When is an undisclosed advertorial, paid for by the fossil fuel industry and splashed across the front pages of all the Murdoch tabloids, not a breach of press standards?
When the Australian Press Council rules there is nothing to see and finds no breach.
This week the APC delivered its surprising verdict four months after a series of articles extolling the virtues of gas were published on page one of the Courier-Mail, the Advertiser, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun.
While the double-page spread inside the papers disclosed the sponsorship, the front-page articles did not. Those who read the main piece online saw no disclosure at all.
Beneath headlines including “Dark ages” and “Step on the gas”, the articles urged an end to lengthy gas project approval delays to avoid “summer blackouts” or households “being plunged into darkness”.
“Households face being plunged into darkness – while paying even more for power – without urgent action on Australia’s gas shortage,” a “special report” on page one said.
The self-regulatory body investigated complaints that the front-page articles did not disclose to readers that they pointed to a series of sponsored content articles, paid for by the gas infrastructure business APA Group and the gas companies Tamboran, Santos and Jemena.
Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor, Adam Morton, argued at the time that readers were “sold a lie – that the story was straight news coverage”.
News Corp, which is the biggest funder of the council, said the front-page articles were “normal editorial content which is neither inaccurate nor misleading” and were written “independently of the sponsors”.
The APC found no breach of accuracy or transparency standards.
“The Council accepts on the information before it, the publications’ submissions that the front-page articles are editorial content and not undisclosed sponsored content,” the APC said.
After the publication of the adjudication, the articles carry a note which tells readers the press council has “not upheld a complaint about this article”.
It’s little wonder even News Corp’s own journalists mock the council’s findings.
Guardian Australia is not a member of the Australian Press Council but it has an independent readers’ editor that investigates complaints and publishes corrections and clarifications.
News Corp goes to war against the ABC
An episode of Four Corners about the Australian War Memorial’s $500m expansion did not breach the ABC’s editorial standards on accuracy, impartiality or fair and honest dealing, the ABC ombudsman has found.
In Sacrifice, the Gold Walkley award-winning journalist Mark Willacy reported on links between the memorial and the global arms industry and examined conflicts of interest, corporate influence and the memorial’s future.
Unsurprisingly, the War Memorial didn’t like it and shared its complaint with the Daily Telegraph, leading to extensive coverage this week across the News Corp tabloids as well as news.com.au, Sky News Australia, the West Australian and the Daily Mail.
The complaint was based on a belief the ABC cut together the Last Post ceremony alongside vision of construction works, giving the false impression that construction work had occurred during the Last Post.
“‘Cannot help themselves’: ABC’s Mark Willacy caught out in another doctored footage claim,” was Chris Kenny’s contribution on Sky News.
The stories linked the complaint to an earlier accusation about the ABC “editing footage to vilify a military institution”, the Daily Mail reported.
In that case an independent review found that five additional sounds of gunshots were “inadvertently but inaccurately” introduced into footage showing a commando firing from a helicopter in the Line of Fire stories, which investigated activities by Australian commandos during a 2012 deployment in Afghanistan.
But this time around the ombudsman found no case to answer. Fiona Cameron said in her lengthy report that the episode did not suggest that construction noise from the development site had disrupted a Last Post ceremony.
Ramping up the criticism on Wednesday, the Tele ran a story suggesting the ABC should be stripped of the rights to broadcast Anzac Day next week.
The former New South Wales veterans minister David Elliott told the Tele the ABC was “manipulating footage to create a sense of drama using innuendo”.
“In my mind the ABC has now forfeited the right to cover the Anzac Day March” Elliott said.
The live broadcast of the Anzac Day dawn service from the Australian War Memorial and live coverage of dawn services, local marches and other key commemorative events in towns and cities around Australia is one of the largest events the ABC broadcasts.
“It is regrettable that News Corporation in its reporting of the Council’s complaint has attempted to link this editorial issue with the Anzac Day coverage the ABC provides for Australians each year across our platforms,” an ABC spokesperson said.
Zelić joins the Tele
The Daily Telegraph was quick to pile on the then SBS broadcaster Lucy Zelić in 2018, calling her “pretentious” and a “show-off” for accurately pronouncing soccer players’ names during the World Cup tournament in Russia.
The columnist Claire Harvey, now the editorial director at the Australian, agreed with critics on social media who didn’t like Zelić’s custom of pronouncing players’ names in the same way they would be in their home country, labelling her “spectacularly silly and flamboyant”.
“Because although we’d all agree it’s good manners to pronounce foreign words as carefully as you can, there’s a line beyond which you just sound like a show-off,” Harvey wrote.
“And that’s what viewers bristle about with Lucy Zelic’s on-air persona. It’s not about pronunciation. It’s about pretension. People feel you’re hectoring them.”
A lot has changed in seven years. This week Zelić was appointed a regular Daily Telegraph columnist, focusing not on sport but on equality in sport.
News Breakfast goes west
James Glenday has been on the ABC News Breakfast couch for three months now and says he is accustomed to rising at 3.30am. The former Europe and North America correspondent joined Bridget Brennan as co-host in January and has no complaints about the early mornings or the 15 hours of live television a week.
But this week Glenday, Brennan and the meteorologist Nate Byrne had to throw out their usual gruelling schedules and get out of bed at 1.30am because the show was broadcast live from Western Australia. The crew did three outside election broadcasts: in central Perth, Cottesloe beach and York.
After the local council announced on Facebook that ABC News Breakfast would be positioned on the main street of York from 4am, some locals turned up at 3.50am to welcome them.
“You get adrenaline from being on the road that helps carry you through the early mornings, especially when you know people who have been watching come down and say hello,” Glenday told Weekly Beast. “It gives you a bit of extra energy.”
Byrne said it was unusual for the weatherman to be on an election tour but since WA is his home state “I get to be tour guide”.
Two more outside election broadcasts are planned, one from western Sydney and one from Queensland.
BBC picks up where NYT left off
BBC News has dramatically expanded its bureau in Australia, not long after the New York Times quietly withdrew as a major presence after opening with great fanfare in 2017.
The BBC bureau has previously concentrated on writing content for the world about Australia rather than news for Australians, focusing on “down under” stereotypes like crocodile hunting and sharks.
This is set to change after the broadcaster hired half a dozen new journalists led by the news editor, Jay Savage.
“This change is aimed to enhance global breaking news content for UK BBC News online audiences, bolster 24-hour news coverage for all audiences globally, and increase BBC News’ editorial presence in Australia,” the BBC said.
Jacko back in the spotlight
The former Spotlight producer Steve Jackson, whose text messages about securing an interview with Bruce Lehrmann were made public at the defamation trial, has been hired by the Australian as media diarist. The court heard that another Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach had texted Jackson in 2022: “I’ve got the yarn. I’ve just been on the piss with Bruce Lehrmann.”
Jackson has been writing for the Daily Mail since his appointment to the $320,000-a-year role as media adviser to the New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb was rescinded in the wake of the reports about his earlier work as a journalist.
At Lehrmann’s trial last April the court heard that Auerbach had fallen out with Jackson and left Seven after allegedly sustaining a psychiatric injury at the hands of his former friend and former Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn.
