It was the week we saw a new ABC policy to call out the social media abuse of its journalists in action. The public broadcaster’s news director, Justin Stevens, took the big stick to news.com.au and the Daily Mail over their coverage of misogynist online abuse of News Breakfast host Lisa Millar but the popular websites did not resile, not in public anyway.
The editor-in-chief of news.com.au, Lisa Muxworthy, publicly defended the coverage, claiming the high ground. “News.com.au has a long and strident history of exposing abuse against women such as the Let Her Speak campaign championing Grace Tame and other victims of crime and, more recently, our Justice Shouldn’t Hurt editorial series which led to legislative change for children involved in sexual abuse matters,” she said in her own publication.
“We believe a clear public interest exists in reporting on the issue of vile social media trolls and the damage they cause. Choosing to not report on this issue or to ignore it would set a poor precedent that could help ensure appropriate action to address these actions fails to occur.”
However, Andrew Bolt and the Australian’s media writer, Sophie Elsworth, were critical of the decision to publish the stories. In a media segment on Sky News, Bolt said: “I probably wouldn’t have run that story” because we shouldn’t allow trolls to set the news agenda. Elsworth agreed: “I don’t think the editors should have run this story”. Bolt also inadvertently blamed “Guardian Australia” for publishing the story – instead of the Daily Mail – but we will forgive him for this slip of the tongue. He also referred to news.com.au as “the leftwing clickbait arm of the Murdoch newspapers”.
Behind the scenes, news.com.au was not so brazen about defending the story. After a strong ABC rebuke, editors quietly took out the highly offensive tweets about Millar’s skirt and removed a screenshot. The story, headlined “‘Just plain gutless’: Aussie Twitter users slam online trolls for sickening Lisa Millar comments”, disappeared from the homepage and was not posted on news.com.au’s social media accounts. But News Corp stopped short of admitting it was wrong or taking the story down, telling Stevens the story was in the public interest.
The Daily Mail used the angry response from Millar on ABC News Breakfast on Wednesday as an opening to do another story, while neatly sidestepping its own role in the amplification of misogynist online abuse.
Co-host Michael Rowland’s contribution was not reported by either website. Rowland said his co-host was “too nice” to name news.com.au or the Daily Mail but “the editors of both websites should hang their heads in shame”.
The editors of the publications did not respond to a request for comment.
Short shrift
The Daily Mail proved once again that no tweet is too inconsequential to prompt a news story.
The New South Wales Labor leader, Chris Minns, poked fun at the premier, Dominic Perrottet, for “height inflation” in an appearance on KissFM’s Kyle and Jackie O radio show.
“If he’s claiming six foot four then I’m calling him a liar.” Minns joked in a discussion about the two keen joggers racing against each other.
Liberal backroom operative John Macgowan picked up on the theme, musing on Twitter that Minns was not as tall as he claimed to be, and posting several examples of the would-be premier allegedly boosting his height in photos.
As you can clearly see from this image, he’s using forced perspective to appear as tall as Steve Kamper, a noted Hellenic titan who is at least 6”2. pic.twitter.com/JsYm7qLF5X
— John Macgowan (@john_macgowan) March 7, 2023
Cue the Daily Mail:
“A politician widely touted to be New South Wales’ next premier has been accused of intentionally making himself look taller in photos as the election heats up,” the Mail reported.
Interviewed by the Daily Mail, Macgowan said: “Chris Minns took a swipe at Dom Perrottet’s height so I thought it was worth taking a closer look at his, and it turns out there’s a lot of discrepancies in his official photos that appear to make him taller than he may really be.”
The Labor campaign eventually responded to this nonsense: “It’s true,” a spokesperson said. “This is obviously a huge setback for our campaign. It was a secret we’d hope would last until election day. We have 17 days to bring it back.”
But the Daily Telegraph front page on Friday made the Daily Mail’s “height anxiety” story look almost like decent journalism.
“Chris Who?” screamed the front page of the Tele. “Would-be premier an unknown quantity”. The report said a “staggering” 60% of voters in Minns’ electorate of Kogarah did not know who he was when shown a photo. “Meanwhile, Dom Perrottet was recognised by 80 per cent of people surveyed in his Epping electorate.”
So how many people were polled for this “exclusive” story? “The Telegraph quizzed 30 locals in each electorate,” the paper said.
OK zoomer
The Australian’s media writer, Sophie Elsworth, is a prodigious observer of the ABC, sharing her thoughts with Chris Kenny and Andrew Bolt regularly on Sky After Dark. But she may have overreached this week when it appears she tried to listen in to a union meeting at the public broadcaster. ABC staff were poised to strike when their managing director put an improved offer on the table on Monday. The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance called a union meeting to discuss the terms but as officials approved each staffer queued up to join the Zoom call, the name “Sophie Elsworth” popped up on the screen. The union has confirmed to Weekly Beast that entry was denied because the meeting was only open to ABC staffers. The incident reminded us of the Australian Financial Review reporter Mark di Stefano who resigned from the Financial Times in the UK in 2020 after he was accused by the Independent of listening in on sensitive Zoom meetings.
Hi, letting everyone know today was my last day at the FT. This afternoon I offered my resignation. Thank you everyone who has given support. I’m now going to take some time away and log off x
— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) May 1, 2020
When di Stefano resigned, the Australian’s associate editor Chris Kenny thundered that what he did “amounted to hacking”, breached the journalism code and “any normal sense of appropriate, fair and honest behaviour”. We asked Elsworth and her editor, Michelle Gunn, what they thought of the incident but we didn’t hear back.
Back in black
When ABC election analyst Antony Green had a “very minor knock on an eyebrow” he ended up with a “rather dramatic looking black eye”, which he said on Twitter would pose a challenge for make up artists trying to make him presentable for ABC News.
A huge credit to the make-up artist. She previously worked on Mad Max where she was usually applying black eyes rather than hiding them. pic.twitter.com/ky0wjkZ1Du
— Antony Green - elections (@AntonyGreenElec) March 6, 2023
After receiving thousands of responses to his black eye posts Green decided to use the interest to increase traffic to his blog post about the New South Wales election. “Knowing how social media works, I thought I’d publish an update on my black eye in an attempt to draw attention to something more important, my blog post on the political impact of optional preferential voting on NSW elections,” he said.
Did a chatbot write this?
News boss Michael Miller has encouraged journalists to try ChatGPT despite the “trepidation around new technology”, calling artificial intelligence (AI) one of “the more significant and transformative technologies that is (and will) change our industry”.
At a town hall meeting on Wednesday the executive leading News Corp’s AI working group, Jules Delany, told staff about the AI applications being worked on across editorial as well as finance and customer departments.
News is not alone in this exploration of new technologies. The UK’s Daily Mirror publisher Reach has revealed it has already published articles written by a chatbot.
During Reach’s 2022 earnings call, executives said there were three AI-written articles about Newport for local paper In Your Area. One of them was “Seven Things to do in Newport”.
