News Corp Australia’s chief, Michael Miller, has defended one of his newspapers likening the Greens to the Nazis – and its leader, Adam Bandt, to Adolf Hitler – as the media just doing its job, which he says is to “surface differing opinions”.
The Australian newspaper has not withdrawn the inflammatory article, which alleged a week ago there were “alarming similarities between Adam Bandt’s Greens and Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party of the 1920s and 1930s”. The newspaper has also called the Greens “the party of anti semitism” on its front page, in a separate incident.
Sarah Hanson-Young, a Greens senator, asked Miller, who was appearing before a parliamentary committee examining the role of social media in society: “Do you reflect on having front pages and articles in your newspaper that refer to the third-largest political party as being antisemitic and our leader as Hitler,” and “Do you think that helps build social cohesion in the community?”
Miller: “I am not going to argue today about something which personally you disagree with, and that I could find people who would personally agree with it.”
Hanson-Young alleged Miller and his fellow witnesses, Nine Entertainment’s Mike Sneesby and Seven West Media’s Jeffrey Howard, were being hypocritical by pitching for the regulation of social media while taking no responsibility for the media’s role in disinformation and division.
In the Hitler article, Francis Galbally, a Melbourne businessman, argued that Bandt was an ideologue and a demagogue, comparing him to the German dictator.
Under the headline “Bandt’s rants seem to borrow from Hitler’s playbook”, Galbally claimed the member for Melbourne attended and encouraged attendance at pro-Palestinian rallies which were “frighteningly similar to those pre-Nuremberg rallies in Munich in the 1920s”.
The editor-in-chief of the Australian, Michelle Gunn, did not respond to a request for comment earlier in the week but the online headline has been belatedly changed to: ‘These duplicitous modern Greens are wolves in sheep’s clothing’, taking the reference to Hitler out of the headline but not the article.
Illuminating answers
Seven’s chief, Howard, was similarly put on the spot over current affairs program Spotlight’s payment of more than 12 months’ worth of rent (over $100,000) for Bruce Lehrmann in return for an exclusive interview, alongside facing questions over evidence in the federal court that Seven paid for sex workers for Lehrmann.
Hanson-Young: “I’m wondering whether you think it’s a mistake to pay for sex workers for a rapist to get the story on air?”
Howard: “We have an invoice on file, it says we paid for pre-production expenses. That’s all it says. There’s no evidence at Seven West Media that I’m aware of that we paid for sex workers or cocaine or any other things to get stories.”
Howard did concede, however, that Spotlight should have disclosed it was paying Lehrmann’s rent. “We didn’t own that at the beginning and if we had done that I think it would have been a very different outcome,” Howard said.
A family affair
An internship in a newsroom is a competitive prize that aspiring journalists are keen to secure. One such lucky chap is Aidan Patrick, who recently started his internship at News Corp’s news.com.au, where he has been writing about shopping woes in places as far apart as Perth in Western Australia and Leichhardt in New South Wales.
Patrick, perhaps wisely, decided to use his middle name as a byline rather than his surname for reasons which will soon become obvious: Aidan Patrick Murdoch is one of Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch’s three children.
At just 18 years old, Aidan is the same age as his father was when he interned at the now defunct Daily Mirror before being appointed general manager of Queensland Newspapers at the age of 22. Lachlan, whose family lives in Sydney, is now chairman of News Corp and executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corporation.
ABC’s arch defenders
After the publication of what Leigh Sales described as “incorrect slurs made anonymously” about ABC News’ chief, Justin Stevens, three of the public broadcaster’s biggest names have come out in support of their boss.
“The idea that Justin is merely a ‘visual thinker’ lacking an appetite for hard news and investigations is beyond laughable,” Sales wrote in a letter to the editor of the Saturday Paper.
Annabel Crabb was next, saying in another letter to the editor Stevens was “one of the good guys”. “I do not entertain doubts about the news judgement, hard work, bona fides and emotional intelligence of Stevens, who does what is almost certainly the toughest job in Australian journalism with a lack of ego that is remarkable in this notoriously ego-infested field.”
ABC News Breakfast host Lisa Millar, whose letter was not published, put her defence of Stevens on her social media feed instead: “It’s just not credible to base a piece like theirs a week ago on anonymous critics with the only named person being someone who left the organisation many years ago.”
So what was the article which saw this ferocious defence from the trio? The Saturday Paper lined up anonymous sources who questioned Stevens’s suitability for the role, including claims he doesn’t have the “news chops” for the job, he lacked an appetite for hard-hitting political and investigative stories and “reporters do not feel backed by him”.
Morris banks on new role
Meanwhile, Stevens’s predecessor, Gaven Morris, has landed the lucrative role of the Commonwealth Bank’s executive general manager for corporate affairs three years after leaving Auntie. Morris, who resigned after six years in the top job, will now be head spinner for the CBA – likely pitting him against some of his former journalists at the ABC in the future.
‘Clumsy’ news.com.au pinged
The press council has found news.com.au breached two principles when it published the headline “DARK ISLAMIC THREAT: Terrifying one-word warning after store bomb” which appeared to blame a religion for the violence.
The press council said the prominent reference to Islam in a headline along with the words dark and threat “unfairly suggests that the religion of Islam as a whole is responsible for the threat and the associated firebombing”. The publication told the council the words Islamic threat were “clumsy” and the headline was no longer visible to any readers.
Offence taken
The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday quietly removed an offensive term from an opinion piece by journalist Antoinette Latouff who, in writing about the ABC’s older audience, referred to them as the “colostomy-bag crowd”.
This is the same Latouff who the Fair Work Commission found was sacked from a casual presenting role on ABC local radio, paving the way for the journalist to pursue an unlawful termination case in the federal court.
In what was a freelance piece for the SMH, Latouff made a tongue-in-cheek pitch to succeed Paul Barry as host of Media Watch.
“The national broadcaster needs younger viewers to survive,” she said. “You can’t cater to the colostomy-bag crowd forever.”
While the charming turn of phrase appeared in the newspaper, it had disappeared from the online article later on Thursday, without the addition of an editor’s note to explain the change in copy.
The Herald’s opinion editor, Chris Harrison, told Weekly Beast as it was “not a factual inaccuracy” he decided not to repeat the phrase in an editor’s note. “The overwhelming response to the clearly satirical piece was positive but I was happy to remove the risk of upsetting others,” he said.
The phrase, however, was repeated on Friday on the letters page, possibly confusing readers who turned to the online article to see what the fuss was about.
“Antoinette Lattouf’s description of ABC viewers as ‘the colostomy-bag crowd’ is insensitive. As bowel cancer rates rise among the young, it’s not even an accurate dig against an older demographic. Perhaps Paul Barry could discuss the comment next week”, wrote one reader.
“Perhaps Lattouf needs to rethink her comments about the ‘colostomy-bag crowd’ and realise that this device is a lifesaver for many people of all ages and enables them to lead the best life they can despite whatever ails them,” wrote another.
SMH price hike
Still on the SMH, the price of a subscription to both the digital and print newspapers rose this week. The premium digital only packages increased from $6.70 a week to $7.20 a week and the weekend packages, which include the Saturday Herald and the Sun Herald, from $8.50 t0 $10 a week. Subscriptions to the Age are the same.
For comparison, the Australian’s weekend packages are worth $48 every four weeks.
