Joe Hildebrand: The sexist scandal we all missed this week

Social media has been a melting pot of outrage this week while a sexist scandal was broadcast live — and yet, we all missed it.

The problem with outrage is that it has nothing to do with the issue and everything to do with the outrage itself.

This is why it is simultaneously so pointless and corrosive: It never fixes the big issues it purports to care about while at the same time, constantly fuelling division and anger over things that aren’t really big issues in the first place.

Anyone with half a brain will have seen this phenomenon explode in recent years, turbocharged by the rise of social media, and anyone who has failed to notice it is probably part of the problem.

But there has been no more perfect example of the selective, tribal and hypocritical instincts at the heart of ideological indignation than we have seen in Australia this week — an example made all the more perfect by the fact that few people saw it at all.

As anyone who has glanced at a screen over the past seven days will know, this was the week in which a woman who has spent her whole career fighting for recognition in a male-dominated field got snubbed in favour of yet another bloke during a major television broadcast.

Most of you will by now be nodding with recognition of this story but now ask yourself this: Am I talking about Wimbledon or the Logies?

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Wimbledon Championship 2019. Ash Barty easily wins the second round against Alison Van Uytvanck. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

Social media went into its usual apoplexy this week when the live feed of Ash Barty’s tennis match was delayed because Channel 7 was still broadcasting the end of Nick Kyrgios' five-setter against fellow Australian Jordan Thompson. To quote one prolific commentator: “My Twitter starts to go ballistic with the outrage.”

He wasn’t wrong. Not since Andre Agassi wore a white T-shirt with turquoise stripes have followers of the All England Club’s premier tournament been so ruddy-faced with rage.

And of course every controversy needs a corpse, which is why Seven’s effortlessly affable sports reporter Mark Beretta was supposedly hung out like a sacrificial lamb to justify the decision.

“Nick Kyrgios’ match started at 11pm. 1am is when Ash’s match starts,” Beretta told his Sunrise crew.

“But Nick Kyrgios and Jordan Thompson are slugging it out over five sets. They run long. People have been watching for two hours, and at the climax of the match, we’re gonna say: ‘Let’s go to Ash now’? That’s the difficult decision.

“We flicked between the two matches until Nick was done and then we went with Ash. That’s how it unfolded. And the nature of our arrangement with Wimbledon is that we can only show one match on one channel at any one time.”

That seemed like a perfectly sensible explanation to me and Beretta is a perfectly sensible guy. In fact he’s one of the nicest guys in television. But somehow even this was a patriarchal media conspiracy.

.@MarkBeretta explains why the start of @ashbar96's first round #Wimbledon match wasn't broadcast live. pic.twitter.com/eLFthFSrbf

— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) 2 July 2019

In one of the most quoted social media posts, another prolific commentator from the now Nine-owned Age and SMH went in for the kill: “If @7Sport is going to defend itself ast (sic) least get the facts right. Kyrgios match started at 8pm, not 11pm as @MarkBeretta says here, and Barty’s started at 10.”

Accusing a senior sports journalist on the host network of not knowing or faking the facts is a pretty serious charge, which struck me as strange. And it took only a matter of seconds to figure out Beretta was in fact referring to Wimbledon time.

Kyrgios’ match started at 11am and Barty’s wasn’t until 1pm. Sure, Beretta might have flubbed the “am” and “pm” but the print journalist trying to slam him flubbed the spelling of the word “at”, so let’s not be too quick to cast stones.

Meanwhile, the other big TV story this week was Tom Gleeson winning the Gold Logie and knocking out the industry favourite Amanda Keller in the process.

Much like the broadcast timing of international tennis tournaments, this was hardly a heinous crime — and even if it was a crime, at least it was a funny one. Perhaps not as funny as the guy who tried to shoplift a bowl of spaghetti bolognese down his pants but certainly up there.

But I digress.

Tom Gleeson and Amanda Keller arrive at the 61st Annual TV WEEK Logie Awards. Picture: Jono Searle/Getty Images

The point is, it is clear to anyone with a passing interest in television that Gleeson’s guerrilla campaigns have cost two people the Gold Logie.

The first was Tracy Grimshaw, who was the outstanding favourite when Tom launched his sarcastic “Grant Denyer for Gold” campaign last year and got my beloved little buddy over the line and the second was Amanda Keller, who was the overwhelming favourite outside of Tom’s anti-campaign campaign.

Again, Gleeson’s efforts were funny and his win was fair and square. He has more viewers and got more votes than both of the people he respectively got up and beat. It just so happens that the biggest victims of each campaign were women who had worked their guts out in a man’s world only to be deprived of their final glory by a bloke’s practical joke.

The upshot is a guy who didn’t really want the Gold Logie got one on the back of voters who had probably never even voted in the Logies before while two women who both wanted and deserved it missed out for the same reason. No wonder Tracy and Amanda are a tad pissed off.

Tom Gleeson taking out the Gold Logie was considered inoffensive by most people, despite his female colleagues’ hard work being totally snubbed. Picture: Darren England/AAP

But where were the cries of sexism when that happened? Where were the trendy Twitterati? Where was the solidarity of the feminist sisterhood?

Surely the intrepid Age/SMH journo who attacked Seven over the Barty broadcast would have something to say about this?

In fact he wrote a whole opinion piece about it — a paean of breathless praise for Gleeson.

“It is to the eternal credit of Logies organisers that they invited the award wrecker to deliver the opening monologue. And deliver he did …

“If you’d tuned in only for the deadly opening and the dead people, you’d have been rewarded beyond expectation and could have gone to bed before seemingly endless hours of awards given to shows you’d never watched and people you’d never heard of took over the night.”

Incredibly, the garlands continued to be stacked on with almost medieval fealty: “Gleeson rarely removes his tongue from his cheek, and he managed to nail both the glory and the gory of the moment: no one will ever take the honour from him, but no one will ever be able to say he didn’t recognise just how silly it is.

“Having wreaked havoc on this ceremony two years running, long may Tom Gleeson reign — or perhaps for just one year.”

Tom Gleeson‘s Gold Logie win was largely praised this year. Picture: Nine

And so when two women are deprived of recognition for a lifetime of work by a man’s stunt it is something to be celebrated but when a TV network doesn’t broadcast the first part of a female tennis player’s round one match it’s suddenly a sexist scandal. And all of this from the very same commentator in the very same week.

Now I don’t want to publicly towel this guy up like he did to Mark Beretta — one of the nicest and most decent guys in journalism you could ever meet — which is why I’ve chosen not to name him. Indeed, he is probably a nice guy too but he is also the perfect embodiment of the idiocy and hypocrisy of the outrage class.

Still, at least this class has taught us there are two types of people in the world: problem-solvers and pontificators. No prizes for guessing the ones who are worth listening to.

Joe Hildebrand co-hosts Studio 10, 8.30am weekdays, on Network Ten. Continue the conversation @Joe_Hildebrand