Australian Financial Review bears bruises of ‘hit job’ on Samantha Maiden
Much has been said, and tweeted, about the now infamous article by Aaron Patrick in The Australian Financial Review last week. Despite the headline suggesting the story was about “campaign journalism”, it was almost singularly focused on award-winning News Corp political journo Samantha Maiden.
For those who perhaps did not make it to page 32 of the AFR last Wednesday — or chose not to visit the AFR website due to fear of catching some kind of cyber bug — here’s a 95-word Dummies summary of the 1800-word feature.
Samantha Maiden is brilliant at her job. She’s led the media pack in applying the blowtorch to the Morrison government which has badly fumbled its response to the emerging reports of abuse of women. Morrison’s office is annoyed with her relentless pursuit of the story, which may explain the PM’s misguided attempt to attack News Corp with a false allegation of staff harassment which apparently involved Maiden. Heaps of people think Maiden is awesome; plenty of people don’t like her at all. Oh, and she once gave her high school principal a bit of lip.
None of that is untrue, but nor is it particularly fresh — especially the scoop that Maiden was once a headstrong teenager.
But what really put Patrick’s article in the crosshairs was the reference to a coterie of female journalists — “a new female media leadership”, as he called them — and their recent “angry coverage that often strayed into unapologetic activism”.
By lunchtime on Wednesday, #IStandWithSam was trending on Twitter, and Patrick and the AFR were groaning under the weight of a spectacular journo pile-on.
Katharine Murphy, of Guardian Australia, didn’t hold back. “Wild that a male journalist can write a piece in 2021 analysing and categorising a group of female colleagues like he’s on a safari, and have that patronising drivel published in a newspaper that I worked for for eight years. What an embarrassment. Here’s a tip. Big story on here at the moment AP. Why don’t you show up for work?”
ABC journalists Louise Milligan and Patricia Karvelas, both formerly of The Australian like Maiden herself, also weighed in. Milligan posted: “No one commissions snarky profiles of male investigative journalists … no one explores their irrelevant childhood/calls their old school”.
Karvelas observed that the Patrick piece was “a bit of an own goal by the Fin”.
Seven’s Nick McCallum wrote: “The AFR hit job is a disgrace.” ABC broadcaster Virginia Trioli also labelled the article a “hit job”.
But was it really a “hit job” on Maiden? It did, after all, observe that Maiden had “done more than any other individual, journalist or otherwise, to define the Morrison government as indifferent to sexual harassment, assault and rape.”
AFR editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury told Diary it was anything but a hit job. “I understand that some people are upset with this article, and I respect that, but others I’ve spoken to, male and female and across the political spectrum, agree that it’s a legitimate story,” he said.
“Far from a hit job, it recognises that Samantha Maiden’s fearless reporting has helped drive the upswell against harassment — and worse — of women and thrown the government off balance.
“And it fills in the under-reporting of what was behind the Prime Minister’s off-beam reference to supposed harassment by a News Corporation person.”
Diary understands that Patrick is also standing by his story, telling associates that he felt it was “fair”.
On Saturday, he tweeted that “Sam’s definitely going to win a Walkley now.” Hmmm … was he trying to make things better, or worse?
As for Maiden herself, she has maintained a dignified silence since the publication of the story. Diary approached her for comment, but she declined.
More orderly bout
While we’re on the subject of journo-on-journo bouts, let’s turn our attention to one that isn’t nearly as nasty as some are suggesting.
On March 13, The Australian’s columnist and regular panellist on The Project, Peter van Onselen, co-wrote a piece in The Weekend Australian with Janet Albrechtsen in which they detailed never-before-published claims from the woman who accused Christian Porter of rape.
According to insiders, PVO’s co-host on The Project, Lisa Wilkinson, was pretty unimpressed with the newspaper article. The rumour mill kicked into overdrive when PVO didn’t fulfil his regular Friday and Sunday slots on The Project for the next two weeks.
Had PVO been benched? Had Wilkinson — who has been one of the most prominent media supporters of alleged rape victim Brittany Higgins — refused to go on-air with PVO?
Or did PVO choose to temporarily stand down to avoid a confrontation? The truth, in this case, is almost stranger than fiction: PVO simply took some time off from The Project to work on his big expose on lewd acts performed on a desk in Parliament House.
Word from inside The Project is that whatever angst there may have been between PVO and Wilkinson was sorted out in a civil, professional manner. How enlightened.
PVO and Wilkinson resumed their on-air partnership on March 28.
Hornery’s update
On Saturday afternoon, the world learned of the death of fashion icon Carla Zampatti, a week after the 78-year-old had fallen down stairs at the opening night of the Australian Opera production of La Traviata in Sydney.
TV news bulletins across the country led with the story on Saturday night.
But SMH gossip journalist Andrew Hornery, who pens the Private Sydney column in the newspaper’s Saturday edition, led with a very different version of the story in the newspaper that morning, quoting “family sources” that Zampatti’s condition was improving. Indeed, the headline on Hornery’s main display story was “Zampatti ‘on the mend’ after tumble at opera”.
Hornery posted a hasty tweet at 1.01pm on Saturday, not long after Zampatti’s death was publicly announced.
“This is not the update we were hoping for — Vale Carla Zampatti,” Hornery wrote.
Another China exit
The BBC’s China correspondent, John Sudworth, has become the latest in a long line of foreign journalists to leave Beijing over safety fears.
Sudworth said his family had decided it was “too risky” to remain in the Chinese capital while he and his colleagues faced “massive surveillance, obstruction and intimidation” when they tried to report and film.
“We as a family based in Beijing, along with the BBC, decided it was just too risky to carry on — which unfortunately is precisely the point of that sort of intimidation — and we have relocated to Taiwan,” he told the BBC on Friday.
“This was not a choice that we wanted to make.”
The ABC’s Bill Birtles, who was also forced to leave China last year along with the AFR’s Mike Smith, said the media landscape for foreign journalists in China was not getting any better.
“John was being harassed because he was the most outstanding broadcast journalist on Xinjiang — exposing hard truths that didn’t fit the Chinese government’s narrative,” Birtles told Diary.
“So I believe his harassment, likely at the hands of state security officers, was more about his personal record of outstanding journalism rather than being purely diplomatic retaliation.
“That said, diplomatic retaliation is likely a secondary factor. Since the British TV regulator revoked the licence for the Chinese government’s global propaganda network CGTN earlier this year, the Chinese government has launched a furious information campaign against the BBC in an effort to discredit it in the eyes of a domestic Chinese audience and to serve a warning to other foreign media about reporting on Xinjiang.”
Birtles also made the point that, in less than a year, China would be welcoming the world to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.
“It will be difficult for China to generate positive coverage of that event (which Beijing craves) if the government continues its current histrionics against the Western media,” he said.
Sky News shindig
Sky News Australia officially opened its new Melbourne bureau and studio inside the Herald & Weekly Times building in Melbourne’s Southbank last week. The celebratory evening was hosted by Siobhan McKenna, the chairman of Foxtel, Fox Sports, Sky News and News Corp’s group broadcast director, and Sky News Australia’s chief executive Paul Whittaker.
Also raising a glass to toast the new and expanded bureau was News Corp Australia’s executive chairman of Australasia Michael Miller, Herald & Weekly Times chairman Penny Fowler, News Corp’s national executive editor Peter Blunden, Fox Sports executive director Steve Crawley, Sky News head of programming Mark Calvert, Herald Sun editor Sam Weir and Sunday Herald Sun editor Nick Papps.
Business figures seen mingling in the crowd included Harvey Norman’s executive chairman Gerry Harvey and CEO Katie Page, AFL supremo Gillon McLachlan, JB Hi-Fi boss Richard Murray, REA chief executive Owen Wilson, the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation’s Andrew and Michelle Penfold, and Cricket Australia boss Nick Hockley.
Health Minister Greg Hunt was there, as was Labor’s Catherine King.
On-air hosts Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin, Rita Panahi and Nicholas Reece showed up to check out their new digs, as did regular Sky commentators Michael Kroger and Stephen Conroy.
Carey’s Covid benching
Former AFL champion Wayne Carey was ordering a caffeine hit when Diary bumped into him in South Melbourne last week.
The 49-year-old spoke of the bizarre situation that saw him abandon his Channel 7 commentating duties at quarter time during the round two clash between the Cats and Brisbane Lions at GMHBA Stadium in Geelong on March 26.
He realised he had recently visited Brisvegas so when the Victorian government alert was announced, during the match, that anyone who had been to the Queensland capital recently had to self-isolate and get tested, Carey left the ground immediately.
“I’d been to Brisbane from March 12 to 14 and during quarter time the dates came up (for those who had to leave the stadium) so I had a conversation with the producers that I had been to Brisbane,” Carey said.
“I packed the bag up, took the headphones off and left.”
The next day, Carey was at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital by 7.20am, tested by 8.30am and was given the all-clear at 1.15pm.
As for whether it was an over-reaction by authorities, Carey said: “I won’t get into the political side of it.
“Just the fact I was there working doesn’t put me ahead of the general public, who were also sent home,” he said.
Hitchener’s TV hitch
Legendary TV newsreader Peter Hitchener has fully recovered after the on-air incident that saw him unable to finish reading the 6pm Victorian news bulletin last Monday.
The 75-year-old was midway through the bulletin when he began to struggle to read his lines off the teleprompter.
Sports reporter Clint Stanaway had to step in at a moment’s notice when Hitchener realised he could not go on.
“I’ve lost my voice occasionally on air, due to cold or flu, but Monday’s migraine was a first,” he told Diary.
“It was quite shocking being unable to read the words — a side effect of the headache.”
Hitchener said the migraine didn’t last long and “it left almost as soon as it arrived”.
“Fortunately it was nothing more than a headache,” he said.
“What was so wonderful was the outpouring of support from our loyal viewers on social media.”
Hitchener has been reading the news since the mid-1960s and became the full-time weeknight newsreader at Channel Nine 23 years ago. He’ll be back on-air on April 19.
Regular Media diarist Nick Tabakoff is on leave. His column will return next week.
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