Crikey’s correspondent-at-large Guy Rundle has a new book out, partly funded by Crikey, but you won’t read about it in Crikey.
Red, White & Blown is part of a Crikey book series, The Crikey Read, which includes Bernard Keane’s 2021 book Lies and Falsehoods.
But the Private Media owned site has not published anything by Rundle since he was roundly condemned for a piece he wrote about Brittany Higgins in which he said the former Liberal staffer had “about as much motive as anyone has ever had to make a false sex crime claim”.
The independent website apologised to Higgins and unpublished Rundle’s offensive article three weeks ago, then followed it up with a lengthy second apology and fell silent.
Rundle’s book about the US came out on 21 June, two days after Crikey’s second apology, but there is nothing about it on the site.
When another Crikey Read came out in November, The Teal Revolution by Margot Saville, the site gave it substantial coverage and published a lengthy extract.
Rundle is popular with readers – “they love him” an insider says – and a driver of subscriptions, but he’s also brought opprobrium to Crikey before, so what to do? The CEO, Will Hayward, declined to comment.
In 2016 Crikey was condemned for publishing obscene comments by Rundle about the relationship between the Labor frontbencher David Feeney and his wife, lawyer Liberty Sanger.
Hardie Grant says Rundle’s book is “a piercing and provocative investigation into the United States’ resolute failure to reckon with its own divisions and blind spots”. Sounds like an echo of the internal turmoil at Private Media.
Tele ‘celebrates footy and the Alice’
Anyone who has picked up a newspaper would be well aware of the close relationship between Harvey Norman and the big media companies who would struggle to survive without the retailer’s prolific print advertising.
But the Sunday Telegraph took this relationship a little further on the weekend, publishing a news story about how Harvey Norman had sponsored a program on Sky News Australia. We think that was what it was about anyway.
“Celebrating Footy and the Alice” ran on page 11 with a happy shot of Sky News host Paul Murray and the Harvey Norman CEO, Katie Page, watching footy in Alice Springs.
Page was described as “a giant of corporate Australia” and Murray as “a prominent media identity” and we were told Harvey Norman “also sponsors Paul Murray Live Our Town”.
“Harvey Norman chief executive Katie Page and Sky News Australia news-breaker and commentator Paul Murray travelled to Alice Springs with the Giants to celebrate the club and regional Australia,” the paper helpfully told readers.
Ten gone to the dogs
Are They Bad To The Bone? asks Channel 10 about the dogs who appear in a new reality show, Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly Australia, which starts on 13 July.
The show is a local version of the UK show Dogs Behaving Badly and has “scoured the nation for the naughtiest hounds … to retrain those with the most outrageous, unusual, hilarious and sometimes downright disturbing behaviours,” the press kit says.
“Narrated by TV Week Gold Logie 2023 nominee Julia Morris, Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly Australia is holding Australia’s naughtiest pooches and their owners to account.”
It might sound harmless, but vets and animal welfare organisations are concerned that the program promotes “archaic methods” to control behaviour in troubled pets and viewers may get the wrong idea from watching the show.
The Pet Professional Guild Australia (PPGA) has written to Ten, and has the support of several dog training bodies, animal welfare experts, professional associations and animal welfare organisations such as Australian Veterinary Association, Delta Therapy Dogs, Companion Animal Network Australia and PetRescue.
A Ten Network spokesperson said: “We take animal welfare seriously at Network 10 and sought to set the bar high with our approach to dog training on Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly.
“We had a behind-the-scenes animal consultant with a diploma in dog behaviour working with both the production team … we followed positive reinforcement training at all times. We liaised extensively with the RSPCA - stories were submitted prior to filming, and we appraised them of our plans for behind-the-scenes support.
“Throughout the production we went above and beyond to ensure the dogs were the beneficiaries of the process and best practice was followed at all steps.”
But the RSPCA told Beast they have asked Ten to clarify that the society did not approve the stories on the program.
News Corp and the press council
University of Melbourne research fellow Dr Denis Muller has an interesting piece in the latest issue of Australian Journalism Review, which argues that News Corp Australia’s editorial code is at odds with the Australian Press Council’s general principles on the issue of separating news and opinion in news pieces.
News Corp allows its journalists to mix the two so that readers might see what the newspaper’s view is on the matter being reported and the press council says news and opinion should be separate.
The problem with this conflict is not only that the press council rules on any breaches of News Corp articles but that the Murdoch newspaper business almost entirely funds the APC, which is a self-regulatory body. Most media organisations are members, except the West Australian which set up its own body, and the Guardian, which has a readers’ editor who is an internal ombudsman.
Muller claims that the editorial policy is “a crucial part of the machinery that enables the Murdoch press to prosecute feuds, intimidate politicians and engage in hyper-partisan campaigning without regard for truth or consequences”.
He argues the press council is compromised in dealing with it by its reliance on News Corp as the single biggest provider of its funding. But when Muller approached the council and News to discuss the matter he got no reply.
ABC journalists on diversity
ABC journalist Bridget Brennan, a Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta woman, says when she got her cadetship at the ABC she was the only Indigenous person in a large newsroom. “At the beginning of my career, I often felt like I didn’t belong in the media and communications industry, which was predominantly white,” the Indigenous affairs editor says. “A decade later, we have a growing force of young Aboriginal journalists and content makers working across Australia and internationally.”
Brennan is one of several ABC journalists to reveal how their identity played out at work in the corporation’s latest Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging Plan published this week.
News executive Gavin Fang, who is deputy to Justin Stevens, revealed he was mocked for his name when he got into journalism.
“As a young journalist in Western Australia the surname Fang was sometimes a source of amusement for colleagues,” Fang said. “I remember vividly being asked to cover stories about dog and snake bites as if this was some especially funny play on my name.” Fang, who has led the ABC’s diversity push, says diversity in all its forms makes journalism better.
‘They still have horoscopes’
Sacking a 101-year-old bridge columnist who has been delivering his copy faithfully since 1968 can’t be easy for an editor. But Len Dixon says John-Paul Moloney, the managing editor of the Canberra Times, was very respectful when he called to say the paper was gutting its feature pages and the chess and bridge columns were among the casualties.
“I felt that he handled it extremely well,” Dixon told Weekly Beast on a Zoom call. “It’s not unique to the Canberra Times; the number of bridge columns in newspapers around the world over has been steadily declining.”
In 1968 when the ACT paper was in the centre of the city, Dixon, a former public servant, would pop in and type his column on one of the typewriters before the editorial staff got in. He was paid $8 a column at the start and by 2023 he was getting the princely sum of $75. He still plays bridge at a local club and will continue writing his column online. “I have done nothing to lengthen my life at all,” Dixon says. “I do as much exercise as I’m forced to but on the whole I’m not an exercising person. I don’t know that there’s necessarily any reason why I’ve lived this long, but I’m a pretty relaxed person. And I think that helps.” The only slightly critical note Dixon had on the incident was: “I dare say they still have horoscopes”.
