Sky News Australia launched a torrent of negative headlines this week about Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, which left some wondering whether it was one of the Murdoch empire’s more blatant attempts to smear an enemy.
The acres of bad press for the former PM came after an interview screened on rightwing UK channel GB News and back home on Sky.
In response to questioning by Brexit cheerleader Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, called Rudd “nasty” and claimed he “won’t be there long” as Australian ambassador to the US.
Cue days of negative headlines saying Rudd, who has been critical of Trump in the past, cannot last in the key Washington post.
No matter that it remains unclear Trump even knew who Rudd was.
Farage prefaced his question by disclosing it came from “our good friends at Sky News Australia”.
Hours later 2GB’s Ben Fordham reported that the Rudd question was written by Paul Whittaker, the chief executive of Sky News Australia and chair of the editorial board of The Australian.
Whittaker, according to Fordham, was invited by the GB News boss, Angelos Frangopoulos, Whittaker’s predecessor at Sky, to craft a question.
And why would Whittaker care about Trump’s opinion on an ex-PM?
Fordham revealed his take on the motive behind the question: “[Rudd’s] war on News Corp has come back to bite him on the bum,” he told listeners. “When he was pushing for a royal commission into Rupert Murdoch’s influence it was always going to end badly because when politicians go to war with the media, they look a little bit like footy players whining about the referee.”
A little more than three years ago Rudd’s petition calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch media reached a historic high of almost half a million signatures.
The ex-Labor leader said Murdoch had become “a cancer – an arrogant cancer on our democracy”.
Whittaker has been approached for comment.
Best face forward
The ABC’s social media team has taken one of the broadcaster’s most marketable assets, Breakfast presenter Tony Armstrong, and turned him into a meme. On LinkedIn, nine photos of Armstrong are used to ask “which Tony Armstrong are you today?”
Nine talent walks away
The Today show presenter Brooke Boney is walking away from Nine to take up a master’s in public policy at Oxford University.
“Guys, I have some very big news for you this morning,” she told viewers on Friday. “I’ve been offered a place at Oxford University later this year, which means I’ll be leaving the show after the Olympics.
Brooke Boney shares a MAJOR announcement with The Today Show family. 💛 #9Today pic.twitter.com/9EGUKbHGny
— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) March 21, 2024
“It’s been a dream of mine to be able to study at an overseas university, and it just felt like the right time to take that step.”
In 2018 the former Triple J newsreader became one of the most prominent Indigenous personalities on Australian commercial television when she replaced Richard Wilkins on Channel Nine.
The Gamilaroi woman, who grew up in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, said she would return to Nine after a year in the UK and “carve out the next part of what my career is”.
“I’d love to be able to come back and still do things with Nine and figure out what that looks like,” she said.
Fungi fables
The media is getting overexcited about the upcoming trial of Erin Patterson, no more so than the ABC which has launched a podcast, Mushroom Case Daily, before a trial date has even been announced. Patterson is yet to enter a plea and any trial is unlikely to be before 2025.
Patterson has been charged with murdering Gail and Don Patterson, both 70, and her sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, at lunch in her home in Leongatha on 29 July.
As well as the three murder charges, she was also charged with five counts of attempted murder.
We reported last month Nine had distanced itself from a potential misstep by producers of an upcoming documentary about the mushroom lunch after the production company published a blurb on its website complete with a title that experts say had the potential to run foul of Australian contempt laws.
Hosted by the ABC court reporter Kristian Silva, the podcast promises “all the key updates from court … if and when the case proceeds to a full trial”.
“Press ‘Follow’ on Mushroom Case Daily now to be the first to hear updates from the case.”
News Corp has launched its own podcast, The Mushroom Cook, which adds to its extensive true crime offerings.
New star of the right
The rightwing media has found a new local hero in the form of former Neighbours soapie star and pop singer Holly Valance, who lives in the UK with her billionaire property developer husband, Nick Candy.
Valance burst back on to the scene last month with a viral video about her political evolution to rightwinger.
“Everyone starts off as a lefty and then wakes up at some point after you start making money, working, trying to run a business, trying to buy a home and then realise what crap ideas they all are,” she said. “And then you go to the right.”
Now she has given an interview to GB News in which she expanded her views, giving licence to Australian commentators to jump in and applaud her attack on Australia’s “wokeness”.
“The Australia I grew up in was unreal. It was so fun and we didn’t seem to have all these problems,” she said.
“The woke stuff’s really gone big in Australia.”
The 40-year-old called Greta Thunberg a “demonic little gremlin” and revealed she was an anti-vaxxer.
“If you are fit and healthy, you should be fine, your body will know what to do,” she said.
The radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands endorsed the sentiment about Thunberg, saying climate change was “bullshit” and “I hate that chick too”.
The Australian’s media writer Sophie Elsworth said Valance was becoming “a bit of a rock star” and “speaking what many people are often too afraid to say”.
The Sky News host Chris Kenny applauded Valance as “golden” for her views on “the way our kids are overwhelmed by climate alarmism”.
“For a starters she says that the woke crusade in Australia has changed this country for the worse, including by injecting issues of sexuality and gender fluidity into the world of schoolchildren,” he said.
In the Oz, Jenna Clarke credited Valance with kickstarting a wave of “post-woke politics”.
“Sick of the same robotic rhetoric from the major political parties, the kids are eating up populism for the fact that they finally ‘feel seen’ by certain personalities,” Clarke wrote.
