Ganging up against ABC’s critics
Canberra critics of the ABC beware! Ita Buttrose is channelling her inner Tony Soprano – and her personal goon squad is coming for you.
Canberra critics of the ABC beware! Ita Buttrose’s personal goon squad is coming for you!
The chair of the public broadcaster channelled her inner Tony Soprano during a question-and-answer session at a business lunch in western Sydney last Wednesday, when she was asked how she felt about politicians taking aim at the ABC.
“We do sometimes upset politicians, including both sides of the parliament. I think the campaign currently being waged against the ABC is far more concerted than I can ever recollect. But I think that must be (because) we’re doing a really good job. We live with the criticisms,” said Ita.
So far, so diplomatic.
But with the niceties out of the way, Ita flicked the gangland switch.
“I got in my elevator this morning and there was a bloke there and he said, ‘Oh, good morning, are they still giving (the ABC) a hard time? Let us know who they are and I’ll get a group of people from this apartment block and we’ll go and sort them out for you.’
“And I said, ‘Well, thank you very much.’ He said, ‘We love the ABC. Don’t give up on it’.”
The bizoids in the audience tittered nervously at the joking threat of an underworld war between the ABC and Canberra, but Ita didn’t blush, telling the suits that the 6am elevator chitchat with the anonymous wannabe hitman left her with “a good feeling”.
And having got that off her chest, Ita turned to the ABC’s managing director David Anderson, with whom she was sharing the stage, and threw him an exquisite hospital pass.
“You might have a word that you want to add there,” Ita offered, helpfully.
Anderson didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity, but he played it like a pro.
“Ah, well, no, other than I agree,” he uttered, as Ita nodded approvingly.
“I get parliamentarians on both side of the political aisle … saying what good work the ABC is doing in some areas, and perhaps some constructive feedback in others.
“Whoever is in government, state of federal, the ABC is there to hold everybody to account, in government and opposition, and I think (criticism) is just par for the course.”
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Credlin critique
Sky News political contributor and anchor of her own show Peta Credlin has certainly left a few blue blood politicians fuming in her home state after she last week put the boot into the Victorian Liberal Party, which she described as “divided and ridden with personal agendas”.
Speaking to The Australian, Credlin criticised the state opposition, led by Michael O’Brien, for failing to have any impact on the dominant force of the Labor government, run by Premier Daniel Andrews.
“They’ve got no backbone. They can’t land a punch,” Credlin said.
“Politics at a state level in the Liberal Party has been divided and ridden with personal agendas in warring camps for more than 20 years.”
Liberal insiders say those in the O’Brien camp weren’t happy about Credlin’s media attack, as it took the attention away from a glowing double-page spread on O’Brien that ran in the Herald Sun on the same day, with a headline: “He’s the man who wants to be the next Premier”.
The Victorian Libs say Credlin’s attack couldn’t have come at a worse time — within days, there were reports in The Age that O’Brien’s leadership was again under threat.
The poll in the Nine-owned Melbourne newspaper found only 14 per cent of respondents had a positive view of O’Brien.
The last time O’Brien appeared on Credlin’s show was on May 20 and it will certainly make for interesting viewing the next time he fronts up to answer the tough questions from Credlin on her weeknight news and a current affairs show.
She told Diary O’Brien should “worry less” about what she said and “concern himself instead with taking the fight up to Daniel Andrews who is back in a week or so and will be well rested”.
Andrews is due to make a return to work next Monday following four months out of action.
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Sudden exit
The departure of The Saturday Paper’s editor Maddison Connaughton last Friday caught staff by surprise.
Connaughton, who has been editing the newspaper for the past three years, was at the helm for last Monday’s regular weekly news conference, discussing proposed stories for the upcoming edition and offering feedback to various ideas put forward by the Schwartz Media masthead’s journalists. But by Friday morning she was gone, with the end of her tenure announced in a press release.
“The announcement certainly caught people off-guard,” one staffer told Diary.
The newspaper’s editor-in-chief Erik Jensen said: “Maddison is a skilled editor and it has been a pleasure working with her on The Saturday Paper. I look forward to seeing what she does next.”
Connaughton was well-liked by staff at TSP, having earned a reputation as a diligent, collaborative and intelligent editor. But there are rumblings from within that there has been growing friction between some senior journalists and the editors in recent times. However, others claim that any disagreements were no worse than the usual “newsroom tensions”.
Interestingly, the newspaper will not seek to replace Connaughton, at least in the short-term. Jensen will take a more “hands-on” role at the paper, and will assume the editor’s responsibilities for the “foreseeable future”.
On Friday, Connaughton tweeted: “I’m so grateful to the incredible TSP team and all of the talented writers who trusted me with their copy over the last few years. It’s been an honour.”
She declined to comment to Diary. Morry Schwartz, the proprietor of Schwartz Media, also declined to comment.
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FitzSimons tunes in
Peter FitzSimons is a man of many talents — journo, columnist, author, after-dinner speaker, ex-Wallaby, and … music talent scout!
In his column in The Sun-Herald, FitzSimons recounted being mightily impressed by an Amy Shark performance at an end-of-year dinner for the Gold Coast Titans in 2016.
“I was stunned. This was not the series of Tina Turner classics you might expect for such an occasion. They were ballads and rock songs she wrote herself and she blew the room away. Who the hell was this? A marketing manager at the Titans, I was told. I was so impressed I chased her as she came off stage, to wish her luck and predict big things for her, narrowly beating my wife, who came to say the same,” FitzSimons wrote.
He then compared his “I was there” moment to that of music critic Robert Shelton, who is credited with discovering Bob Dylan in 1961.
Of his Amy Shark awakening, FitzSimons modestly observed: “Roger (sic) Shelton I ain’t, but I did spot her phenomenal talent early!”
Well, not that early …
By the time FitzSimons and wife Lisa Wilkinson had recognised the talents of the excellent songstress, Shark was already a very big deal on Triple J, and major record labels were involved in a bidding war to sign her.
So, while FitzSimons can rightly claim that he has a good eye for musical talent, his boast that his spotting of Shark was Shelton-esque seems a tad over-egged.
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AFL lost for words
The Australian ran a series of exclusive stories last month on women in the AFL being routinely silenced with confidentiality agreements after raising complaints about workplace bullying and harassment.
The reports coincided with the release of the book that is continuing to cause a stir within AFL circles – The Boys’ Club, by Herald Sun’s award-winning sports journalist Michael Warner.
Launched last month by Hawthorn president and former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, it reveals the inside story of the power and politics within the nation’s biggest and richest sporting league, the AFL. Curiously, very few of the compliant mainstream Melbourne AFL football media have bothered to follow it up.
“With the AFL football media, someone would fart and it would be back page and front page but this book, they haven’t even talked about it,” an AFL insider said.
“This is the way the house-trained football media operate.”
In the book there are startling claims from both current and former football staff about the AFL being an “unsafe” workplace.
For years there has been animosity between Warner and the AFL which even prompted the AFL to deny him media accreditation to the 2013 finals.
Copies have been flying off the shelves and right now it’s the No.1 sporting book in Australia.
Despite attempts to ignore Warner’s book it will be high on the discussion list at a virtual meeting on Tuesday with all the 18 AFL club presidents and representatives from the AFL Commission due to attend.
The mistreatment of women is also understood to have caused concern among AFL sponsors who have questioned what is going on at the relevant clubs, into which they pour millions of dollars each year.
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Jumping the gun
Channel 7 certainly caused problems ahead of last week’s highly anticipated media launch at Coffs Harbour involving the community’s most famous local resident, Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe.
Many Sydney-based journalists filled up their petrol tanks and packed a cut lunch before setting off on the 500km-plus journey north of Sydney on Tuesday ahead of the secret-squirrel press conference, at which a big announcement was to be made.
One journalist who attended the press conference told Diary: “We didn’t know what the event was about or who was going to be there, all we knew was it was a big announcement at Coffs Harbour at 10.30am on Wednesday.
“It was all super-secretive. There was no press release or media alert. The only way we found out about it was through our boss a day or so before.”
But things went belly-up on Tuesday evening when Seven ran a story divulging details of the event and Crowe’s attendance, leaving organisers shocked and annoyed that the cat was let out of the bag.
Rumours had been circling for some time about the plans to build a major movie studio at Pacific Bay Resort, which has been dubbed “Aussiewood” by some.
NixCo was the company behind the event fronted by Crowe on Wednesday, and sources told Diary they were ropeable when details of the announcement leaked the night before.
“It’s shocking when an embargo is broken. Nobody likes that,” the source said.
It is understood that Seven didn’t receive a warm reception at the press conference on Wednesday but still managed to score one-on-one time with Rusty that aired later that day.
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Changing tastes
It appears that Ten’s MasterChef has gone completely off the boil.
It first hit the small screen in 2009, but 12 years on, it can no longer draw in the foodie viewers.
Latest figures show the average five-city metro audience sat at just 573,000 viewers series to date — this is down by a massive 41 per cent series compared to 2020 when it was averaging a healthy 976,000 viewers.
The three co-hosts – Melissa Leong, Andy Allen and Jock Zonfrillo – certainly aren’t household names like their predecessors Gary Mehigan, George Calombaris and Matt Preston.
Ten is giving the program an overhaul and will be launching Celebrity MasterChef later in the year in the hope it will bring in much larger audiences.
Among those who will be putting their culinary skills to the test are Melbourne Nova breakfast radio personality Chrissie Swan, former St Kilda footballer and Fox Footy commentator Nick Riewoldt, Olympian Ian Thorpe and actors Rebecca Gibney and Matt Le Nevez.
Regular Media diarist Nick Tabakoff returns next week.
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