Brisbane 4BC breakfast radio host Peter Fegan makes hasty update

Brisbane-based breakfast radio host Peter Fegan gives his online profile a quick tickle up after appearing in the Diary – and he’s not the only one with a wobbly lip after Monday’s column.

4BC radio presenter Peter Fegan.

Now we don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea but in here at Media Diary HQ we reckon a week is a long time between drinks – and an even longer time between Diary entries.

When it comes to industry scuttlebutt, we’re over-sharers after all.

So we thought we’d give you a little update on the fallout from Monday’s column along with a couple of tasty pieces of media tittle-tattle straight off the grapevine.

Reading the room

On Monday, we revealed 4BC shock jock Peter Fegan was promoting himself as an “award-winning journalist” in and around the Queensland capital while renting himself as an em-cee for private functions – which struck us as a little odd, given he didn’t have any awards on his bookshelf.

You might recall we pointed out he briefly had four of them – three Queensland Clarion awards and a Walkley – before being unceremoniously stripped of the prestigious prizes after he falsely accused former federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming of “upskirting” a woman while she was stacking a bar fridge.

But, hey, “award-winning journalist” sounds better than “award-losing journalist”, doesn’t it?

Either way, we’re pleased to note Fegan has been reading along and taking notes – because by the time he went to air on his talkback breakfast show at 5.30am on Monday, his hire-a-host listing on Crowd Pleaser had been updated to remove that redundant description.

Surprisingly, gone too was his claim: “I’ve never met a room I can’t read.” (Even though it seems he had finally read this one.)

Despite the updates, Feegsy’s listing continues to claim that, thanks to his time in television and radio, he knows how to “craft hilarious antidotes (sic?)” – talk about a spellbinding showman!

It wasn’t long before the shock jock’s 4BC profile also received a bit of a tickle up, with a quick edit removing the “award-winning” claims, instead describing Fegan as a “renowned journalist” – we won’t argue with that.

Still, if we’re being helpful (and we certainly try to be), we should probably point out that the radio presenter’s out-of-date Nine Network profile continues to boast “he has won a number of awards, including Queensland Journalist of the Year, The Kennedy Foundation (sic) and The Walkley Award for Television/Video News in 2021”.

He might want to take a look at that one too – not least given he’s never won a Kennedy Award in the first place.

We’d let you know if he’d had a chance to get to his LinkedIn or Instagram accounts – but it seems he was so upset by his mention in Diary, he’s decided to block us from all his social media profiles … how devastating and decidedly anti-social!

On the plus side, it turns out ditching the “award-winning” humble brags is unlikely to cost him anything, given he’s renting himself out for events at between $500 and $2000 a pop.

De Ceglie’s late night out

Fegan wasn’t the only one with a wobbly lip when they finally got around to reading the Diary – seems not-so-dearly departed Seven news boss Anthony De Ceglie has also crossed us off his Christmas card list.

After a hectic weekend of telling friends that he would be lobbing at the rugby league in North Sydney on Sunday arvo and that Seven was about to make more job cuts (only for said friends to dutifully relay the inside intel to the media), the incoming Perth “Polar” Bears boss was then flat out posing up for photos and giving interviews about his new gig at the footy.

(And here we were thinking he was still getting paid by Seven for the next week and a half.)

Anthony De Ceglie.

Having watched the Bears cop a bit of a battering, De Ceglie then made his way into Seven’s Media City bunker in Sydney’s inner south later in the evening to retrieve his few remaining personal effects under the cover of darkness.

Such a busy boy … we wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t get a chance to peruse Diary until early Monday, though we’re reliably informed he did read it.

And when he did, he was straight on the phone to those talkative friends of his again, insisting his memory of his time running the nation’s No 1 commercial broadcaster apparently differed wildly from many of the Seven insiders we spoke to in the wake of his resignation last week.

In an alternate universe, he reckons he accomplished many great things during his time in charge of Seven’s beleaguered news and current affairs division.

Of course, this is likely the same alternate universe where ratings don’t matter, and astrology segments and Friday night funnymen are a natural fit in a serious news bulletin.

Macdonald watch

Well, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

The ABC worked themselves all up into a lather after we noted there was industry-wide scuttlebutt that their still-new Sydney morning radio host Hamish Macdonald wanted to pull-back on his already part-time posting.

Journalist Hamish Macdonald.

Even though we dutifully included their denial that this was the case, the hand-wringers at Aunty were miffed we dared even mention it … and wanted to “correct” the record and double-down, insisting Macdonald – who splits his time between the ABC station and hosting Channel 10’s The Project on Sunday nights – is definitely NOT going anywhere.

Yeah, yeah, we heard you the first time – but we’re more than happy to say it again: according to the ABC, Macdonald is not going anywhere.

Still, let’s just wait and see. We’ve been wrong before and we’ll be wrong again … but we’re not calling this one just yet.

As if that wasn’t enough, we also copped a bit of a serve for suggesting Macdonald had increased the station’s audience following the unpopular decision to axe his predecessor, the much-loved Sarah Macdonald (no relation).

It’s a vexing question because, as anyone in radio knows, there are lies, damned lies and ratings statistics.

Sarah Macdonald attracted 6.2 per cent of the available audience in the final survey before clocking off at the ABC last December, dropping from a bumper 7.5 in the previous ratings report.

Hamish Macdonald, meanwhile, increased the audience he inherited – albeit marginally – to 6.4 per cent in the first survey this year before drifting back to, you guessed it, 6.2 per cent in the second report.

So has he lifted ratings? Yes. Or has he simply held the audience? Well, also yes.

We’ll get a clearer snapshot of how Hamish is faring when the next ratings report comes out next month.

Guardian still underdone

Forget the floor of Parliament House – most of the political drama and intrigue at the Guardian Australia continues to be centred around its own newsroom.

As has been previously reported, the masthead’s Canberra bureau has been shattered by warring allegations of workplace misconduct between its former political editor Karen Middleton and chief political reporter Paul Karp and a drastic staff exodus on the eve of the federal election campaign.

Karen Middleton

Karp ended up leaving the digital offering in January and heading to the Australian Financial Review while Middleton exited two months later – after just one year in the job – and has written the odd yarn for indy online mag, Inside Story.

They add to the earlier departures of reporters Amy Remeikis, who’s been filing for The New Daily, and Daniel Hurst, and photographer Mike Bowers.

The Grauniad started looking for potential candidates to help rebuild the battered bureau in April with speculation swirling The West Australian’s current federal bureau chief, Katina Curtis, could well be the perfect fit for the post and might well be tapped for the role.

We reached out to Curtis to see if the rumblings were true on Sunday but still haven’t heard back.

To be fair, the former The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age scribe is currently on leave and not back at work until next month, so we’ll just have to wait to see.

Review mirror

When it comes to reviewing Australian financials, the Australian Financial Review could do worse than starting with the ones published on its own website.

While The Australian’s national crime correspondent, David Murray, has been busy breaking story after story about the allegedly shonky practices of controversial NDIS provider Cocoon SDA Care, including claims it presents “an immediate danger to vulnerable participants in the community” by sending untrained staff into the field and failing to pay its employees, the AFR has been busy promoting the outfit.

Despite revelations the company is now at the centre of a major investigation by the National Disability Insurance Agency, it continues to be proudly listed in 14th spot of the AFR’s “Fast 100 List” from last November (which was, oddly enough, the month after the NDIA launched its probe).

Not only that, the niche news site also continues to host a story sponsored by Cocoon SDA Care on its website – which praises the business for “encouraging an atmosphere of fun and community”.

Now, we don’t have any problem with the AFR renting out its website to private companies – they’ve got to make a crust somehow and the lease on their North Sydney offices can’t be cheap.

Plus, Cocoon and its bosses have denied any wrongdoing.

Still, when a business is facing a litany of serious and widely reported allegations about their practices, it might be worth considering a little reviewing.

Barking mad

And finally … if you ever needed any proof that the only ones who win when it comes to defamation lawsuits are the lawyers, yet another reminder has popped up in the Federal Court.

More than a year after Channel 9 was ordered to pay Gina Edwards $150,000 after A Current Affair falsely portrayed the Sydney barrister as a “thief” by accusing her of stealing an Instagram-famous cavoodle named Oscar from former friend Mark Gillespie, the warring parties were listed to be back in court this month for mediation over their monstrous legal bills.

While Edwards had offered to settle her defamation claim for just $40,000 before it went to trial in 2022, Nine is now staring down the barrel of being forced to cough up $1.2 million to pay for the dog-lover’s legal fees – and that’s on top of the $2m bill they clocked up on their side.

What an absolute dog’s breakfast.