“It’s 16 days to save the country from the mad left,” was the war cry from Paul Murray leading in to his cosy pre-recorded chat with the prime minister on Sky News on Thursday night.
As Scott Morrison enjoyed free rein to make his points, unhindered by interruptions or curly questions, Anthony Albanese was facing the heat from the audience at the ABC’s Q+A.
Murray’s opening statement when he sat down with Morrison at Kirribilli House was: “Labor is going with an overtly small target where they have a fistful of policies, yet today Albo couldn’t remember one of them.”
The second question: “It’s like their whole strategy was to come up with half of a Band-Aid so that they could say they had a solution, right?”
It’s not hard to understand why Morrison declined to appear on Q+A – or to take part in an ABC-hosted election debate – when he can sail through the election by hand-picking partisan outlets such as Sky News and avoiding ABC hosts Leigh Sales and Patricia Karvelas.
#BREAKING: The Opposition Leader has made another serious gaffe, unable to remember key details around one of his party's key pre-election policies. @jekearsley #AusVotes #9News pic.twitter.com/2VvyUerCIM
— 9News Australia (@9NewsAUS) May 5, 2022
On Friday the Daily Telegraph front page labelled Albanese’s failure to list the six points of his National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) proposal “another monumental blunder from the man who wants to be the nation’s next prime minister”. The headline was a play on NDIS: Not a Damn Idea, Sorry.
Albanese was questioned by the Nine News reporter Jonathan Kearsley, described by Karvelas as “shouty”, in what she called a daily “competition to test the Opposition leader’s command over the details”.
Karvelas: “Should leaders have an encyclopedic memory of every policy? Is it acceptable for leaders to refer to … notes?”
Murray’s guest, the Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger, thought it was essential, labelling Albanese’s failure to list the six points earlier in the day a “disgrace”, and saying Labor would be better off with Bill Shorten as leader. Murray agreed, adding: “Albo is the face of the mad left; he is the lipstick on the pig and the lipstick is thinning by the day.”
"Albo unable to remember six point plan," says journo reading from a teleprompter
— The Shovel (@TheShovel) May 5, 2022
The treatment of Albanese by Nine and News Corp is in sharp contrast to the puff pieces in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday for the Liberal candidate in Warringah, Katherine Deves, and in the Sunday Herald Sun for Josh Frydenberg.
#QandA hopes we can offer you the opportunity to put your questions to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and has extended a standing invitation to the Prime Minister for a one-on-one special at any time during the campaign. pic.twitter.com/75j2hjwNL8
— QandA (@QandA) May 5, 2022
Not everyone agrees on which outlets are biased in which direction, of course. Sky’s Andrew Bolt told his audience Morrison was under attack from the national broadcaster. “Anyone with ears and eyes can see the ABC is barracking like fury for the defeat of the Morrison government,” Bolt said.
Heralding a few changes
Five months after his appointment as editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Bevan Shields has made major changes to his reporting and editing team.
Shields, 36, replaced Lisa Davies, who is now running AAP after an abrupt departure from the paper.
The most famous of SMH reporters, Kate McClymont, was handed the title of chief investigative reporter, which apparently bemused even McClymont herself, because when you’ve won nine Walkleys, you don’t really need a title.
Another senior writer, Deborah Snow, was anointed associate editor and special writer, “in overdue recognition of her status as one of the Herald’s most experienced, talented and versatile journalists”, Shields told staff. Jordan Baker has been appointed chief reporter to give the masthead “extra firepower in covering big stories and issues and add more depth to our reporting”.
Shields has apparently had trouble filling the roles left vacant by the departure of Samantha Hutchinson and the Melbourne-based Stephen Brook from the CBD gossip column, but has picked up a talented young reporter from Crikey, Kishor Napier-Raman, who has been covering politics in Canberra. Hutchinson is taking up a senior reporting role on sister-paper, the Australian Financial Review, while Brook has been made deputy editor of the Sunday Age.
Shields is looking for a new opinion editor after moving Julie Lewis out of the role “after five successful and hugely busy years” which have often seen her working seven days a week. Lewis has been appointed weekend features editor, a role she has always coveted. Meanwhile the deputy editor of the SMH, Cosima Marriner, has left to join the Australian Financial Review as managing editor under Michael Stutchbury.
Marriner, who acted as editor when Davies quit and who was overlooked for the editor’s role, is a former editor of the Sun-Herald and Herald veteran, and many staff are sad to see her go.
“This is really sad news for us,” Shields told staff. “As managing editor, she will be responsible for managing the AFR’s budget, driving the performance of the newsroom and leading its premium subscriber-based growth and business development strategy.”
Happy birthday to the protection racket
Weekly Beast understands Chris Kenny is making a Sky News documentary about the ABC to coincide with its 90th birthday in July, with the working title: Is there anything wrong with the ABC?
We can’t see Kenny’s answer to the hypothetical question being anything other than “yes”, given he is the ABC’s biggest critic. This week he called the broadcaster a “green-left protection racket” which is trying to frighten journalists away from “scrutinising the fake independents” during the election.
We hear Kenny’s doco team has been approaching ABC-types as potential interview subjects – which could prove tricky, given the associate editor of the Australian’s reputation on this subject.
Today’s numbers
With the election in full swing, the ABC’s News Breakfast, co-hosted by Michael Rowland and Lisa Millar, has beaten Nine’s Today every morning this week, according to ratings provider OzTAM.
Nine’s co-hosts, Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon, have slipped to third place, behind David Koch and Natalie Barr on Sunrise and the ABC.
On Wednesday the Sunrise breakfast team had 234,000 viewers to News Breakfast’s 192,000 (across the main channel 116,000 and the news channel 76,000) and Today’s 170,000 in the five metro markets.
On Thursday it was the same: Sunrise on 238,000, News Breakfast on 197,000 and Today on 185,000, and the ABC beat Nine again on Friday morning. The addition of the popular sports presenter Tony Armstrong last year to the lineup of weatherman Nate Byrne and business reporter Madeleine Morris seems to have got the chemistry right.
Was that really necessary?
The Daily Mail published an article about a Logie award-winning actor who was working in a Sydney cafe, in what looked very much like an attempt to shame her for not being on television at the moment. As if the photos of her waiting tables weren’t enough, they named the cafe.
On Friday, news.com.au followed suit, publishing multiple photographs. The website also named the actor and the cafe and even said her home was nearby. Keep it classy, guys.
Puccini gets a promotion
Justin Stevens, the ABC’s new director of news, has appointed his leadership team, adding the highly regarded Jo Puccini as head of investigative journalism and current affairs. Although relatively unknown outside the ABC, Puccini is the force behind many of the ABC’s groundbreaking stories in recent years, including on aged care – leading to the calling of the royal commission on aged care – and alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
Gavin Fang, who missed out on the top job to the younger Stevens, has been appointed to the new role of deputy director news, head national and international.
