Murdoch newspapers gave readers a preview of how they are likely to cover the election, with a series of budget front pages on Wednesday which would make a Liberal party newsletter proud.
The Daily Telegraph depicted the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, as a clown juggling small change and offering a “pitifully small tax cut and deficits as far as the eye can see”. Under the headline “Jim pickings”, the commentator Andrew Bolt declared: “We’re not fools Jim.”
The Herald Sun said “Jim’s coffee shot” was “barely enough to buy a cuppa”, with Bolt’s syndicated line of commentary slightly altered to “Treating us like mugs”, mirroring a photo of Chalmers holding a mug of coffee.
The Australian’s “Cost of saving Albo” headline emphasised that Chalmers’ budget would put the country “back in the red”, with a series of red graphs highlighting debt.
The Advertiser compared the tax cut to a six-nugget McHappy meal and the Courier-Mail kept it simple with “Jim’s $17bn vote grab”.
Budget influencers hit back
Media commentators were left gasping this week at news that not only had the government invited some social media influencers into the sacred space that is the budget lock-up, but that Labor had compensated some of them for their travel to Canberra. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age reported that the move was a campaign strategy to court prominent online voices. Some influencers will even be joining the campaign trail for a single day.
The Rear Window column in the Australian Financial Review dismissed the Instagram and TikTok content creators as “self-obsessed and self-promoting Gen Z and Millennial influencers”.
“Genius, really: they’re far less likely to be the ones to call out Chalmers playing funny with the numbers, and they’ll regurgitate the government’s messages directly into the phone screens of hundreds of thousands of young people,” Rear Window said. “Feel old yet?”
But the columnist got as good as he gave, with The Broke Generation’s Emma Edwards hitting back on Instagram: “Bold of the AFR to call me self obsessed and charge me $64 a month to be able to read the article saying so but OK.” Touché.
The Australian reported that the influencer Hannah Ferguson’s “social media posts skew against the Coalition”.
“Some experts have raised concerns about an expanded role of partisan influencers in the media landscape, saying it could undermine faith in institutions,” the Oz said, sans irony. The report did not quote or name any “experts”.
Mail miffed
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail was miffed that the treasurer did not make time for its reporters when he made his traditional flying visits to the parliamentary press gallery bureaux to discuss the budget.
“By the way … Chalmers couldn’t be bothered dropping by our suite – even though it was directly between the other outlets’ two offices – but, hey, we’ve only got 8.68 million readers – keep living in the past there, Jim,” Peter van Onselen wrote in the Inside Mail column he shares with the media writer Steve Jackson.
Disinformation claim dismissed
Two weeks ago the opposition frontbencher Jane Hume made a splash in the Age and the SMH with the claim that a “fake newspaper” funded by top teal donors was paying to boost positive stories about independents. It’s hardly big news that some newspapers are partisan but Hume was horrified by what she said was a “highly sophisticated domestic disinformation campaign”.
Hume wrote to the Australian Election Commission claiming laws were being breached because a new local newspaper group, Gazette News, was not required to “disclose its funders or how much it was spending on advertising that could sway voters”.
But on Thursday the AEC threw cold water on the claim. “It should also be noted that electoral matter is defined by the Electoral Act to exclude the reporting of news, presenting of current affairs, or any genuine editorial content in news media,” the commission said.
“The AEC has notified both Gazette News and Senator Hume of this decision. We are taking the additional step of communicating about this matter publicly as we note that this outlet has been the subject of commentary in the media, and [the public] is entitled to be updated on our examination of this issue thus far.”
Gazette’s founder, Anna Saulwick, told Weekly Beast: “This was always a nasty, false political stunt, and the AEC’s decision confirms it. Some politicians are willing to try to intimidate independent media into silence, but we won’t be backing down from asking tough questions or serving our local communities.”
Age overreach
The Age dominated the 30th Melbourne Press Club Quill awards, collecting a record 14 awards including the Gold Quill and journalist of the year – so was it really necessary to claim the Guardian Australia reporter Nino Bucci as its own?
Nine’s press release had the Guardian’s courts and justice reporter, who was highly commended in the Grant Hattam Quill for investigative journalism, as an Age reporter.
At least it didn’t try to claim the inequality reporter Stephanie Convery, who won the award for reporting on disability issues.
The Graham Perkin Australian journalist of the year award was presented to the Age investigative reporter Nick McKenzie.
Subscriber stuff-up
Subscribers are highly sought after by media organisations in these lean times so annoying them is not something anyone wants to do.
But 16,000 subscribers to Nine newspapers have had their personal data exposed online in a major cybersecurity breach.
Subscribers to the SMH, the Age and the Fin Review had their names, postal addresses and email addresses exposed online, although payment details and passwords were not affected.
“We have been made aware by a security researcher that certain personal information held by a third party supplier was not protected to the level of Nine’s strict internal data protocols after an unauthorised change,” a Nine spokesperson said.
Divine intervention?
Tess Livingstone, biographer of George Pell, had quite the scoop to promote her new book and she managed to have it published at the top of the front page of the Australian on Friday.
The Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, told her book launch in Parramatta about a US toddler whose miraculous recovery after he stopped breathing for 52 minutes after falling into a swimming pool was being credited to Pell’s intercession.
Livingstone, the author of George Cardinal Pell, Pax Invictis, raised the possibility of Pell’s canonisation if the boy’s recovery were cited in future “as one of the two miracles necessary for canonisation in the Catholic Church”.
“He’s 18 months old and fell into a swimming pool,” Fisher reportedly said. “He stopped breathing for 52 minutes. His parents prayed for the intercession of Cardinal Pell.
“The boy survived and came off life support free of any damage to brain or lungs or heart. He’s fine now and his doctors are calling it a miracle.”
