With Rupert Murdoch scheduled to visit next month to celebrate The Australian’s 60th birthday, you can understand the masthead’s wish to flatter the 93-year-old newlywed. But the daily coverage of the triumph of publishing reached incredible heights with claims of the young Rupert’s “magic” and his ability to pull off “miracles”.
“‘We thought he was magic’: Birth of a paper like no other”, was the headline on a piece about Murdoch setting up the national broadsheet in 1964.
The former News Corp executive Tony Prowse came up with the line: “There was a sense of the incredible. We were going to build a paper in Canberra and fly metal plates [of the pages] to Melbourne and Sydney and distribute a paper … We thought Rupert Murdoch was magic.”
The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Michelle Gunn, said the masthead was “a testament to Rupert Murdoch’s vision and determination”.
“Publishing the paper was definitely a daily miracle for a while there,” Gunn said.
The company reported it was “honoured to have the support of iconic Australian companies” Qantas, Harvey Norman, Hancock Prospecting, Commonwealth Bank, Ampol and Woodside Energy for the “six decades in six weeks” extravaganza.
If the hope was that Murdoch would acknowledge the praise in person, that seemed less likely on Friday as the Nine papers reported that his visit had been cancelled.
Black day
The radio and TV presenter John Blackman, who was best known as the voice of Hey Hey It’s Saturday, died this week aged 76 and the tributes flowed.
But clearly no one at Channel Seven News knew who the veteran performer was, because the screen referred to a John Blackwood.
Does anyone in TV news check anything at all these days? Words fail me. pic.twitter.com/liGSuYigbC
— Ian Maurice (@ian_maurice) June 5, 2024
Fellow Melbourne radio presenter Neil Mitchell provided some relief to embarrassed Seven executives when he said on X: “Oh dear. I think John would have enjoyed that.”
‘Definitely a commentator’
The News Corp executive chairman, Michael Miller, is not the most confident or inspiring of speakers, but he did his best as journalists bowled up some curly questions after his National Press Club address on Wednesday. Like the one from SBS’s Anna Henderson, who asked him about academic research that “identified what it determined was misinformation about the nature of the referendum that was published by News Corp outlets”.
Henderson: “Andrew Bolt said it would [lead to] an Aboriginal-only [advisory] parliament and Peta Credlin said it was about a treaty and compensation. So, did they get it wrong?”
Miller said Bolt and Credlin are commentators and there was a “difference between news reporting and opinion and commentary”. In Bolt’s case, he was “definitely a commentator” and while his views are part of the News Corp group, they are “not the only” views.
Miller soon had backup from a loyal member of his troops: Rosie Lewis from The Australian, who prefaced her question with: “Just quickly, as someone who reported on the voice for The Australian, I’ll stand by our news reporting, but that’s up to everyone else to be the judge.”
Who are the trusted?
Miller, who is calling for the regulation of big tech companies, presented research that said seven out of 10 social media users “said they or someone they know had first-hand experience of negative issues on social media” and listed all the problems that it had allegedly caused, from youth suicide to cyberbullying and revenge porn.
His claim appeared to be backed up by the latest Roy Morgan research on Australia’s 10 most distrusted brands (March 2024). While Facebook (Meta), X and TikTok were in the top 10, there was a media company in there too, and it was more distrusted than X or TikTok. You guessed it: News Corp came in at No. 5.
ABC’s feral fail
We told you in April about the ABC’s seasoned court reporter and newsreader Jamelle Wells, who was the subject of an investigation by the ABC ombudsman, Fiona Cameron, for her social media activity in relation to the brumbies in Kosciuszko national park.
Wells is opposed to the New South Wales government’s policies on control of feral horses in the park and made her stance well known online, where she criticised media coverage of the issue, including by the ABC, encouraged the public to complain to the ABC and suggested how to lobby to stop the cull.
A complaint from the Invasive Species Council that Wells read a news update on 8 April on the feral horse control program, which the council claims was inaccurate, remains unresolved because Wells has been unavailable to comment.
But a resolution of sorts emerged from Senate estimates last week when the ABC’s editorial director , Gavin Fang, revealed the ombudsman had completed a preliminary investigation and found a breach of the accuracy and the impartiality standard – but the report could not be finalised because Wells is on “personal leave”.
For the ombudsman to complete that investigation, Fang said, “we need to hear from the journalist to be fair”.
On Friday morning the ombudsman released her report, finding the broadcast breached the ABC’s editorial standards for accuracy and impartiality in the feral horses story.
Cameron recommended ABC News issue a correction (which it has) and that it update the board on “measures identified to ensure future adherence to the standards”.
Jack Gough, the advocacy director of the council, said on Friday it was disappointing it had taken two months to resolve the matter, but the council welcomed the “clear and scathing ruling”.
“The ombudsman has unequivocally backed up our detailed complaint to the ABC,” Gough said.
The ABC’s correction read in part: “The stories included claims the number of horses in the park is at or below 3,000 rather than the NPWS [National Parks and Wildlife Service] estimate of between 12,797 and 21,760 and that the horses are being mistreated when shot. The stories were published without seeking comment from the NPWS, and failed to acknowledge evidence previously provided by the NPWS to a parliamentary inquiry attesting to independent assessments validating its estimate and expert assessment that the culling is done humanely.”
ABC News is also investigating “whether or not this was considered to be misconduct” on the part of Wells, the Senate committee heard.
Around the world with Bill
When Bill Shorten appeared on Sky News Agenda this week, he expected to be grilled over evidence of alleged rorting of the NDIS, but he didn’t expect to be taken halfway across the world and back.
As Shorten responded to claims made in Senate estimates that thousands of participants were claiming things that are not consistent with the plan, his backdrop kept changing: from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, to the ocean and to a rocky outcrop.
“This was a technical fault at our end,” Sky’s Laura Jayes said on X. “I feel terrible. I didn’t realise until I was off air. There’s plenty of Ministers who fail to front up when the tough issues arise [but Shorten] isn’t one of them.”
Murder, he showed
The editor of the Daily Telegraph, Ben English, marked his promotion to leading the News Corp national reporting team on top of the Sydney daily and Sunday masthead with the launch this week of DTTV, Daily Telegraph TV.
“Today, a new era begins at The Daily Telegraph,” English said in an email to subscribers.
“For the first time, we are giving you a shopfront for all of our best journalism on video.”
So what video did the Tele choose to showcase in its pitch to subscribers? At the top of the app and embedded in the email from the editor was a continuous loop video of a murder.
“Dramatic footage of Sydney hitman Hamad Assaad being killed has been obtained by The Daily Telegraph, nearly eight years after the man known as ‘The Executioner’ was himself executed. Watch the video on DTTV.”
• This story was amended on 8 June 2024 to remove an incorrect suggestion that an image of the September 11 terrorist attacks was used as a backdrop in a Sky News interview with Bill Shorten.
