When Shane Warne was found unresponsive in Koh Samui, Thailand a week ago his manager, James Erskine, issued a short statement confirming his untimely death at 52 and relaying his family’s wish to be left alone to grieve.
“The family requests privacy at this time and will provide further details in due course,” he said.
On Monday his family gave the media a lengthy statement with individual quotes from his parents, Keith and Brigitte, his three children, Jackson, Summer and Brooke, and his ex-wife, Simone Callahan. The document included a pointed remark about the media and the family’s desire for privacy.
“We also wish to acknowledge and thank those members of the media who are honouring our request to respect our family’s privacy and who will [their emphasis] continue to do so.”
The passing of Shane Warne is the passing of a true modern great. Request the media to allow his family, friends, fans mourn his untimely demise for sometime before you begin analysis of his playing career, personal habits or death.
— Abhishek Singhvi (@DrAMSinghvi) March 8, 2022
But many editors were not listening as they scrambled to dig up any and all information in Thailand and Australia. There were paparazzi shots taken outside Callahan’s property in Victoria, with long lenses capturing Warne’s colleagues as they arrived to pay their respects to the family.
Intrusive photographs from inside Warne’s hotel room were published, including closeups of the inside of his suitcase, his nightstand and his bed. “Sitting on Warne’s bedhead was a packet of Benson and Hedges smokes – his cigarette of choice,” one report said.
Nine broadcaster Tracy Grimshaw said on social media: “Hoping Shane’s grieving kids don’t read the graphic police descriptions of the hotel room and what happened there.”
SBS presenter Jenny Brockie said she agreed with Grimshaw’s criticism on Twitter.
The media got their hands on CCTV footage from the villa: “Final moments captured in haunting CCTV images,” and, “Four masseuses are seen on CCTV leaving resort where Shane Warne was found.”
No disrespect meant to Shane Warne's family. I feel for them. They're going through the personal hell that losing a loved one brings and I wish them well. To the media, give it a rest. Show some respect and stop treating this like it's a rock and roll tour. pic.twitter.com/o7OendJjNe
— meagrebones (@meagrebones) March 10, 2022
The speculation about the cause of death began immediately with several stories asking whether his diet and lifestyle were to blame.
On Friday morning the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail all published photographs of Jackson and Brigitte Warne and other family members and friends waiting for his coffin to be repatriated.
His death did not bring to an end the tabloids’ fascination with his private life and has left many asking whether the coverage should have been more sensitive to the grief of his family and friends.
Flood sparks deluge of support
On Saturday the three commercial networks will put aside their rivalry and unite to present a fundraising concert for communities who have suffered from the devastating floods across Queensland and New South Wales.
The Seven Network, Nine and Network 10 will join for the first time in 17 years to present Australia Unites: Red Cross Flood Appeal, live on Saturday 12 March, at 7.30pm AEDT.
While we can’t fault the generosity of the people involved in pulling the mammoth event together in under a week the hosting lineup is once again an all-white affair, with commercial TV failing to reflect Australia’s multicultural society.
Hosts include Nine’s Scott Cam, Sylvia Jeffreys, Andy Lee and Peter Overton, Seven’s Natalie Barr, David Koch, Sonia Kruger and Mark Ferguson, and Ten’s Carrie Bickmore, Dr Chris Brown, Amanda Keller and Osher Günsberg.
Australia Unites: Red Cross Flood Appeal will be a star-studded joint fundraising event to help those who have suffered from the devastating #QLDFloods and #NSWFloods.
— Channel 7 (@Channel7) March 8, 2022
Join us LIVE 7:30pm AEDT this Saturday on @Channel7 and @7plus. pic.twitter.com/wvOrhIbJU1
Did the industry learn nothing after its vaccination campaign in May last year had to be re-edited after the lineup – Hamish Blake and Andy Lee, Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon, Amy Shark, Scott Cam and Eddie McGuire – was criticised for being too white?
New moves at the Age
We may soon be hearing a lot more from the founding editor of rightwing online magazine Quillette, Claire Lehmann.
Lehmann made her debut appearance on Q+A on Thursday night, an episode hosted by Stan Grant which hit a new low of just 175,000 metro viewers.
No reflection on Lehmann, who was one of five women invited as panelists on a special International Women’s Day episode.
A reminder: aside from Twitter, you can find me in the @Quillette Circle which costs just $US5 per month to join https://t.co/3ok8ztpk5j
— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) December 7, 2021
And on Instagram, where I post reading recommendations and gratuitous selfies https://t.co/ysWtBSKe7Y pic.twitter.com/1vRYJTU9cj
Sources say Lehmann is likely to start writing regularly for the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald’s opinion pages.
Her last piece for the Australian, which was about Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins at the National Press Club, was published on 6 February.
In it Lehmann said she admired both women for their courage but warned “about creating a culture that fetishises stories of female victimisation”.
The Sunday Age deputy editor, Patrick O’Neil, told Weekly Beast that Nine Entertainment was “in discussions” with Lehmann over a role. Lehmann did not respond to a request for comment.
Google and Facebook’s brown paper bag
On Thursday the ABC managing director, David Anderson, opened the ABC’s first bureau in Charleville in south-west Queensland, one of 55 new positions which have been filled in every state and in the Northern Territory.
The ABC has been able to expand its regional and rural coverage – bringing the number of journos outside the cities to 600 – thanks to the passage of the news media bargaining code 12 months ago.
After being a late entrant to the eligible media organisations, the ABC was able to negotiate with Facebook and Google for an undisclosed sum which the broadcaster promised would be spent on regional and rural public interest journalism.
The Guardian Australia editor, Lenore Taylor, said the tech funds “made a huge, huge difference to our newsroom” and enabled the site to double its podcasting desk and expand reportage outside the capital cities.
News Corp Australia and Nine Entertainment also signed deals with Facebook and Google but neither company has chosen to disclose what the funds have been spent on.
The code was described this week by the Judith Neilson Institute (JNI) inaugural Alan Moorehead journalist-in-residence, Bill Grueskin, as an Australian success story “to those who’ve long yearned to force big tech to prop up suffering newsrooms,” who also said it was “a murky deal” with unprecedented secrecy.
Grueskin, who is a professor of professional practice at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism, spoke about his research into the code at JNI’s Chippendale headquarters on Thursday, and how difficult it was to glean any details from the media companies which signed the deals with the tech giants. “Critical details [were] guarded like they’re nuclear launch codes,” Grueskin said. He said he was surprised how tight-lipped everyone was about the nature of the deals, said to be worth a total of $200m.
Grueskin’s article about the code in the Columbia Journalism Review summed it up: “In the words of one Sydney media executive, ‘It’s like a brown paper bag gets stuffed with money, is shoved across the table, and then the platforms can say: Now just shut the fuck up.’”
Devine’s staycation
Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine, who joined the New York Post for an 18-month stint before the 2020 US election, has loved it so much she has decided to stay in the Big Apple.
Devine has become a darling of the right in the US, making the gig work with appearances on Fox News, columns in Murdoch’s Sydney and New York tabloids and a book about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Laptop From Hell.
“It is very exciting,” Devine told CNN’s Source Material. “There is never a dull minute at the New York Post,” she said.
“I’ve loved my time here and I look forward to lots more.”
Better late than never?
The editors of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, Bevan Shields and Gay Alcorn, have belatedly apologised to readers for incidents last month which brought the Nine newspapers considerable criticism.
Weekly Beast reported two weeks ago that at least one staff member told Shields before 7am that the Sydney train outage was “not technically a strike” and that “industrial action” would be a better description. Shields insisted it was a strike. Internal messages revealing the exchange were later leaked.
In a letter to subscribers on Friday Shields said it wasn’t a conspiracy it was just a “stuff-up”: “Some critics have tried to portray the use of the word ‘strike’ as some kind of conspiracy but this was simply a stuff-up, which was later corrected. Any assessment of our coverage over the following hours and days would detect no sign of anti-union bias.”
There was no explanation why it took more than 10 days between staff raising concerns and the readers’ letter to correct a basic factual mistake.
Alcorn addressed the removal of the story by Chip Le Grand that suggested multimillionaire Geoff Bainbridge was the victim of an elaborate six-year extortion racket.
The Melbourne editor, who had already admitted the Age was “badly misled”, told readers it was an “embarrassing error” and that she was sorry.
“This was an embarrassing error, and we have inquired into how it happened and what our processes should be to prevent something like this happening again,” Alcorn said.
