Sky News Australia wasted no time trying to put at least one of Donald Trump’s executive orders on the local political agenda.
On Thursday a Sky News reporter asked the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan: “US president Donald Trump this week made an executive order for the government to only recognise two genders, male and female. What’s your response to that? And how many genders do you think government should recognise?” Allan’s response to the question was: “Really?”
Around the same time, over on Sky’s NewsDay program, Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie was asked a very similar question: “Donald Trump this week made an executive order for the government to only recognise two genders, male and female. How many genders do you think our government should recognise?”
Earlier, on AM Agenda with Laura Jayes, the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, was asked a pared-down version of the same question: “What about Trump’s national executive order of only recognising two sexes … two genders?”
Coincidence? We don’t think so.
A Sky News operative was overheard telling a colleague the gender question was “a directive from the big boss”. We asked the chief executive of Sky News Australia, Paul Whittaker, to confirm he sent the directive but received no reply. Whittaker does have form: last year he fed a question to Brexiteer Nigel Farage to ask Trump about his relationship with US ambassador Kevin Rudd.
Newsmax comes to Australia
No doubt Sky News is trying to be the destination for all things Trump – promising to cover his first 100 days in depth – but it is also bracing for a challenge from a second rightwing television operation by the name of Newsmax Australia.
Details are sketchy, but the streaming channel Australian Digital Holdings TV, which was launched in December 2021 with ex-Sky News host Alan Jones as the figurehead, has rebranded as Newsmax Australia. It has social media accounts and a website but is yet to launch.
Jones has been off air since December and has pleaded not guilty to 34 historical sexual assault charges.
In the US Newsmax TV is a cable and broadcast channel which has positioned itself as an alternative to Fox News and, like Sky News Australia, features conservative opinion shows.
Former Sky host Erin Molan is the first signing to Newsmax, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
Undiscovered territory
“Discover our podcasts,” said the Sydney Morning Herald marketing email, above a colourful selection of podcasts from the Nine Entertainment stable including The Morning Edition, Naked City with John Silvester and The Drop with Osman Faruqi. The Drop promised listeners would “learn the latest in the world of pop culture and entertainment”. Didn’t Faruqi leave Nine, where he was culture editor at the Age, in August last year?
Indeed he did. The email was a plug for a podcast that no longer exists.
Faruqi’s latest work, however, will soon be available in the form of a book, The Racist Country, to be published by Random House this year.
Talkback tirade
A caller to Tom Elliott’s program on 3AW on Thursday made some inflammatory remarks during a discussion about the protest in Melbourne this weekend. Elliott was taking calls from listeners who claimed the protests were ruining the city. The shock jock was in furious agreement with them.
“I’ll preface this by saying I’m not Jewish, but I feel sorry for the Jewish people,” the caller said. “And for 15 months now, we’ve been putting up with these Arab protests. And I’ve got to say, I apologise for the word Arabs, but that’s what it is. And now myself and my friends are starting to hate the Arab nations because of it.”
At this point Elliott could have used the dump button, but the caller was allowed to continue.
“They are destroying Melbourne. They are destroying Melbourne. They are destroying Australia. And the more we let in, the worse it gets. And I wish we’d stop importing these people. And I think if we got rid of a few and showed them an upper hand, that would be the way to stop all this stupidity.”
Throughout the rant, Elliott was silent except for the odd “yes”, but he did point out at the end that “Anglo Australians” were among the protesters, adding that he didn’t “have any particular issue with [the Arabs]”.
We asked Nine Radio management if they were comfortable with the views expressed in the broadcast and they declined to comment on the record.
Go west
The Sydney Morning Herald is establishing a Parramatta bureau with an eye to capturing a new market and better representing the city.
The Herald editor, Bevan Shields, announced the bureau will allow the masthead to better reflect the diversity of the city and will be staffed by at least four reporters.
The Herald has made previous attempts at securing a foothold in western Sydney. According to former Herald journalists, there have been two Parramatta bureaus and one Blacktown bureau in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
The first Parramatta outpost was run by writer and celebrated artist Collinridge Rivett in the 1970s for about a decade.
A new office in Blacktown was opened at the end of the 70s and was run by former Herald science reporter Richard Macey until around 1990, when it was shut.
Then Herald editor-in-chief John Alexander, keen to attract new advertisers and readers in the area, decided to recreate the Parramatta editorial office in the mid-1990s and Macey was again dispatched to run it. Third time lucky for Parramatta perhaps?
We hope Shields doesn’t face as much resistance as the ABC did in sending its Sydney radio division to the new digs in Parramatta.
IPA’s newest hire
The Australian’s former Washington correspondent Adam Creighton has joined the rightwing thinktank the IPA as a “senior fellow and chief economist” – perhaps an unsurprising move for the former economist, who will still write a weekly column for the Australian.
“I have had a long and beneficial association with the IPA, so joining the organisation at a senior level felt like a logical next step to me,” Creighton said.
“With the rapid decline in Australians’ standard of living, and as the economic windfall from China begins to dissipate, the IPA will have a critical role in promoting sound policy and I am looking forward to contributing to the national discussion on how best to stop and reverse this trend.”
Cash for comments
Nine reporter Alex Cullen has left the network after allegedly taking a $50,000 payment from a billionaire for referring to him as “McLaren man” on air.
The news was broken on Channel Nine’s Today show on Friday by co-host Karl Stefanovic.
“As most of you are well aware, our colleague Alex Cullen has not been on air with us this past week,” he said. “There has been widespread reporting on the circumstances surrounding this. What I can say is that last night, Alex and Nine agreed that he would finish with the network.”
The said billionaire, Adrian Portelli, became known as the “Lambo guy” in 2022 after he turned up to a house auction for popular reality TV show The Block in a yellow Lamborghini.
Portelli bought houses from the show in 2022, 2023 and 2024, spending $15m in 2024 to buy all five properties.
Then he inexplicably offered $50,000 to the first television journalist to use his chosen moniker “McLaren man” because he didn’t like “Lambo guy”.
Cullen allegedly accepted the challenge and was swiftly stood down by Nine and made to give the money back. Now he has lost his very lucrative job with the network – and he didn’t even get to keep the Portelli cash.
But Cullen is not the only victim of this absurd incident. Herald Sun journalist Fiona Byrne was targeted by Portelli after referring to him as “Lambo guy”. Portelli offered his followers $5,000 for “the best comment” posted on her social media.
Byrne said she was bombarded with “thousands of vile, demeaning, offensive, misleading, insulting, factually incorrect and just plain stupid and ridiculous comments”.
