ABC apologises for Indigenous reference in smoking stereotypes story
The head of the new cultural adviser cohort barely had time to get her feet under the desk before she was confronted with a shocker in her new patch.
The ABC recently went on a hiring spree, scouting for “cultural advisers” to ensure journalists deal with “culturally sensitive stories appropriately”.
Former ABC TV presenter Miriam Corowa is heading up the cultural adviser cohort, but she barely had time to get her feet under the desk before she was confronted with a shocker in her new patch.
Last week ABC published a story online about smoking stereotypes.
The report, by journalists Lottie Tywford and Penny Travers, focused on an Australian National University study, with one of the lead-in lines being: “If you were asked to picture a typical smoker, you might come up with the following stereotypes: someone who is unemployed, uneducated, Indigenous, and suffering poor mental health.” Whoa …
Soon after the story was on the ABC’s website, someone – quite possibly someone from the cultural advisory division – stepped in, and any reference to stereotyping Indigenous people as typical smokers was scrapped.
The revised sentence read: “If you were asked to picture a typical smoker, you might not imagine someone employed, educated or who has good mental health.”
The report had highlighted the issue of smoking among many people, some of whom are Indigenous.
“Although smoking is more common in people who are experiencing structural disadvantage – like people in more remote areas, Indigenous peoples, those with less education and those living in poverty – most people who smoke are educated, employed and in good mental health, similar to the total population of Australia,” ANU medical student Jessica Aw wrote.
The ABC later apologised to readers for referring to Indigenous people in the story, adding an editor’s note at the bottom of the article: “A previous version of this story referred to Indigenous people in the first paragraph. That reference has since been removed and we apologise for any offence caused.”
Curiously, the ABC’s “corrections and clarifications” page made no mention of the significant change to the story. Perhaps it’s one for the ABC ombudsman Fiona Cameron to look at.
In a radio interview with Virginia Trioli last year, Cameron said the ABC had to get better at dealing with mistakes and changes. “We need to make better use of (the Corrections and Clarifications page) and we are beginning to,” she said. Still a work in progress, it seems.
Ita’s last supper a subdued affair
Ita Buttrose chaired her final board meeting at the ABC last week, but her last supper at the public broadcaster was without fanfare.
Buttrose, whose five-year tenure as ABC chair will conclude next Wednesday, broke bread with the other eight members of the board – including managing director David Anderson – after last Thursday’s board meeting in Sydney, in what Diary understands was a quiet affair.
There were no non-board guests at the dinner, and no formal speeches. Just a few words from board members, thanking Buttrose for her service.
It was a far cry from the fancy-pants cocktail party that had been planned to celebrate Buttrose’s time in the chair’s chair.
Buttrose pulled the pin on that idea earlier this month, and despite reports to the contrary, Diary understands that Ita’s decision to cancel the big function had nothing to do with the furore surrounding the recent sacking of Antoinette Lattouf, a matter which plunged the broadcaster into a summer of controversy.
Rather, the 82-year-old, who is not as mobile as she once was but remains “as sharp as a tack”, according to one insider, simply wanted to leave without a fuss.
The West goes gonzo
The West Australian’s editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie has developed a reputation in recent years for his creative page one designs, and his clever headlines. And more power to him.
But last Friday’s effort to promote the Elimination Chamber wrestling event in Perth was next-level cringe-worthy. De Ceglie went to great lengths to manufacture a “real-life stoush” between himself and WWE star Austin Theory in front of a bunch of journalists on the The West’s newsroom floor.
He even had a videographer conveniently situated in the newsroom to capture the buffoonery as it unfolded.
The show started after De Ceglie suggested to wrestler Austin Theory that WWE was “fake”, prompting Mr Theory to become pretend angry.
“Just cause you’re in charge of some s… doesn’t mean you can talk to me like this,” the muscly actor/fake wrestler yelled at the skinny actor/professional newspaper editor.
“You’re saying what I do is easy and you’re in front of all of your people talking about my job is easy … you couldn’t walk a damn day in my shoes. Are you kidding me man? I will smack the s… outta you right now.”
Cue the intervention of a third actor, WWE security guard Barrie Knight, who intervened before a red-faced De Ceglie could be subjected to any more bad acting.
The West duly went bonkers on the yarn, with its back page headline screaming The Wrestle Australian, set against a full page image of an open-palmed De Ceglie standing defensively in front of Theory as he was being “restrained” by his security.
Incredibly, subsequent stories in The West and on its website continued to refer to the “real-life” incident.
And according to one report on a wrestling website, “eye-witnesses were ‘seriously worried’ for the defenceless editor, who would’ve felt like he was in the ring with the statuesque star after his ill-advised comments.”
That quote, of course, finally gave the game away.
As anyone who has ever worked in a newsroom would know, if the editor was being threatened with a punch in the nose, it’s a fair bet there wouldn’t be a staff stampede to stop it from happening.
But we digress.
If De Ceglie’s intention was to generate publicity, it worked. The “story” was picked up by wrestling websites across the world, with one international masthead helpfully explaining that non-wrestling fans simply don’t understand how “offensive” it is to label anything to do with WWE as “fake”.
Diary asked De Ceglie about his in-depth coverage of The West Australian’s wrestling cook-up, and if the Kerry Stokes-owned masthead was a sponsor of the WWE event in Perth.
De Ceglie said the newspaper wasn’t a sponsor, and said he could “neither confirm or deny if it (the alleged newsroom stoush) was fake or real;)”.
Asked if he had ever taken acting lessons, De Ceglie – surprisingly – said he had.
“Yeah, I was literally a film student who fell into journalism. I was in the WA Youth Theatre Company when Tim Minchin was learning his chops.”
Diary asked to see photographic evidence of the unlikely on-stage union of a young De Ceglie and a young Minchin, but the editor was unable to “dig anything up”.
Swift move
Former Bachelorette and ex-Channel 7 and 10 journalist Georgia Love is rarely left off the VIP guest list for star-studded events but it appears her invite to Taylor Swift’s sold-out Melbourne concerts may have got lost in the snail mail.
Desperate times called for desperate measures and after missing out on Swift’s Melbourne shows, FOMO got the better of the journalist-turned-influencer last week and she put out a call out to her 216,000 Instagram followers pleading for a Tay Tay ticket to one of the Sydney gigs.
“An impossible task I KNOW I KNOW BUT … if anyone is selling or can somehow otherwise get 2 tickets for Taylor Swift in Sydney please let me know. The FOMO is real, I need a piece of that euphoria.”
Hmmm, is it just us, or does that sound like a well-paid journo fishing for a freebie? Surely not? That would never happen!Anyway, hours after her initial Insta-beg, Love felt the need to issue an urgent community service announcement just in case any desperate Swifties were still trying to secure a (legitimate) ticket.
“Still trying to get tickets but just a note to anyone else trying, these are SO many scams out there,” Love warned.
“People’s personal socials are being hacked so if anyone offers to sell you tickets, call them and make sure it’s actually them and they’re definitely legit.
“There’s so many stories about people just wanting to see Tay and losing so much money (insert crying emoji).”
At this point, Diary began to worry. Was she emoji crying for herself, or for the common man/woman/11-year-old girl? Had this Love Story turned sour? OK, OK, relax. Sorry to scare you. It’s all fine. Georgia got tickets, she informed her bazillion followers.
“I GOT TICKETS!!! See you Saturday, @taylorswift!!”
So, how did she get them? Diary did some digging but Love’s management was not forthcoming after repeated inquiries.
Love’s Instagram stories were, however, spammed with endless pics of herself with the tag @frontiertouring.
And when Diary approached Frontier Touring, the mystery was quickly solved. “Georgia Love was a guest of Frontier Touring,” a spokesman said.
So add Swift tickets to Love’s extensive freebie list.
Some of Love’s followers were appalled she got to go at all, with one follower writing on Instagram: “She puts all her stories up looking for tickets – miraculously less than an hour later she put a story up saying she got tickets – then quickly deleted them all.”
Another wrote: “It’s just sickening for the poor Swifties that spent hours in the Ticketek waiting room, on multiple devices to get nothing. While a D-lister like Love manages to snaffle a ticket within an hour.”
Nine News Sydney reporter Maggie Raworth posted: “I spent $900 on a ticket and logged on like everyone else to get it.”
Love, whose latest media gig is reading the news for Melbourne’s KIIS 101.1FM, regularly uses her social media account to boast about her never-ending stream of invites and freebies, including weekends away and nights out, often alongside her reality TV series husband Lee Elliott.
She most recently inundated her followers with a bunch of posts about a lavish junket to London for the global premiere of movie Argylle, and even uploaded a selfie with British heart-throb Henry Cavill.
Love’s online adventures haven’t always had a happy ending, though.
She was demoted from her on-air reporting duties while working as a reporter at Channel 7 Melbourne in 2021 after posting a video of a cat sitting inside an Asian restaurant, prompting accusations of casual racism.
She apologised and left Seven five months later.
Ten’s woes worsen
Network Ten boss Beverley McGarvey has certainly been making headlines in recent weeks, with the fractured relationship between her and dumped Project co-host Lisa Wilkinson laid bare for all to see in court.
Earlier this month it was revealed that McGarvey had praised Wilkinson for her “beautiful speech” after the TV host accepted the Logies award in 2023 for her interview with former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins. As it turned out, the virtual back slap from McGarvey to Wilkinson didn’t age well, given that the speech sparked a certain kind of smelly storm that delayed Bruce Lehrmann’s criminal trial. Then on February 15, McGarvey had to deal with the announcement of 20-odd staff redundancies at Ten, including the exit of her colleague Jarrod Villani, the executive vice-president and chief operating & commercial officer of Paramount Australia.
So what happened next? Well, on Friday, McGarvey made a very public confession that a TV boss should probably never make.
We’re paraphrasing, but during an appearance before the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee in Canberra to discuss the federal government’s prominence legislation, McGarvey, sitting alongside fellow TV bosses including Nine’s Mike Sneesby and Seven’s James Warburton, disclosed that the last time she got a new telly, she couldn’t work out how to find the app thingies.
“I’m pretty tech savvy. The last time I got a TV in my office which was an LG TV, it took me 45 minutes to find the 10 Play app,” she said.
McGarvey said that she eventually had to call a technician in order to watch the 10 Play app in her office. “I actually had to get an engineer to do it,” she told the hearing.
Wrapping up, McGarvey had some choice advice for viewers who have the 10 Play app on their screens but would rather not have Ten at the front of their devices’ interfaces: “If you don’t want us, get rid of us.”
Tingle silent
ABC 7.30 chief political correspondent and board member Laura Tingle was quick to hit out at the criticism over her views on Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce’s recent Canberra footpath sprawl, and how it was vastly different to her approach when former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe ended up in a late-night screaming match outside a Melbourne strip club.
Tingle told ABC Late Night Live host and Weekend Australian Magazine columnist Phillip Adams last week that she was “actually on leave when the Lidia Thorpe thing happened. But I’m pretty sure I did say something about it at the time.”
Pretty sure, hey? Diary asked Tingle herself to share the alleged comments she made after Thorpe’s wild night out, that left the controversial senator banned from the strip club. Curiously, Tingle didn’t respond.
Nick Tabakoff is on leave.
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