By Jenna Price
MEMOIR
Unapologetically Ita
Ita Buttrose
Simon and Schuster, $49.99
How is it possible that the latest volume in the Ita Buttrose chronicles does not mention how the Australian media icon dealt with the case of Antoinette Lattouf, the casual ABC Sydney presenter wrongfully terminated by the national broadcaster after intense pressure from anti-Palestine, pro-Israel lobbyists?
You will recall Buttrose was chair of the ABC during the fiasco in 2023. The case brought intense scrutiny on ABC management, propelled it onto front pages, home pages and broadcast everywhere. But the case does not appear in this book, published by Simon and Schuster this week.
Why did the publisher think this was a good idea?
When I was given the job of reviewing Unapologetically Ita, I tried to find out what went wrong. How is it fair to readers to leave out this episode in Buttrose’s storied career? It attracted national headlines and cost our ABC more than $2 million. Turns out, says one insider, publication was scheduled to be in time for Christmas, the busiest book-buying time of the year. And publishing schedules allegedly wait for no man nor judge, which means anyone buying the book will be shortchanged (until the next edition).
Antoinette Lattouf won in the Federal Court of Australia in June.Credit: AAP
Getting the book out was, apparently, more important than giving readers the full story, worse than Cheryl Kernot mentioning Gareth Evans in her memoir but excluding the nookie. The treatment of Lattouf is, at least, in the public interest.
Buttrose does give insights into some of the big challenges of her time at the ABC. It’s 2019. Then Prime Minister Scott Morrison offers her the job of chair, a job she thinks she was made for. She takes the gig, meets her deputy chair Kirstin Ferguson (now a columnist for this masthead) and together they realise the extent of the repair job needed in the aftermath of the chaos left by former chair Justin Milne and former managing director Michelle Guthrie – and the challenge in dealing with “a government that I soon discovered had barely a good word to say about us”.
She’s refreshingly tough on Coalition politicians, including South Australian Senator Alex Antic, who she says told an online Christian forum that the ABC was biased but “he had not verified this by watching it”. Then Senator Eric Abetz tells David Anderson that Senate Estimates was “show time”, writes Buttrose. “That probably explains why some of the participating senators come across as clowns.”
She’s also brutal, politely, about the former minister for communications, Paul Fletcher, the member for Bradfield on Sydney’s north shore, back in the day when it was a safe seat: “His communications skills were not good. When we met, he showed little interest in anything we were doing. I often wondered if he watched or listened to the ABC.”
Then she spills the tea: “It was obvious that Paul Fletcher didn’t want any kind of relationship. In fact, it was soon apparent that his office and the office of Prime Minister Morrison leaked like sieves.” And that includes, writes Buttrose, the time when she learned on Twitter of a letter of complaint from Fletcher about the Four Corners Inside the Canberra Bubble program, in which veteran reporter Louise Milligan explored the behaviour of two ministers. Buttrose republishes the letter in full, and it’s a useful reminder of the level of control Fletcher and his political pals tried to exert.
Buttrose’s new memoir is as compelling for what it omits as for what she includes.Credit: Ross Coffey
One of the lovely things in Buttrose’s book is her enthusiasm and support for journalism - which must have driven the government of the time barking mad. I adore and admire her decision to reprint correspondence in full, and she writes to Fletcher: “This is not the first time that your correspondence to the ABC has been publicly revealed before we had been given the courtesy of reading it. Your letter and its publication add to a pattern of behaviour that go well beyond normal inquiry and might well be construed as political interference.” The full letter is even more scathing (and it’s worth buying this utterly incomplete book just to get a lesson on how to respond to fools) – and Fletcher never raised Inside the Canberra Bubble with her again. Plus, who doesn’t love a woman who keeps receipts?
Buttrose left out some of her other challenges too – Stan Grant’s name does not appear and there is no reckoning with the way he was hung out to dry after repeated racial harassment, although she acknowledges the reality of Indigenous dispossession and discrimination. There’s no recognition of her embarrassing misstep when she basically – and I paraphrase – called the younger staff of the ABC a bunch of snowflakes.
I wouldn’t say there was much self-reflection – any keen follower of the ABC will see Buttrose doesn’t acknowledge the way she turned her position as chair into a five-day-a-week job, more of an executive than a chair – and starved the actual managing director David Anderson of oxygen.
I love her advocacy on disability, ageing and menopause, all of which require some rewiring of the Australian media sensibility – and some of the biggest changes we’ve seen in how the media cover some of these issues is down to Buttrose, who speaks openly about her own disability.
But a really great memoir is one where you confess both failure and success. Looking forward to the second edition, with apologies where they are due.
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