The Liberal senator Alex Antic was perturbed when he found a program on ABC Kids which was about “confronting sexuality in school in very different ways”.
It was proof that the ABC is a “publicly funded propaganda outfit” which is out of step with what he calls “normal Australia”. After all, this is the same South Australian senator who accused the ABC of “grooming children” when performer Courtney Act read a book on Play School.
“I’m interested in a program called Everything’s Gonna Be Okay,” Antic told the managing director, David Anderson, at Senate estimates. “It aired on ABC Kids recently and on the ABC’s website, the program’s genre is listed as LGBTQIA+, and it contains sexual themes.
“Why is it that the ABC thinks sexualised content and adult themes are appropriate for the ABC Kids platform?”
Anderson hadn’t heard of the program but did his best to explain the public broadcaster tackles community issues and that “includes the LGBTQIA+ community”.
But what neither men realised is that the program, Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, is not a kids program at all, and was never programmed for ABC Kids. It’s comedian Josh Thomas’ show about autism and sexuality.
In the evening the ABC Kids channel becomes ABC TV Plus and converts to adult programming. Antic really should do more research before his next so-called moral crusade.
Social media malaise
But Antic’s misfire was the least of Anderson’s problems at estimates. He revealed that Twitter continues to be a headache for the ABC and some tweets had breached social media guidelines and staff had lost their jobs as a result.
“I do think social media is a problem,” he said, adding that the ABC can’t prohibit staff from being on social media.
However, if ABC staff bring the broadcaster into disrepute on social media and breach social media guidelines it is possible to “legally terminate” them, he said.
One staffer to fall foul of the guidelines in December is Late Night Live host Phillip Adams, who was required to make amends. The veteran Radio National broadcaster said cricketing legend Don Bradman was a “right-wing nut job” who treated singer Kamahl as an “honorary white”. Kamahl had complained he felt humiliated.
Anderson said Adams had written to Kamahl to apologise.
The very next day the ABC announced the Insiders, News Breakfast and ABC Politics Twitter accounts were closing. “We’re closing some of the ABC News program accounts and consolidating our activity in our main Twitter account, @abcnews, which has by far the most activity, followers and engagement with audiences. This is a better use of resources while still serving audiences on this platform.”
Programs like Insiders and News Breakfast, as well as journalists including Leigh Sales, David Speers and Lisa Millar, have been subjected to consistent abuse and trolling on Twitter for years but the traffic to ABC content from the Twitter handles is minimal. In the end it was simply not worth the effort of keeping them going. It’s quite the reversal from the days when the then ABC MD Mark Scott enthusiastically embraced Twitter and journalists were asked to tweet regularly.
Murdochs and Ita Buttrose unite over queer museum
If there was anything that was going to unite the Murdochs and the ABC chair, Ita Buttrose, it was Sydney’s first queer museum.
On the eve of World Pride the Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch Foundation surprised organisers of the Qtopia Sydney museum project by announcing a $1m donation.
“All of those people that fought for rights, where are their stories?” Sarah told the crowd at Green Park, Darlinghurst.
Any animosity between the Murdochs and the ABC evaporated as Buttrose, a patron of the project, posed with Sarah, MP Alex Greenwich and chair David Polson, who in 1984 was one of the first 400 people diagnosed with HIV/Aids.
But it was the Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore, once a regular target of Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph, who was overwhelmed by the donation and caused a stir with her off-the-cuff remarks.
“Not always did I actually get support from the Murdoch newspapers in the 1990s but that’s history,” Moore said to loud laughs from the crowd. “That’s history. And no one’s more happy than I am to know that you’re supporting this cause and of course where you go, governments will follow, as well we all know.”
We don’t know if it’s a coincidence but the Tele on Friday ran a front-page story and an editorial supportive of World Pride and tolerance, saying a printer’s refusal to print a flyer for a gay roller derby team due to her Christian values was an “embarrassment to Christianity”.
Scott joins the Conversation
Prof Mark Scott AO, now the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, is back in the media game nine years after leaving the ABC in 2016.
He has been appointed chair of the Conversation Media Group board, saying the Conversation “has afforded our scholars unique opportunities to engage in and lead public debate on key issues”. “That opportunity seemed like a good fit between my past and my present,” Scott told Weekly Beast. “It is an honour to follow Julianne Schultz – one of our great public intellectuals and media pioneers.”
Flash fails to fire
Sometimes not even the might of the News Corp promotional machine can boost a flagging product. Despite blanket advertising, cross-promotion and thousands of free trials, Foxtel’s stand-alone streaming news service, Flash, failed to fire. Launched in October 2021 promising “a first-of-its-kind live and on demand news-only streaming service with more than 20 leading global and local news sources” Flash’s latest figures show only 15,000 subscribers.
This week Flash laid off its editorial staff, dumped its original content and moved to automatic programming, but the $8-a-month service has survived for now.
The former news.com.au editor-in-chief Kate de Brito, who was drafted to be executive director of Flash and the head of editorial, James Law, will leave the service. Both De Brito and Law have been given parachutes. They “will move to new opportunities within the Foxtel Group and the wider News Corp business”, an internal memo said, while the rest of the staff will be made redundant.
But you wouldn’t know about the slow demise of Flash if you read the report in the Australian.
“News Corp Australia’s world-first local and international news streaming service, Flash, is adding a further two heavyweight media brands to its on-air lineup, as part of a push to satisfy customer demand for more live news sources under the one banner,” the media editor James Madden wrote on Wednesday. At the end of the article he reported “there will also be a small reduction in the overall staff headcount at Flash”.
ABC staff ‘worse off’ under pay offer
ABC staffers got one step closer to industrial action this week when the Community and Public Sector Union said the new pay offer from management “will leave workers worse off in year one than the offer that was voted down late last year”.
“It is safe to say that CPSU members will be continuing on the path toward protected industrial action, but if management intend on putting another offer on the table, we recommend it at least be an improvement on the previous ones,” the ABC section secretary Sinddy Ealy said.
The people you run into while campaigning for a a fair pay deal in the ABC…
— Melissa Donnelly (@DonnellyMel) February 15, 2023
Billy Bragg lending his support to ABC workers 👇 pic.twitter.com/7des0lYs4L
The campaign was given a boost by the support of visiting working-class hero and singer Billy Bragg who lent his support to ABC staff.
“The ABC is not offering less,” a spokesperson said in response to the union claim.
Forrest tussles with West Australian
The editor-in-chief of the West Australian, Anthony De Ceglie, has rejected claims by Australia’s richest man, Andrew Forrest, that the Kerry Stokes-owned paper is “biased”, “inaccurate” and motivated by its own commercial interests.
“I stand by our reporting, by our journalists, by the stories we choose to pursue and how we do so,” De Ceglie said in a front-page editorial. “And my email has always been open to Mr Forrest or any of his staff to specifically point out supposed inaccuracies.”
Forrest’s complaint came after the West covered Fortescue Metals Group’s cost-cutting and other woes on two front-pages splashes, complete with photos of Forrest, last week.
In a video to staff Forrest accused Seven West Media of “narrow self-seeking” coverage driven by his plans to build a trucking business which would rival Stokes’ Caterpillar business.
Ryan Stokes told the Australian Financial Review there was no editorial interference in Seven West Media.
