At the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, it seems, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Three years after the former feminist columnist Clementine Ford walked away from her column and accused the Herald of losing its independence, an interview with the author was spiked after it had been written by an Age journalist, published online and printed in Saturday’s Spectrum.
On Thursday the interview Kerrie O’Brien conducted over lunch with Ford about her new book How We Love appeared online, complete with a photo of the $300 lunch tab. The hard copy of the article was ready to go too, as it is printed ahead of the news section. But soon the online story had disappeared and that particular page in Spectrum was torn up and re-printed.
Tory Maguire, the executive editor of the Herald and the Age, confirmed the story had been pulled at the 11th hour.
“Clementine Ford spent years making vile and personal attacks on the journalists and editors of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age after the mastheads stopped publishing her column,” Maguire told Weekly Beast. “I had knocked back a pitch for an interview with her but there was a breakdown in communication and it was commissioned and published in error. I have pulled it from Spectrum and taken it down out of respect for my team.”
The animosity was sparked by Ford’s harsh criticism of the Herald on Twitter, and in an article for Schwarz Media’s the Saturday Paper. Ford was angered by getting an official warning from her editor for calling Scott Morrison a “fucking disgrace” on social media and said she quit because of the “cultural shift” at the newspapers, which are now owned by Nine Entertainment.
But she denies Maguire’s claim that she “spent years making vile and personal attacks on the journalists and editors of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age”. Ford says she has had a thing or two to say about the direction of the SMH - but that has been aimed not at the journalists but senior management and Chessell.
After she quit she wrote that “the change in political culture at Fairfax began long before the television network set its sights on establishing a newspaper presence”.
“To my mind, the trajectory traces back to the appointment in March 2018 of James Chessell as Fairfax’s group executive editor of Australian Metro Publishing … he has also been an adviser to former Liberal treasurer Joe Hockey, as well as a known associate of many in business and finance,” she wrote.
Chessell, since promoted to Nine’s managing director of publishing – with responsibility for the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, Brisbane Times and WAToday – as you can imagine is no fan of Ford’s.
Ford, who had no idea what had happened to the piece when we contacted her, was disappointed readers wouldn’t get to read about the “lovely chat” she had with O’Brien.
She told Weekly Beast that “if something as gentle and inoffensive as a piece about love can be spiked as retaliation against valid journalistic critique” then “I do think readers should think carefully about what that means”.
Back from the ‘dark side’
We are used to journalists quitting reporting to join the so-called dark side as advisers and lobbyists but when they go the other way it can ruffle feathers.
Tom Baddeley to replace Russell Woolf as new ABC Radio Perth Breakfast host https://t.co/xL1ZR4GwQJ
— ABC Perth (@abcperth) January 6, 2022
Long-term Santos spinner Tom Baddeley has represented the oil and gas producer as the manager, government and community relations in Western Australia and the Northern Territory for 12 years. Before that he was WA’s director for the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, the peak national body representing the oil and gas industry.
A former journalist who left the ABC in 2005, Baddeley starts on 7 February as ABC Radio Perth’s new Breakfast presenter, replacing Russell Woolf, who died suddenly last October.
Govt affairs for Santos is not just any old corporate job https://t.co/JcSjwiBOST
— Dan Gocher (@justdanfornow) January 27, 2022
Some environmental campaigners are concerned about the appointment given Santos is a powerful player – it was the fossil fuel company which the government hosted at its pavilion at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow last year.
Baddeley, who has appeared before the NT’s fracking inquiry, will now have to present an objective journalistic voice on all the issues he used to prosecute for Santos.
We think the ABC may have sensed a problem as the press release announcing the appointment reached back 14 years on Baddeley’s CV to find a job that wasn’t related to fossil fuel lobbying. “He began his journalism career with The West Australian and after leaving the ABC in 2005, went on to work in media relations, government relations, policy advocacy and public affairs including as Communications Manager for WA’s then new Super Rugby team, the Western Force,” the ABC said.
An ABC spokesperson said ABC Radio broadcasters have a diverse range of experiences and come to the organisation from many different backgrounds.
“Tom Baddeley is an experienced journalist and former ABC reporter,” the spokesperson said. “When he takes to the Perth airwaves, next month he will be subject to the same editorial standards and ABC Editorial Policies that all of our employees must meet. He will be required to present independent and balanced content at all times, regardless of the topic or interview subject.”
A bit rich
With Covid-19 in Australia deaths passing 3,000 we were quite startled by a headline in the Australian Financial Review that the pandemic had an upside. It was, according to Michael Stutchbury’s AFR, good for rich people.
“COVID was a great wealth-creation event,” declared senior correspondent Aaron Patrick in an article that argued that for some homeowners “the pandemic was the greatest wealth-creation event of their lives”.
Patrick is well known to Beast readers for his hit job on Samantha Maiden last year which backfired spectacularly.
Apparently all this wealth was good news for the prime minister, who would be rewarded at the next election by happy, cashed-up voters. Watch out Albo.
“The consequences of a more prosperous-feeling society will be seen in the election campaign,” Patrick wrote. “Labor leader Anthony Albanese will have to be more cautious; more wary of frightening a nation asking itself: what’s the compelling reason to replace the government under which we have become so much richer?”
Patrick’s award under a cloud
Still on Patrick, the National Press Club board will discuss a request to rescind an award he won for an article that the WA supreme court subsequently found “contained incorrect statements of fact”.
Last month justice Rene Le Miere awarded $400,000 to Dr Jemma Green, who sued for defamation over two articles published in the Fin in December 2018 about her technology company Powerledger.
Le Miere said the imputation in the articles by Patrick was defamatory and the defendants had been unable to establish that it was substantially true or that it was their honest opinion, adding that nominating himself for the award during legal proceedings was an “aggravating factor” in the defamation.
The judge was also scathing about Patrick’s decision to criticise defamation law on the eve of the trial in September 2020 in an article that claimed Green’s action was “sucking up financial resources that could be used to fund investigative journalism”.
Le Miere found that the September article constituted a publication by Patrick and the AFR of an act of intimidation or reprisal or ill will towards Green for suing them.
The judgment found the articles had several inaccuracies, and conveyed serious defamatory imputations against Green.
NPC’s chief executive Maurice Reilly told Weekly Beast he had referred the matter to legal counsel for an opinion. “The judgment it should be noted is against the AFR and Aaron and not the National Press Club,” he said. “We don’t have that opinion as yet and the board will consider when it meets in February.”
The judgment said while the award judges would not have known about the legal action, the newspaper did. “In those circumstances it was improper for Mr Patrick to nominate himself for the award and state that the article was an objective look at blockchain technology,” Le Miere said.
The AFR did not respond to a request for comment.
60 Minutes lands Cleo Smith special
60 Minutes will launch its 2022 season on 6 February with an exclusive interview with the family of Cleo Smith, an interview which is reportedly part of a $2m multimedia deal Nine Entertainment made with Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Glidden.
The program released a promo to tease the upcoming show which they claim contains “startling revelations to reporter Tara Brown about what really happened to their precious daughter”.
The Australian reported the deal includes plans for a drama, likely to be a six-part special for Nine’s streaming service Stan.
And all this before the man accused of abducting her is sentenced.
Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, on Monday admitted taking the four-year-old from a tent at the remote Blowholes campsite last year.
