Wiki-tweaks: Taylor Auerbach’s CV gets a polish
Just days after launching defamation action against his one-time employer, the former TV producer’s Wikipedia page has been given a serious makeover by a mysterious fan.
It has been a busy few days for former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach.
Last week it emerged that Auerbach – who gave dramatic evidence during Bruce Lehrmann’s blockbuster defamation trial against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson – had lodged defamation proceedings against the Seven Network.
Then, on Saturday, Auerbach’s Wikipedia page was given a polish by a mysterious somebody calling themselves Wikibuff91, who “updated this biography which is very out of date”.
Among the changes were descriptions of Auerbach as a “famous Australian media figure” who became “one of the country’s lead investigative print journalists”. Impressive, no? That Wikibuff91 guy is obviously a big Auerbach fan!
Auerbach’s Wikipedia page also now notes that he is a “professionally trained singer” with an “exceptionally expansive range”.
If that’s not enough, the Wiki entry sheds some much-needed light on Auerbach’s brief appearance on reality cooking show Come Dine with Me.
“A fan favourite, Auerbach finished third of the five contestants after serving Helen (a difficult and notoriously rude contestant) allegedly raw chicken on the final night.”
Diary notes the careful use of the word “allegedly” in the context of the raw chicken. Clearly, Wikibuff91 firmly believes that the chook was cooked to perfection.
We asked Auerbach if he was responsible for the generous Wikipedia edit but he declined to give us a straight answer. He did, however, imply that our line of questioning was unlikely to win us any journalism awards.
Cheeky!
No date has been set for the first court sitting in Auerbach’s defamation case against Seven.
But the legal action was first flagged a year ago when news.com.au reported that Auerbach had sent a concerns notice that “named former Seven chief executive officer James Warburton, Kerry Stokes’ longstanding right-hand man Bruce McWilliam and producer and blogger Robert McKnight, and refers to comments it is claimed they made over the cocaine and sex scandal that emerged around the program’s explosive interview with Bruce Lehrmann”.
This is truly The Never-Ending Story.
ABC Friends’ pre-election sob story wearing a bit thin on facts
Activist group ABC Friends will launch its online advertising campaign on Monday for the federal election, with the organisation’s 77,000 members put on notice to do what they do best: cry poor.
ABC Friends president Cassandra Parkinson sent an email on Saturday to the Aunty Army, warning that “the stakes are high for the ABC in this election”.
“There was nothing in the budget for the ABC … it is up to us to change that,” Parkinson thundered in her call to arms, perhaps unaware that the public broadcaster’s funding already had been locked in by the Albanese government until 2028.
“We must remind our political representatives that people across Australia care about the ABC’s future. You, our 77,000 members and supporters, are a powerful group who can tell them that the ABC must be properly funded.
“That it must remain free to access, with no ads and no subscriptions. And that we vehemently oppose any attempt to sell it off.”
Whoa, what? They’re gonna flog the ABC?! Who? When? Where? We must have missed the memo?
Actually, no. Sorry. That proposal has never seriously been put forward by any major political party and it most certainly won’t be floated at this election. Neither should it be.
Although the organisation has many detractors – many of whom simply would like to see the ABC offer value for money – it still occupies a vital role in the Australian media landscape, especially in the regions.
So why would the ABC’s noisy activist collective want to run a disingenuous scare campaign about the possibility of a “For sale” sign being hung up outside the ABC?
Because jumping up and down about a perceived lack of taxpayer funding is the only shot they have in their locker. And it’s wearing thin.
Complaining about a shortage of funds allows the ABC to sweep its core problems under the carpet. Rather than talking about an unrelenting commitment to impartial journalism or focusing on strategies to service Australia’s news deserts instead of trying to woo inner-city audiences with excessive lifestyle content, the ABC’s supporters – and its leaders – continue to push the argument that the public broadcaster would be so much better if only the feds would shower them with a bit more cash.
This Thursday, ABC chairman Kim Williams will deliver a speech at the Melbourne Press Club, an address in which he will reflect on his first year at the ABC.
Diary is willing to hazard a guess that Chairman Kim will call for a further boost to the ABC’s funding, as he has consistently done across a series of speeches that he has rolled out over the past 12 months.
It will be interesting to see if he mentions the $1.1m the ABC has spend to date on defending the unlawful termination case brought by fill-in presenter Antoinette Lattouf.
The truth is that in an era of entrenched cost-of-living crisis, with a decade of budget deficits looming and as commercial media outlets tighten their belts, additional ABC funding boosts just aren’t in the nation’s trolley of priorities.
As for the argument that there was nothing in the budget for the ABC? We’re not sure exactly what the broadcaster’s loyalists were hoping for.
In December 2024, the Labor government announced a one-off top-up of $83.1m across two years from the 2026-27 financial year, and then an ongoing commitment of $43m a year in additional funding. In the coming financial year, the ABC will receive taxpayer funding of $1.229bn, an increase of $33m from 2024-25. That increase, while not enormous, is above the consumer price index.
Aunty’s leaders and followers would be well advised to read the national room before begging for more during this election campaign.
Hume hits the highway
Political forums are pretty dry affairs. Indeed, if no one says anything controversial or vaguely inappropriate, they can feel like an episode of the ABC’s Q+A. And no one wants that.
Luckily for those in attendance at the first birthday celebration of Seven’s online newspaper The Nightly earlier this month, the masthead’s regally titled “writer-at-large” Latika Bourke was on hand to deliver some old-fashioned awkwardness. Hooray!
Bourke was part of an onstage panel discussing the upcoming federal election when she offered her assessment of Peter Dutton’s frontbench.
One of the big challenges for the Opposition Leader, Bourke said, was that his frontbench wasn’t exactly filled with standout performers.
In fact, she could name-check only one member of the Coalition shadow ministry who impressed her. The rest were “Morrison leftovers”. Ouch!
As opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume looked on from the front row of the Sydney Opera House theatrette, Bourke identified the hope of the Coalition side.
It’s Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson!
Oh no!
Bourke’s searing assessment might not have caused a ripple if not for the fact that one minute after the clanger, Hume rose from her seat, in full view of the 100-odd members of the audience, and left the room as the panel discussion continued. It was impossible to miss. So, was Hume’s departure as it seemed? A silent yet public dummy spit?
No.
Turns out that Senator Hume had told the organisers of the event that she could stay for only the first 20 minutes of the panel discussion because she had another engagement to attend.
Unfortunately, her necessary departure at the 20-minute mark roughly coincided with Bourke throwing shade in her direction. What rotten luck!
We’re reliably informed that while the assembled crowd was tittering about the incident on the night, Hume wasn’t fussed at all.
Water off a duck’s back, apparently.
That said, Diary reckons the next time Hume has to leave a function early, you might find her seated at the back of the room.
‘Fearless’ Gwen remembered
Gwen Akiko Robinson, a giant of Southeast Asia journalism, a grandee of the regional reporting scene and a widely respected Myanmar expert, died in Bangkok on the weekend, aged 65.
The editor-at-large of the Nikkei Asian Review (a title richly earned) died after a long battle with cancer and only hours after being evacuated from her hospital bed by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that devastated Myanmar and her adopted Thai home city.
The storied Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, of which Robinson was the immediate past president, said in a statement on Sunday that the passing of the journalist of Australian and Japanese heritage had “prompted an outpouring of grief and disbelief from around the world”.
Fearless, free-spirited and with a capacity for global networking rarely matched, Robinson graduated from the Australian National University in the 1970s and would go on to become one of the region’s most talented journalists and storytellers.
She reported with distinction from across the region for some of the world’s great mastheads, including the Financial Times and Times of London, in Japan, Southeast Asia, New York and Washington, before spending a year as a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. In her final role as a roving editor for the Tokyo-based Nikkei she “set an impossibly high bar” through her commitment to journalism of quality and integrity, and will be particularly remembered for bringing attention and humanism to reporting on Myanmar’s forgotten war.
Generous to a fault, “she stayed the course when others grew bored” and helped many journalists get published in an increasingly frugal news environment, former Eastern Economic Review editor Michael Vatiokitis said on Sunday.
“Beneath her steely and sometimes truculent exterior lurked a kind and gentle soul with a huge heart and a soft spot for the underdog,” he said.
Andrew Gower, her former editor at the FT, described the bicultural daughter of journalists as both “an insightful reporter, commentator and editor” and “enormous fun to be with, as anyone who worked with her in the field can attest”.
Friend and Asia Link group chief executive Martine Letts said Robinson never lost her zest for life and “worked the room and the world right to the end”.
She is survived by her brother Mark.
Triple M formula jars
Last week’s release of the first radio ratings survey of 2025 was a mixed bag for the ABC.
Radio National breakfast, under new host Sally Sara, had a shocker, while the Adelaide and Sydney stations enjoyed steady ratings growth.
But the result in Melbourne was a startling wake-up call for ABC execs.
Clearly, the Triple M-like experiment at ABC Melbourne to pair a former AFL footballer (Bob Murphy) with a commercial TV reporter (Sharnelle Vella) doesn’t appeal to Aunty’s audience in the Victorian capital.
The duo registered an audience share of 6.3 per cent in the crucial breakfast timeslot, down 1.6 percentage points on the final survey of 2024 when comedian Sammy J presented the show.
ABC metro radio boss Mike Fitzpatrick used to oversee Triple M breakfast shows around Australia that linked sportspeople with broadcasters, and while it might be a tried-and-tested formula on the FM dial it’s unlikely to work on the public broadcaster.
One well-placed ABC Radio source told Diary that unless Murphy and Vella can connect with listeners across the next two monthly surveys, it’s unlikely they will last the year, given that the breakfast program has a direct flow-on effect on audience numbers for the shows that follow.
The news was better for the bosses at Triple M, where audiences love eating their cereal while listening to footy players.
The return of Mick Molloy to Triple M, alongside former St Kilda champ Nick Riewoldt, plus “the voice of Australia’s working class” Titus O’Reily, and station veteran Rosie Walton, saw the program lift its share by 1.3 percentage points to 7.9 per cent.
It’s now game on between the two SCA FM breakfast shows as Fox’s trio of Fifi Box, former AFL star Brendan Fevola and comedian Nick Cody dipped 1.0 to 8.4 per cent.
O’Keefe’s new gig
Former 2GB drivetime host Chris O’Keefe is the latest ex-journo to join the ranks of communications consulting shop GRACosway.
O’Keefe left the Nine-owned 2GB in December 2024, when he announced his same-day departure from the media industry during his final on-air shift.
“It’s been a difficult decision, and one I have been wrestling with for many, many months,” O’Keefe told his listeners on December 13.
“As much as I have enjoyed my time here at 2GB and my 13 years at Nine, the time is right for me to make the call to move on.”
O’Keefe has since established his own consulting firm, Emerald House Advocacy, and is the national spokesman for the Clean Energy Council.
He has now also joined GRACosway as a part-time subcontractor. O’Keefe joins several other former journos at GRACosway, including. Brigid Glanville, a partner in the firm, who worked in the NSW press gallery with O’Keefe when he reported for Nine News and she worked for the ABC.
Other former hacks among GRACosway’s team include Sophie Hull (Seven, BBC, Sky), Sarah Coghlan (Seven, Nine and Ten) and Joel Labi (2GB and CNN).
Ben Wilson, former Africa correspondent for the ABC, and The Australian’s former media and business editor Geoff Elliott are managing partners at the firm.
Life after Guardian
Karen Middleton, whose blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stint as the Guardian Australia’s political editor was the journalistic equivalent of Mal Meninga’s legendary 16-second political career, has secured a new gig.
Middleton, whose lengthy absences from the Guardian during her one year with the masthead prompted widespread industry speculation about its troubled workplace culture, penned a piece on Friday for Inside Story, an independent, non-profit magazine.
Middleton’s article on “pre-election giveaways” was the first time her byline has appeared anywhere since 2024.
“I’m doing a weekly column for Inside Story for the duration of the election campaign, along with a few other things elsewhere,” Middleton told Diary on Sunday.
The fact Middleton has found her feet so quickly after departing the Guardian serves only to raise more puzzling questions about what exactly is going on at the online masthead, which has suffered a raft of resignations of senior staff across the past several months.
Nick Tabakoff is on leave.
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