Clive let off the hook by star-struck media

THE ABC and Fairfax have refused to answer questions about their failure to prominently cover court proceedings.

Cartoon: Peter Nicholson

THE ABC and Fairfax have refused to answer questions over their failure to prominently cover court proceedings involving Clive Palmer’s alleged use of siphoned Chinese cash in his election campaign.

Supreme Court documents treleased last week revealed $2.167 million, siphoned from an account holding Chinese funds, went to Brisbane agency Media Circus Network, which booked advertisements for Mr Palmer’s election campaign.

The revelation that the Palmer United Party leader used money from an account only meant to be spent on the operation of an iron ore port in Western Australia for his campaign is likely to end up in a future police investigation.

Documents filed in the Queensland Sup­reme Court in Brisbane on Monday show that $10 million went from the bank account into a Clive Palmer-­controlled company, Cosmo Developments Pty Ltd, in August last year, but it has not yet been established where the money went next. Subpoenas have been filed to require Mr Palmer and others to explain the money trail. Mr Palmer has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

It’s a story that both The Australian newspaper and Brisbane’s The Courier-Mail published on the front page on Tuesday, and Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph ran prominently the same day.

Yet the ABC and Fairfax Media have not assigned journalists to investigate the issue, nor have they covered with any prominence the court proceedings brought against the resources tycoon by Citic Pacific.

The Guardian has also failed to investigate the issue independently, while the commercial networks have only touched on it lightly. The ABC, Fairfax and The Guardian refused to respond to questions yesterday.

The Nine Network’s news and current affairs director Darren Wick said there was no deliberate strategy not to cover the story and when Mr Palmer appeared in court, “we’ll be across it”.

“In the TV bulletin we do the main political story of the day,’’ he said. “There’s so much going on with Clive on any given day, often there’s five or six angles coming out about him.’’

Ten’s news director, John Choueifate, rejected suggestions that the media had rolled out the red carpet for Palmer and said his network covered the story last week as part of a package from Canberra. “He turns up at parliament in lavish cars, he calls news conferences with Al Gore … it’s not the media that is pulling these stunts,’’ Choueifate said.

Seven’s news director, Rob Raschke, said his state bureaus had been “covering the story as part of the daily political cycle over the past week’’.

“We are taking an active interest in the story and will follow it as it unfolds,” he said.

The Australian’s Hedley Thomas has been breaking stories routinely on the issue, and wrote a week ago that the court documents were not difficult to find.

“The ABC’s Tony Jones is an interviewer, not an investigator like Woodward or Bernstein, but the flagship program he presents (and on which Palmer loves appearing) has the staff and the resources to be properly informed by publicly available court documents about a very serious matter,’’ he wrote, critical of the way Jones was unable to hold Mr Palmer to account by drawing on the court documents and hard evidence that has emerged.

Thomas said journalists who did not understand the issues should not interview Palmer.

“The lesson for journalists, many of whom are being made to look like inept fools by Palmer, is simple. Do your homework. Forget his media conferences and the PR stunts unless you have researched the detail and can maintain a line of questioning. When his track record shows he makes stuff up on a regular basis, it is journalistic irresponsibility to fail to question him with rigour.”