The Australian Financial Review has removed references to two female journalists from an article after complaints by the ABC and the Seven Network about the newspaper’s “trivialising” portrayal of their employees.
But the Nine Entertainment-owned paper stopped short of apologising to the women, attaching instead a “clarification” at the foot of the article.
“An earlier version of this online story included some detail that was not relevant or necessary. Those details have since been deleted.”
The AFR’s senior correspondent Aaron Patrick included gratuitous references to two political reporters in an online analysis on Thursday about the media’s coverage of the Victorian election: A Melbourne reporter fights a guerilla war with his premier.
While Patrick described the Age’s Paul Sakkal as an “ambitious young reporter” he referred to the Victorian state political reporter for the ABC as “ABC television’s Bridget Rollason, who has shot TikTok videos to catchy music of herself going to a gym, eating breakfast and having makeup applied”.
According to Rollason, there are no TikTok videos on her account of her at the gym or eating breakfast.
Patrick described the Seven Network’s political reporter Sharnelle Vella as having “her own talent agent”.
Both Seven and the ABC have written letters of complaint to the AFR editor-in-chief, Michael Stutchbury.
“The ABC has complained to the Australian Financial Review and Aaron Patrick over the irrelevant, incorrect and trivialising reference to award-winning journalist Bridget Rollason and asked for the story to be changed,” the ABC said.
Seven has also lodged a complaint with @FinancialReview. https://t.co/VZLG7IiXBJ
— Sharnelle Vella (@SharnelleVella) November 10, 2022
The newspaper did not explain why Patrick’s article in the printed newspaper did not contain the references.
The online article referred to a press conference with Dan Andrews in Melbourne on Monday like this: “Sakkal was joined by ABC radio presenter Rafael Epstein, one of the few journalists Andrews was friendly to; Rachel Baxendale from the Australian, who had long been harassed by Andrews’ supporters on Twitter; Julia Bradley from Sky News, which is a perennial critic of Andrews; the ABC television’s Bridget Rollason, who has shot TikTok videos to catchy music of herself going to a gym, eating breakfast and having makeup applied; the Seven Network’s Sharnelle Vella, who has her own talent agent; and Gus McCubbing, a reporter for The Australian Financial Review.”
Stutchbury told Guardian Australia the comments had been deleted.
“The claims about the journalists contained in Aaron Patrick’s report have been deleted from the online story,” he said. “The claims detracted from what was an otherwise well-written piece.”
Last year an article by Patrick about the News Corp reporter Samantha Maiden was described by some as a hit job and criticised by journalists from across the media.
