By Noel Towell
Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph thought it had landed a blow this month in the US-owned publishing empire’s ongoing holy war against Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The paper invoked the legacy of none other than Nelson Mandela to accuse the former royal couple of tacky conduct.
The Tele’s European correspondent Danielle Gusmaroli quoted Ndileka Mandela, granddaughter of the former South African president, to the effect that Harry and Meghan had used the Mandela legacy to fund their California lifestyle by drawing eyeballs to that famous Netflix doco.
Sounds pretty bad, right?
But that’s not how Ndileka sees it, it turns out.
Ndileka Mandela was not impressed.Credit: Facebook
In an opinion piece for The Independent in London, Mandela has lashed out at the “Australian newspaper” which, she says, “misquoted” her, “leading to global news coverage that weaponised my name – and the name of my grandfather, the late anti-apartheid activist and first president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela – to target a woman of colour.”
“The words wrongly attributed to me, criticising them for quoting my grandfather, are not mine at all – they belong not to me, but to those who have amplified these falsehoods all over the world.
“I am mortified to have seen how my words were twisted in such a way as to distort my genuine concerns about the commercial exploitation of my grandfather’s legacy.”
Now, there’s a story, but you won’t be reading it in the Daily Telegraph.
News Corp Australia, publisher of the Tele, did not respond on Sunday to a request for comment.
PARTY’S OVER
Hopefully by now, most of us will have moved past any messiness at December’s end-of-year work drinks, but for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp - yes, that lot again - the hangover just won’t quit.
The US-owned media company has parted company with its third – yes, its third – senior male editorial employee in just three months over alcohol-fuelled bad behaviour at work functions.
The latest departure, a senior editor at the stable’s flagship broadsheet The Australian, comes in the wake of the sackings of the paper’s former editor-in-chief Chris Dore and Sky News presenter Chris Smith, both punted after inappropriate behaviour towards female colleagues at work functions.
In the latest matter, women employed by The Australian filed complaints about the senior editor over his physical and verbal conduct at an after-work event in Surry Hills in December, with the complaints later verified by an internal investigation.
The senior editor engaged lawyers and issued a legal letter to the media company and now management has been telling staff that he will not be returning to the newsroom, although neither party was willing on Sunday to discuss the terms of his departure.
In the wake of the Surry Hills Christmas Party, News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller issued staff with a blunt warning: “Remember that inappropriate behaviour has consequences.”
Michael will be hoping that everybody gets the memo this year.
OPEN HOUSE
Australian leftie social media had a bit of a meltdown on Friday night when pictures of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sitting next to Peter Costello, former treasurer in John Howard’s Liberal government and currently chairman of Nine, publisher of The Age, at Melbourne Park for the Australian Open women’s singles final.
Just wait until the chateratti find out who Costello was hanging with on Sunday evening.
Peter Dutton and Peter Costello at Nine’s soirée at the Australian Open.Credit: Eddie Jim
Leader of the opposition Peter Dutton and his sister Samantha Quirk were enjoying what looked like a delicious bite of dinner with Costello in the Nine suite at John Cain Arena before the heavyweight men’s final between Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas on Sunday evening.
Just across the table was staunch Labor man and former Collingwood footy club president Eddie McGuire, so there would have been a lot to talk about, once tennis greats Todd Woodbridge and Lleyton Hewitt got through telling Nine’s guests what they thought of the final match-up.
Elsewhere in the room, we had Nine chief executive Mike Sneesby, comedian Andy Lee, the network’s entertainment editor Richard Wilkins, actor Lachy Hulme and presenter Darren McMullen.
HAND-BOL-ED
For an elite athlete under a performance-enhancing drugs cloud, the bad news just keeps piling up.
Australian middle-distance runner Peter Bol was looking good to become Young Australian of the Year for 2023 until news broke this month that he had allegedly tested positive for the banned substance EPO in out-of-competition testing last year, dashing the Olympic finalist’s hopes for the award.
Looks like the invitations are drying up elsewhere for Bol, who maintains his innocence and whose B-sample has yet to be tested, with a hurried reshuffle of the line-up for an event in Melbourne on Friday promoting the Commonwealth Games, to be held in regional Victoria in 2026.
Event hosts the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry swapped out Bol for Diamonds netballer Liz Watson – a gold medallist at last year’s Birmingham games – who will join Jeroen Weimar – the state’s former Covid-19 response Tsar and now chief executive of Victoria 2026 – on stage at the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s Olympic Room on Friday.
We wondered if more scheduled public appearances by Bol were going the same way, but the athlete’s management did not respond to a request for comment.
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