The Australian’s Washington correspondent, Adam Creighton, was at least upfront about where his publication stands when he filed his report for Monday’s paper from Donald Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden
By 10.30am local time at least 3,000 supporters, including The Australian, were lined up to enter what will be remembered as the signature Trump rally, which featured a roll call of MAGA celebrities including for the first time on the campaign trail his wife, Melania, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and former Democrat scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It may have been unfortunate phrasing to include himself among the 3,000 Trump supporters but if it was accidental the newspaper’s editors made no attempt to correct it by Friday.
Unlike much of the press who described the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico as racist, Creighton merely said it was “off colour”.
“Democrats seized on an off-colour joke by the first speaker on the program, Tony Hinchcliffe, an up and coming Republican-aligned comedian, who joked about Hispanics’ alleged proclivity to have children, and described Puerto Rico as a ‘floating island of garbage,’” he wrote.
For comparison the New York Times report was headlined: “Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism”
NBC News: “Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally overshadowed by his allies’ crude and racist remarks.”
Giant mistake?
Murdoch’s Courier-Mail is excited that David Crisafulli has taken power in Queensland. Before the election the Courier urged a vote for Crisafulli in its editorial, saying Labor’s “bleeding-heart attitude to how the justice system should treat youth offenders” had fuelled a crime crisis. The Liberal National party leader, on the other hand, was “a driven career politician from central casting. His work ethic? Extraordinary.”
Just days into the new term, a documentary about the leader is set to launch. “The Courier-Mail has tracked David Crisafulli’s ascension to power and spoken to those closest to him for a in-depth documentary that goes beneath the surface of Queensland’s most powerful man,” the teaser says.
The doco is called Goliath: The David Crisafulli story, in an apparent reference to the David and Goliath story in the Bible.
Goliath was of course defeated by David, so we asked the Courier’s editor, Chris Jones, if he had chosen the correct title – but we didn’t hear back.
Another Rundle comment emerges
The former Crikey columnist Guy Rundle may have apologised in a statement on Arena this week for saying “every grope is now a sexual assault” but another comment on the matter has popped up elsewhere.
Rundle told editors at Arena that his text to Radio National Breakfast had been taken as expressing the idea that “unwanted sexual touching” was not sexual assault and was “falsely inflating” the statistics. “This is not what I believe,” he said. “All unwanted sexual touching is sexual assault.”
In October, Rundle posted a comment on the subject of the “new legal definition of assault” on an article by another writer on Crikey.
He said “intimate relationship violence is defined as both physical and non physical, which then racks up huge numbers.
“That presumably includes shouting, throwing stuff at the wall etc. The ‘every two minutes’ police call out stats are useless; police are called out to loud arguments now, and attend.”
The two minutes comment is a response to the article’s estimate that, on average, “police respond to a domestic and family violence incident every two minutes”.
Rundle did not respond to a request for comment.
Victim of lockdown
It’s a brave journalist who reveals that his book did not sell but that is exactly what the Age’s chief reporter, Chip Le Grand, said in an opinion piece about the Covid-19 response inquiry.
“Two years ago, I wrote a book about Melbourne’s pandemic experience,” Le Grand wrote. “Few people bought it and fewer still read it.
“I suspect that among the copies that were sold, many are sitting on bookshelves, crisply unopened, consigned to a history no one has much desire to revisit.”
Le Grand appears to have set aside his pride because he had an even bigger point to make: Australia hasn’t learnt from the pandemic and was “still experiencing an acute case of COVID brain fog”.
A critic of Victoria’s pandemic response, Le Grand believes the social harms inflicted by Covid and our public health response are “real, serious and ongoing”.
Farewell to an ABC legend
Matt Peacock, the former ABC journalist famous for exposing the dangers of asbestos over four decades, has died after a short battle with pancreatic cancer aged 72.
His role in uncovering the asbestos scandal was made into a 2012 ABC telemovie, Devil’s Dust, starring Ewan Leslie. Peacock’s dogged pursuit of the asbestos manufacturer James Hardie culminated in a court case brought by the asbestos disease victim Bernie Banton.
Over his 40-year broadcasting career Peacock was familiar to ABC audiences for his work as a foreign correspondent in London, Washington and New York, and as the chief political correspondent for current affairs radio in Canberra, among other roles.
In 2017 he was one of the many staff to take voluntary redundancy due to ABC budget cuts. By then he was a senior reporter on 7.30 as well as the staff-elected director on the ABC board at the tumultuous time Michelle Guthrie was managing director.
It wasn’t his first brush with redundancy. Despite his legendary career and his status as a board member, Peacock was placed into a redundancy “pool” alongside his colleagues on 7.30 to be assessed by management against a “skills matrix” in a process dubbed the Hunger Games.
As the author of Killer Company: James Hardie Exposed, which details his role in uncovering the corruption and spin of the asbestos industry over three decades, Peacock had been in worse scrapes before and he survived.
In 2015 he stood up for his colleagues when the ABC was under attack from News Corp after Zaky Mallah asked a question on Q&A.
Peacock said it was “an inflammatory campaign against the national public broadcaster directed by people who have a duty to show better leadership”.
“I urge staff to stand strong in the face of such intimidation and to maintain our statutory commitment to fearless, impartial and independent coverage.”
Video mix-up
On Saturday, as Israel launched its attacks on Iran, The Australian had a dramatic video of explosions auto-playing at the top of its website all day. It was still on the homepage on Sunday morning.
But the video was from the Lebanon strikes earlier in the month and not the Iran strikes.
A screenshot of the Lebanon video also appeared on another article about Israel delivering retaliation against Iran. And a video on a third article had the same footage.
After we contacted the editor-in-chief, Michelle Gunn, the video was removed and corrections were put on two pieces: “An earlier version of this story included an image of an explosion incorrectly captioned as purporting to be from Iran, when it was in fact a file image from Lebanon.”
Changing places
There are so many roles at Aunty changing next year, you can expect a raft of announcements in coming weeks.
On Friday morning Patricia Karvelas announced that the former foreign correspondent Sally Sara would replace her as host of Radio National Breakfast in 2025, and the program would have an earlier start time of 5.30am.
Karvelas will take over as presenter of Afternoon Briefing each weekday on ABC iview and the ABC News channel.
No one is confirming the next appointment but we tip the ACT newsreader James Glenday will be the replacement for the ABC News Breakfast host Michael Rowland, who we understand is likely to stand down from his early morning gig in coming months.
Last month Rowland revealed he was looking for a “less intense” role.
“I’m getting older – the ripe old age of 55 this year,” he said. “The toll it takes gets more pronounced every year – the hours, the horrible stories we have to cover as journalists presenting a news program.”
After two years reading the news, Glenday, who has been standing in for Rowland while he is in the US covering the election, will transition to a more permanent role.
He will be replaced by Greg Jennett, who is leaving the Afternoon Briefing chair.
