Andrew Bolt admits to gloating but says he is “gloating for a good cause”.
“We have to shame the lies and the hysterics who came far too close to getting the empty head of Kamala Harris elected on a great lie that Donald Trump would be a Hitler-loving dictator,” Bolt told his Sky News audience on Thursday.
Earlier, Peta Credlin couldn’t hide her delight. “Let’s hope good riddance to her and good riddance to woke,” she said.
Speaking to Credlin, her fellow Sky host Paul Murray called Harris a “disgrace” for not showing up to address her Democratic supporters on election night, and it was an “insight into her true personality”.
The former Liberal party vice-president Teena McQueen, who is Gina Rinehart’s adviser, took it one step further, putting Trump’s win ahead of her own offspring.
It was the “best night of my life – including childbirth”, she told the Australian.
The rightwing media is emboldened by Trump’s victory and excited about what it might mean for Australian politics.
In the Daily Telegraph, the columnist Tim Blair was urging Australia to join Trump in drilling for oil and gas.
“We need to join this ride,” Blair said. “To hell with the scolds and the wimps, the haters and the losers. Drill, Australia, drill.”
As the tabloid’s editorial said, local politicians should “follow Trump’s policies on energy, bureaucracy and the economy”.
“We may now anticipate several months of sour grapes from Trump’s enemies until his inauguration next year, and then a thrilling new international landscape afterwards.
“Australia should deeply engage with the awesome economic potential of a Trump-led US.
“Let’s become great again.”
The Australian’s editorial team was similarly thrilled, saying Trump’s win marked the end of “progressive interests of climate and woke identity politics”.
Marquee mix-up
When Cara Waters, the city editor of the Age, spoke to “Raphael Geminder”, the founder of the Pact group, in the GH Mumm marquee at the Melbourne Cup, he was wearing a Gucci jacket and bursting with enthusiasm. He said he loved the Melbourne Cup because of “the women, the effort they go to, the fashion – they all look beautiful.
The Mumm marquee staff had introduced the man to reporters and photographers as Geminder, and he was duly interviewed and photographed by the Age, the Australian Financial review and the Australian.
“It makes the guys try a little bit harder and scrub up a bit better,” he told the Age.
He said he found betting mind-numbing but he enjoyed the people watching and the socialising.
The interview was published on the Age’s Melbourne Cup blog and subsequently its CBD column online but was taken down from both when someone realised the man was not Geminder but an impostor who had talked his way into the marquee.
“An earlier version of this column said that Raphael Geminder, founder of Pact group, was in the Mumm marquee at the Melbourne Cup and attributed quotes to him,’” the Age said. “That person was not Mr Geminder, but someone claiming to be him. The Age apologises for the error.”
Similarly, the AFR published a correction saying Geminder was not in the Mumm marquee.
Marquee staff frantically messaged journalists to say the man was an impostor and could they please disregard his comments.
Media Watch frontrunners
When Paul Barry stands down as Media Watch host next month after more than a decade in the chair, the hot tip is that the program will take on a new direction. ABC TV bosses have chosen an investigative journalist, Mario Christodoulou, as executive producer. A former newspaper reporter, Christodoulou is a multi-award winning journalist now working as supervising producer on Background Briefing.
The host has not yet been confirmed but one of the frontrunners is another top investigative reporter, Linton Besser.
Not on the short list are the stand-in host, Janine Perrett, or the Australian Financial Review’s Rear Window columnist, Mark Di Stefano. Di Stefano was screen-tested at the urging of the current Media Watch team, who thought he was a good fit.
The ABC will announce the new team at the ABC Upfronts on 21 November.
No joke
When Seven’s director of news and current affairs, Anthony De Ceglie, recruited the comedian Mark Humphries to perform a segment at the end of the bulletins around the country, some people mocked the idea.
“I was so stunned because I did five years at 7.30, the ABC’s flagship current affairs program, which I think of all the shows to have a comedy segment, that’s even less likely to have one,” Humphries told Stellar Magazine.
Over 4 million views across X and TikTok for this latest segment. Thank you to everyone who’s watched or shared. https://t.co/7sxxZztkfo
— Mark Humphries (@markhumphries) November 4, 2024
Unsurprisingly, because Humphries is a very funny man, the idea has been a success, with one segment of the 6.57pm news clocking up 4m social media views and counting.
Liberal attitude
When Weekly Beast contacted Nine Entertainment about whether it was appropriate for Ben Fordham to attend a Liberal party fundraiser, the 2GB host quickly pulled out.
Fordham said he had not realised the event was raising money for the political party when he accepted the invitation to speak.
The Kirribilli branch of the New South Wales Liberals, on the other hand, knew exactly what was planned: “This is a state fundraising event for Kirribilli Branch,” it said on its website.
According to the branch, Fordham was to be the latest in a string of high-profile journalists to attend: the Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, its Washington correspondent, Adam Creighton, and its associate editor Chris Kenny have all graced the party’s members with their presence.
“I’d have to check, might have done years ago – I’m generally happy to speak anywhere about politics,” Kenny, a Sky News host, told Weekly Beast. “I’ve even been on the ABC, spoken at schools, universities and once spoke to a journalist from The Guardian.”
Gambling ad ban looms large at Nine AGM
An annual general meeting is one of the rare times publicly listed boards and executives have to face tough questions and can’t hide behind spin doctors and corporate statements.
And so it was this week when Nine Entertainment’s chair, Catherine West, was confronted by multiple questions from shareholders about Nine’s toxic culture and its reliance on gambling revenue.
The first question came from a reformed gambling addict: “Given that gambling causes significant harm in Australia, with the average Australian losing $1,600 per year, what action is the company taking to prevent gambling harm?”
That was followed up by a question from the gambling reform campaigner Tim Costello, who pointed out that Nine was not just accepting the status quo but was “actively lobbying with free-to-air networks to actually defeat the recommended total gambling ad ban”.
The Albanese government is planning to cap gambling ads during general TV programming instead of introducing a total ban, as recommended by a bipartisan committee report.
“To be fair, Nine, I don’t think, has been leading it,” Costello said. “I think it’s Seven, and I think it’s Foxtel.
“And I might add, every health professional, child protection expert, domestic violence expert in this nation wants a total ban on gambling ads.”
West’s rationale was that if there were to be any restrictions on TV gambling they needed to apply equally to all the social media platforms. “We don’t think it will be a good outcome for gambling to be banned in our ecosystem but be freely available in other ecosystems, including on Google word searches,” she said.
West was repeatedly asked to explain how she could not have known about Nine’s systemic problem with bullying and harassment, despite being on the board for six years.
One investor said it was disappointing the board had not known given “the reputation of the industry has been fairly poor for a very long period of time”. “So for you to come on to the board and not recognise that that is a potential problem is, you know … ” she trailed off and West said, “I hear you, and we would ask people in the newsroom, I would ask people what it was like to work in the newsroom. They’d say, ‘Fantastic.’”
West said it wasn’t until later that staff had started to report the truth.
