, that most journalists vote Labor or Green. So she is always fixated on the advice which members of the Fourth Estate see fit to give to the Liberal Party – especially when the Liberals change their leadership.

Such an opportunity occurred this week when, in a surprise move, Tony Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Party – and Opposition – leader. Nancy was most impressed with the page one report by Laura Tingle, the Australian Financial Review’s political editor, on the morning after the afternoon before’s leadership vote. Wrote Ms Tingle:

The momentous Liberal ballot has demonstrated the power of conviction politics over consensus. The party room gave itself a choice between the two conviction leadership options, unpersuaded [sic] that Joe Hockey was a viable unity candidate. The only trouble is that in choosing Tony Abbott it has backed a conviction position that is not the conviction of the electorate, and it has not even backed that position with any conviction: Abbott won by just one vote, with one informal vote cast and one presumed Turnbull supporter absent for health reasons.

Veteran pollster Rod Cameron says simply of Tony Abbott that he is “unelectable”. “This is a description I reserve for a very small group of politicians,” he adds.

Well, does he really? The former Labor pollster Rod Cameron was once an admirer of one-time Labor leader Mark Latham (who now writes a column for the AFR). Mr Cameron certainly did not regard Mr Latham as “unelectable”. Unfortunately for the ALP, the electorate did. Hence Labor’s dreadful drubbing in the 2004 election.

By the way, the AFR neglected to point out that Rod Cameron – Ms Tingle’s expert on Mr Abbott’s electability – was a one-time Labor pollster.

▪ Mark Scott Channels The Profits

It’s just over a month since, in his R.N Smith Memorial Lecture, ABC managing director Mark Scott mocked News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch for his view that newspaper owners should charge the likes of Google for the material which it lifts from the printed page and places on-line. Mr Scott dismissed the idea that those “who have never in their lives paid for news online” will respond to Mr Murdoch’s “demands and start paying”. The ABC managing director dismissed the view that people will pay for online content “as a classic play of old empire, of empire in decline”. By the way, this is the same Mark Scott who, in late 2008, praised Mr Murdoch as the person most likely to save newspapers. See Issue 32.

MWD was delighted to read an AFP report, published in yesterday’s Canberra Times, which was titled “Google agrees to let publishers limit free reports”. Here it is:

Google, under fire from Rupert Murdoch, and some other newspaper owners, says it will let publishers set a limit on the number of articles people can read for free through its search engine. The Google announcement came yesterday as the News Corporation chairman, who had threatened to block the internet giant from indexing his newspapers, and other United States media heavyweights gathered to discuss journalism in the internet age.

Which suggests that Mark Scott’s analysis of the classic plays of old empire is old hat.

GUARDIAN-ON-THE-YARRA EXTENDS UNWELCOME MAT

The Age excelled itself in its coverage of the Liberal leadership change. The Guardian-on-the-Yarra cannot find even one weekly conservative columnist. However, it runs former Liberal Party deputy leader Peter Costello each fortnight and last Wednesday published a piece by former Tony Abbott adviser Terry Barnes. Well done, don’t you think?

Costello and Barnes aside, last Wednesday The Age was quite unwelcoming to the new Liberal leader. In recent times The Age seems to have engaged leftist academic Dr Paul Strangio as a regular commentator on Liberal Party affairs. On Wednesday The Age ran Dr Strangio on Page 4 giving advice to the Liberals. MWD was much impressed by the learned doctor’s assessment that “Abbott’s leadership will need emotional intelligence – a quality in short supply in the Liberal Party in recent times”. As distinct, it seems, from the Monash University Politics Department where, according to Marxist analysis, Dr Strangio is a wage slave.

There is a left-of-centre sameness about The Age’s politics writers. The likes of Michelle Grattan and Tony Wright and Katherine Murphy and Shaun Carney and Peter Martin and Tim Colebatch write similar analysis most days of the week.

On Wednesday The Age topped up this analysis with an editorial opposing Mr Abbott. Highlights included The Age editor’s assessment that the Liberal Party “could yet split” and his assertion that “the Opposition is giving Prime Minister Kevin Rudd the trigger for a double-dissolution election at a time of his choosing”. Interesting then that, despite The Age’s assessment, Mr Rudd has declined the opportunity to have a double dissolution election on an emissions trading scheme in early 2010. Perhaps the Prime Minister does not read Age editorials.

Precisely 100 per cent of letters published in The Age on the Liberal leadership bagged Tony Abbott – along with 15 out of 16 readers’ comments in the “And Another Thing” section. Even “The Hard Question” in the Melbourne Life section was predictably predictable. The Age asked one reader: “Do you think that Tony Abbott is the man to unite the Liberal Party?” Tim, of Elsternwick said “No”. Gosh. No one else was asked, apparently. So that’s 100 per cent of Age readers responding to the negative to its “Hard Question”. Hard luck for Abbott.

After a while MWD switched off from coverage of the Liberal Party to follow its favourite – and, apparently, The Age’s highest paid – columnist, Catherine Deveny. Wednesday’s Guardian-on-the-Yarra highlighted The Thought of Ms Deveny on Page 2 and again on Page 7. The real thing was published on Page 28. Catherine Deveny devoted an entire column to bemoaning the size of – wait for it – prams.

This was a week that saw the Opposition leadership change, Kevin Rudd discussing climate change at the CHOGM with Commonwealth leaders, Barack Obama announcing US military plans for Afghanistan, news that Iran is constructing more nuclear reactors and more besides. Meanwhile the Guardian-on-the-Yarra’s highest paid columnist was banging on about “monster prams” and the “pretension”, “smugness” and “delusion” which is involved when baby carriages become fashion statements. How about that? By the way, Ms Deveny also got around in her column to mentioning vaginas. As she does. How about that?

TONY JONES TRUNKS BARNABY JOYCE

The evidence indicates that Tony Jones is making a late run for MWD’s most perceptive set of questions in a calendar year directed to National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce. Here we go – with Senator Joyce’s answers deleted. The transcript is taken from last Wednesday’s Lateline program.

Tony Jones:….You certainly seem to have acquired Tony Abbott’s trust and admiration. What’s this story about you waking him up very late at night in a hotel when he was scantily clad?

Tony Jones: He was wearing trunks then, was he?

Tony Jones: Is it at all strange to be led by a man who’s so comfortable to be seen widely wearing very few clothes at all?

Tony Jones: Sort of a partially clothed Renaissance man?

Tony Jones: All joking aside, let’s get back to today’s politics….

Yeah. Good idea.

SYCOPHANTIC SPOON AWARD

MWD did not get an invitation to the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture which was delivered by leftist expatriate John Pilger at the Sydney Opera House on 5 November. Pity really. Because all City of Sydney ratepayers are conscripted to finance this particular gong. Yet another case of taxation without representation, it seems.

In any event, MWD had to watch Mr Pilger’s City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture – along with the previous evening’s Sydney Peace Prize Award ceremony & Gala Dinner – on the Sky News APAC Channel (Channel 648). Sky News is part owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited. In his Peace Prize Lecture, Pilger re-stated his decades old thesis that Australia is afflicted by a “great silence” and dominated by “an invisible government of propaganda”. [If it’s invisible, how does Comrade Pilger see this? Ed]. Pilger also condemned “murdochacy”. How strange, then, that Pilger’s speeches were covered in full on the Sky News Channel.

Pilger’s speech was a regurgitation of his old material. It lacked freshness and could have been delivered any time over the past two decades. However, MWD found that the (ratepayer funded) flattery was fresh.

At the Sydney Peace Prize Lecture, Sydney Peace Foundation director Stuart Rees referred to a “wonderful” clip from a Pilger documentary. Professor Rees also referred to Pilger’s “amazing record”. In moving a vote of thanks, City of Sydney Councillor Marcelle Huff bagged Kevin Rudd but referred to John Pilger’s “unflinching honesty”. The previous evening, at the Gala Dinner, Mary Kostakidis offered a “salute” to the leftist journalist. Not long after, Lord Mayor Clover Moore also saluted Pilger and praised him as a honourable journalist who is committed “to reflect our world to us as it is”. [What’s she on about? – Ed].

All of this fawning brought to you per courtesy of Rupert Murdoch and Sky News.

A USEFUL SUGGESTION

MWD always wants to be helpful on such matters – especially where taxpayer dollars are involved. Since the Sydney Peace Prize is funded by the taxpayer subsidised University of Sydney and the ratepayer financed City of Sydney, MWD would like to make some really useful suggestions for the 2010 award – consistent with the tradition that only leftists or left of centre types win the Sydney Peace gong each year. Here are half a dozen (modest) proposals:

▪ President Ahmadinejad of Iran.

▪ North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il

▪ Hasan Nasrullah c/- Hezbollah

▪ Fidel Castro

▪ Raul Castro

▪ Any other Castro who is a continuing communist.

Until next year.