Peter FitzSimons issues an ABC call to snarls

Author and commentator Peter FitzSimons. Picture: Mark Wilson

On Sunday, Sydney’s Sun-Herald ran a piece from Peter FitzSimons, interviewing new ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson after her first week on-air.

In an otherwise unremarkable column, FitzSimons, the chair of the Australian Republican Movement, seemed to take issue with Ferguson for not appearing to be sufficiently horrified when she was photographed next to Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon after interviewing him in 2018.

FitzSimons: “I remember you being torn apart on social media for posting a photo of you standing with the execrable Steve Bannon, where you were NOT snarling. In hindsight, was that a mistake?”

Ferguson, to her credit, tried to play a straight bat to the suggestion that a journalist should routinely snarl with disgust at political players whose beliefs they might not necessarily agree with.

Ferguson: “I would never apologise for interviewing Bannon. At that time – in 2018, when he had just left the White House – he had an open door into Trump’s mind, methods and intention, and laid out a path of actions that Trump was going to take, which included overturning Roe v Wade.

“He talked about a change to America’s behaviour in the Pacific vis a vis China, which would have profound implications for Australia. So, all the things he talked about that day, all of them have come to pass. People at this time were too ready to dismiss Trump as a sort of bizarre circus phenomenon, but we needed to know what it really meant. Not just to treat it as a pantomime.”

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Albo’s team still finding its feet

On the face of it, Anthony Albanese’s first trip to Europe as prime minister was a success – he managed to reset Australia’s broken relationship with France, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the much-admired Volodymyr Zelensky, and generally speaking, he looked prime ministerial. But behind the scenes, things between Albo’s media team and the travelling press pack were not-so-smiley. First-hand accounts from the near 20-strong crew of journalists, photographers and camera-people on the overseas tour suggest that from the perspective of the press, the trip was a “shambles”.

Diary spoke to a number of journalists who were on the trip, with the majority saying they were left stunned by the lack of co-operation from the PM’s staff, accusing the on-the-ground comms team of being repeatedly rude, dismissive and unhelpful to the media.

“They were aloof, arrogant, and seemed to be out of their depth,” said one of the touring journos, who asked not to be named.

“It was just things like not returning calls or texts for hours on end, and just generally keeping us in the dark … it doesn’t necessarily sound like much, but when you’re on these overseas trips as a journo, you’re totally reliant on open communications with the PM’s team.

“The general consensus among the travelling press pack was that we were made to feel like a nuisance for just doing our job.

“I’m not saying that we need to be best friends, but there needs to be a level of two-way respect.”

Since winning the election in May, Albo’s office has undergone some significant changes. Longtime press secretary and ex political journo Matthew Franklin — who had been Albanese’s main press flak for almost a decade — left unexpectedly, leaving a distinct lack of actual newsroom experience among the Labor leader’s crew. The press office is now led by Liz Fitch, and the PM has sought to bolster his team’s media credentials with the recent appointment of former TV political corro Brett Mason. On the recent European trip, tensions between the PMO and the press pack came to a head in the foyer of an up-market Paris hotel after Albanese had met with French President Emmanuel Macron. The journos, alive to the likelihood that Albo was planning to travel to Ukraine to meet Zelensky, quizzed one of the PM’s senior staff as to whether there were any updates on the possibility of such a visit, and what pool arrangements might be in place for the media.

In front of a group of about 10 journalists, the Albanese staffer said: “I don’t have any more updates for you. And now, I’m going shoe shopping.”

Compounding the Jimmy Choo boo-boo was the PMO’s insistence on a news blackout on the reporting of Albanese’s visit to Ukraine until he had arrived back in Poland on the overnight train from Kyiv.

The Australian media contingent argued that international news wire services, not to mention social media users, would reveal Albanese’s presence in Ukraine within minutes of his first public appearance – and that is precisely what happened, resulting in the travelling media getting scooped on the story.

In fact, the Ukrainian government were the first to breach the defacto media blackout, posting images of Albanese on its websites.

One journo on the trip told Diary that the spiky attitude towards the press by some in Albo’s office is a hangover from the election campaign, when the Labor leader felt unfairly targeted by some members of the press.

“They were really resentful of the way a few journos carried on in the campaign, and perhaps that is fair enough. But now it feels like a bit of collective punishment of the press is being meted out.”

But another veteran journo on the trip was a bit more sympathetic to Albo’s team.

“The PMO was being incredibly conservative about security issues on the Ukrainian tour, but, to be fair, the security briefings that they were given (about safety issues in Kyiv) were frightening.”

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Talkback in back seat

Nine Radio took the industry by surprise last week with the announcement that well-established on-air Brisbane personalities Laurel Edwards, Gary Clare and Mark Hine – who for the past 16 years have helmed ‘Good Times’ on 4KQ, the city’s longest continual running breakfast show – would be jumping ship to 4BC.

The trio’s move to the breakfast slot on 4BC is intriguing, not least because in recent years the station has heavily promoted its talk radio credentials.

But the recruitment of the popular breakfast team to replace Neil Breen, who has occupied the timeslot at 4BC for the past two years, suggests that management at Nine could now be looking to take the station in a different direction. One point of concern among 4BC insiders is that the station could be giving up its competitive advantage by effectively abandoning the talkback format in the most critical timeslot of the day.

From left: Mark Hine, Laurel Edwards and Gary Clare. Picture: Richard Walker

Will the incoming trio seek to keep the government of AnnastaciaPalaszczuk to account, at a time when it is fending off a series of scandals and bad press over several missteps by the premier?

Also, will the ‘Good Times’ show deliver the network’s star, Ray Hadley, with a strong lead-in audience to his morning show, which is syndicated out of Sydney’s 2GB?

Edwards, Clare and Hine are well-known and well-liked in the world of Brisbane radio, having held their own, ratings-wise, for years.

But they are not a traditional talkback team, with their 4KQ show having blended that station’s classic hits music format with breezy breakfast banter. Elbows-out, conservative-leaning, desk-thumping talkback radio is not their thing.

So, why the move to easy listening? Is Nine Radio seeking to becoming “less conservative”, in order to widen its appeal to advertisers?

Word from the Nine bunker is that the revamped line-up at 4BC should not be interpreted as an unwinding of the station’s existing format, nor a political shift to the left.

“Brisbane is not, and has never been, a traditional ‘talkback-heavy’ radio market,” one senior Nine insider says. “The most important thing is having a connection to the local audience – to be live and to be local.”

Edwards, Clare and Hine certainly have a connection to the local audience, but listeners shouldn’t be expecting too much heavy-hitting politics with their Cornflakes, which will be a marked departure from the tone of Breen’s show, which adopted a traditional talkback format of listener engagement, with a strong focus on local political issues. Breen will now host the station’s Drive program.

Scott Emerson, a former LNP MP who has hosted 4BC’s Drive show since August 2020, has been bumped from hosting duties, and will take up a new role as political contributor across 4BC and Nine Radio’s other talk stations.

In the fourth radio ratings survey of the year, released last week, Breen (up 0.5 to 8.0 audience share) saw a slight improvement in his ratings, while Edwards, Clare and Hines enjoyed a strong jump in their farewell poll in the breakfast slot at 4KQ, up 1.5 points to 11.1.

4BC’s main rival in the news radio market, the ABC, lost audience share across all timeslots for the second survey in a row.

All eyes will be on the results of the next survey, due to be released on August 23, to see if a talkback-less breakfast show on a talkback station resonates with listeners.

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Better late than never

Staying in Queensland, it turns out it’s not just big business that has to hire lobbyists to get meetings with the state government.

Fledgling online media operation InQueensland has also called in the big guns to open doors.

InQueensland, which started publishing in Queensland two weeks before Covid hit in 2020, is backed by Eric Beecher’s Solstice Media, and pegs itself as the state’s “only truly independent high-quality news service – freely available to all Queenslanders”.

Despite that grandiose claim, requests for meetings with Palaszczuk government ministers to talk advertising and other commercial opportunities went “unfulfilled”, according to publisher Peter Atkinson.

Enter Labor lobbying firm Hawker Britton, and then-lobbyist and former Palaszczuk government staffer Elliot Stein.

Queensland’s lobbyist register contact logs show the lobbying firm made introductions for InQueensland to the chiefs of staff for Deputy Premier Steven Miles, Treasurer Cameron Dick, and Tourism Minister Stirling Hinchliffe on February 24 and 26, and to Hinchliffe’s diary manager in April. And on a couple of days in March, Hawker Britton secured meetings for InQueensland with Miles himself, his chief of staff, a senior media adviser and the director-general of the department of state development to talk about the “development or amendment of a government policy or program”.

“We’ve had a couple of good conversations with a couple of ministers” as a result of Stein’s work, Atkinson tells Diary.

And Diary couldn’t help but notice that Queensland government advertising – spruiking the state’s controversial coal royalties hike – has popped up on InQueensland newsletters and on its website recently.

But when InQueensland ran a column by Stein on March 14, the day he was to go before a parliamentary inquiry to talk about reform of the booming lobbyist industry in the state, the media outfit failed to mention he also moonlighted as its lobbyist.

The disclaimer read: “Elliot Stein is a director of Hawker Britton, a Labor-aligned national government relations company. He is appearing today as a witness to the Queensland parliament inquiry into the functions of the Integrity Commissioner.”

Atkinson says Stein’s “role, and his political alignment, has been appropriately disclosed to our readers”.

But InQueensland appears to be taking a different approach now, with the change of heart coming after Diary lobbed some questions to editor Craig Johnstone and Atkinson.

At the bottom of political analyst Dennis Atkins’ recent column on Palaszczuk’s attempts to regulate lobbying on June 28, the disclaimer was a little more fulsome.

“Publisher’s note: InQueensland has used the services of government relations firm Hawker Britton in dealings with the Queensland government. This work has been fully declared on the state government lobbyist register.”

Atkinson says the new disclaimer was because the issue had “been in the headlines, and we wanted to make our position very clear”.

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Ten’s new low

Last week, Media reported that Network 10’s new breakfast news bulletin, 10 News First: Breakfast, pulled just 44 viewers in Sydney on its second day on air – one of the lowest ratings figures in Australian television history.

Well, records are meant to be broken, and this week, we can bring you details of a fresh low for the show – last Tuesday, the 30-minute program, led by Natasha Exelby and Lachlan Kennedy, drew just 43 viewers in Perth, a city with a population of 2.1 million people. Take that, Sydney!

Presenter Natasha Exelby on 10 News First: Breakfast.

Despite having only been on-air for three weeks, the news bulletin surely must be raising eyebrows within Ten’s executive ranks.

While ratings are grim in Sydney and Perth, things aren’t much better in Melbourne. Last Monday, the show managed to draw only 557 viewers in a city with more than 5 million residents.

Latest figures from ratings firm OzTAM reveal News First averaged 17,000 viewers a day across the five major capital cities in its first week, but this fell to just 15,000 a day in week two.

If Ten is going to make any impact in the breakfast market it looks like they’re going to have to head back to the drawing board pretty fast, despite a senior network figure last week telling The Australian that Ten is “happy” with the show.

Last week, after several media outlets rushed to do a follow-up on the revelation of the bulletin’s 44 viewers in Sydney, Ten’s head of broadcast news, Martin White, came out swinging and was reported as saying the show was a “work in progress” and he, too, was “happy” with how it was tracking.

Ten certainly are sticking by the show for now and a spokeswoman told Diary that the program “is filling a gap at a time when many morning television viewers are after an update on the latest news and it leads well into Studio 10”.

“10 News First: Breakfast edition is only in its second week and we look forward to increasing engagement as viewers become more familiar with the timeslot,” she said.

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Insta vid misfires

Guardian Australia political journalist Amy Remeikis took to Instagram recently to voice her disgust following the overturning of the of Roe v Wade case in the US.

Remeikis, who has more than 4200 followers on one of her multiple Instagram accounts was sitting in a car and drinking out of a coffee cup when she took a selfie video, lashing out at the decision of the US Supreme Court.

Political reporter Amy Remeikis. Source: Instagram.

In her profile under the name, “ifyouseeamy” she describes herself as a “journalist” and “an unholy mess of a girl”.

Diary has chosen not to print the expletive-laden post, in which she takes aim at the sexual misconduct of “cis men”, but when Diary put a few questions to the Guardian about the post, it quickly disappeared.

A bit late though; it had already been played about 1500 times.

A Guardian spokeswoman told Diary that the post by Remeikis was “a personal opinion expressed on a personal account, intended to make a figurative point about men taking responsibility for birth control, posted in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v Wade”.

She went on to explain that while the publication’s social media guidelines “encourage open debate around issues that are important to our staff, the guidelines also ask staff to keep in mind that posts with strong opinions can be read out of context and that their personal accounts can be seen to reflect on the Guardian”.

It’s understood that after senior members at the Guardian spoke to Remeikis about the controversial video, it was deleted. “Amy has agreed to take down the post,” the spokeswoman told Diary.

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