A mystery at the heart of this week’s biggest media story is who leaked the story about Antoinette Lattouf’s sacking from the ABC to The Australian?
The Oz had the story live on its site before Lattouf made it home on the day she was let go, she told the court, and the court also heard that there were a number of details in the story that could only have been known by a small number of senior people at the broadcaster.
Laura Tingle, the ABC’s chief political correspondent, wrote to the then chair, Ita Buttrose, to express her “deep concern” that someone senior had leaked information about Lattouf’s dismissal to The Australian, an email read aloud in court revealed.
“Whether or not she breached the social media code, the fact that someone apparently senior briefed The Australian on it and (I suspect) verballed your actual role in any action taken on it is almost as spectacular an error of judgment as any social media breach,” Tingle wrote.
Several of the witnesses, including Buttrose, were asked explicitly if they were the source of the leak or knew who had been. All denied it.
Content chief Chris Oliver-Taylor even offered some additional commentary on the mystery of leaks at the ABC. He had told the court he had taken a call from The Australian and said “no comment” but was unaware of who had leaked the story about Lattouf.
“You have no idea how The Australian was privy to this information?” Lattouf’s barrister, Oshie Fagir, had pressed Oliver-Taylor.
“No, I do not,” said Oliver-Taylor, who went on to say: “How did the Guardian two weeks ago know that I was about to resign? They did, though. How did that happen? … Journalists have ways into the ABC.”
Daily Mail’s ‘courthouse catwalk’
Staying with Lattouf a moment longer, while the court battle has kept most of the media busy with news stories, live blogs and analysis for the past two weeks, for the Daily Mail it was a chance for some investigative fashion journalism.
The Mail’s picture-heavy format meant that its Lattouf stories featured half a dozen or so photographs of the journalist entering the federal court building each day, from different angles, as well as descriptions of her choice of outfit each day.
They even ran a separate story on Lattouf’s “courthouse catwalk”, with a breakdown of the labels she wore each day to court, the cost of some of her clothing, shoes and handbags and an estimated total of the cost of her court wardrobe.
Lattouf responded to the piece on her Instagram account on Thursday, writing: “I knew my appearance would be dissected, analysed, and judged—because that’s what happens when you’re a woman in the public eye … And sure enough, here we are.”
House always wins
The new host of Media Watch has come out of the gates with a bang.
Linton Besser, in his second episode hosting the iconic program, turned his attention to Channel Nine’s Find My Beach House.
In the show, prospective buyers searching for a home by the sea are taken around beach houses by host Shelley Craft before deciding which one they want to buy.
Besser examined one episode, in which young couple Lachie and Tonya considered three homes in Mount Martha, Victoria, eventually deciding to buy house number three.
“We’ve lost a lot of sleep over this,” Lachie says when Craft asks him if they have settled on a home.
“For us right now, house number three feels like it’s the one,” Tonya says.
Which is lucky because, as Media Watch exposed, the house they decided on in the show is one they already owned and in fact had built themselves on the plot of land they had bought eight years prior, documenting the build on social media.
Media Watch spoke to a former producer of the show who said roughly 50% of the properties featured on it are already owned by the people featured on the show.
After inquiries from Media Watch, Channel Nine scrubbed the series from its website.
“We know these shows aren’t trying to be Four Corners but talk about selling your audience and advertisers down the river,” Besser said.
Billboard blues
Advertising executives celebrated this week after a LinkedIn pile-on apparently led to a billboard spruiking an anti-renewables message being taken down.
The billboard, which carried the message “‘Renewables’ cost the earth”, accompanied by a picture of wind turbines and earth-moving equipment, was spotted in the marginal seat of Paterson, north of Newcastle, by the ad executive Mike Spirkovski, who shared a photograph of the billboard on LinkedIn on 10 February.
The billboard was funded by rightwing campaign group Advance Australia, which has been running a campaign to expose the “truth” about renewables, including a 50-minute documentary called Dollars and destruction: How renewables harm our farms and cost the earth.
James Greet, the co-founder of the Payback Project, shared Spirkovski’s post and wrote his own message of outrage on LinkedIn, tagging oOh!media, which owns the billboard, calling it out for allowing the ad, in spite of its commitment to sustainability, as a founding member of Ad Net Zero.
One day later, on 11 February, oOh! replied on LinkedIn saying it had removed the advertisement “following an additional internal review and given our business’ strong commitment to sustainability and reducing our operational impact on the planet”.
oOh! received a lot of plaudits from people on LinkedIn for the decision.
“oOh! today you made the right call, swiftly and without hesitation,” wrote Spirkovski. “Thank you for acting with integrity and standing by your commitment to responsible advertising. Your decision helps ensure that misinformation doesn’t undermine the important conversations we need to have about our environment. I appreciate your leadership on this.”
The only thing is, according to Advance Australia, which paid for the billboard, the billboard was only scheduled to run until 9 February, the day before Spirkovski posted about it on LinkedIn and two days before oOh! said it had removed it “following an additional review”.
Advance told Weekly Beast: “We are surprised at oOh!media’s statement because the billboard in question ran for the full contractual period. We have received no correspondence from them about the billboard. As far as we are aware there was no issue, oOh!media has been paid in full, and the billboard performed above expectations.”
oOh! Media said in a statement that it did act in response to the LinkedIn post, but did not dispute Advance’s claim the billboard ran for its full contract period.
An oOh! spokesperson said: “oOh! acted to remove the campaign following a LinkedIn post and in line with our sustainability commitments. In regional locations, classic billboards can remain in situ for longer than their prescribed campaign period, however on this occasion we expedited de-installation. While we have robust procedures in place to review sensitive advertising content, oOh! has initiated further steps to strengthen these processes.”
