The prospect of Rear Window columnist Aston returning to Australia just to appear in the witness box in person, and joust with Stead’s formidable defamation barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC, will alone be worth the price of admission to the Federal Court’s Sydney compound.
Stead and LA-based Aston have very differing views about a series of unflattering items he wrote in the Nine-owned AFR about her former involvement in Blue Sky.
But that’s not our focus today. Indeed, some fresh information Diary has got off the back of a truck suggests the court case between Stead and Aston may be a sideshow to revelations in its documents of another rivalry — this time within the AFR newsroom itself.
Our information, from a section of Stead’s affidavit filed in April ahead of next week’s case, suggests bad blood between two of the AFR’s best known journalists, senior correspondent Aaron Patrick and Aston.
The affidavit features a text message from December 10, 2019, sent by Patrick to Stead.
Patrick’s text to Stead seemingly reveals a personal beef he has with his celebrated colleague.
Patrick begins his text by finding common ground with Stead over Aston. “Hi Elaine. We haven’t met, but we have something in common: we’ve both been trolled by a certain AFR columnist.”
It’s not much of a stretch to surmise that Aston is the “certain AFR columnist” the text is referring to, given that some of his columns have seemingly critiqued stories by Patrick.
And the AFR senior correspondent quickly moves to capitalise on his common ground with Stead: “If you ever have any stories, or article ideas, you wold (sic) like to share, I’m all ears.”
Patrick’s text ends with some sage advice about how to get back at their mutual enemy: “Success is the best form of revenge. Cheers, Aaron Patrick.”
Stead, for her part, appears baffled by the Patrick text. Her affidavit states: “I understood the reference in the text to ‘a certain AFR columnist’ to be to Joe Aston. When I received the text, I was entirely confused by it, that a fellow AFR journalist would write such a thing.”
Stead then claims she was also “disturbed” by it. “In circumstances where I expected Aaron Patrick would know a lot about Joe Aston, I was also disturbed by his reference to me being ‘trolled’.”
Sounds like Stead, in her innocence, has never been exposed to a case of extreme newsroom rivalry (or is it jealousy?) before.
When Diary reached Patrick on Sunday, he said: “I’ve got absolutely nothing to say.”
-
Seven’s SAS image problem
The elite Australian Special Air Service Regiment, better known simply as the SAS, was dragged through the mud in the new last week, with the Brereton report finding credible evidence Australian SAS soldiers were involved in incidents where 39 Afghan nationals were unlawfully killed.
If you’re a network screening a TV show that happens to also be called SAS, you’d think it might carry the real risk of guilt by association.
It may seem unfair, but Seven is in that predicament right now.
The network’s breakout hit show, SAS — hosted by former British soldier Ant Middleton, and showcasing the elite military toughness of some alleged Australian celebrities — has been one of the few ratings success stories across any network in the latter months of 2020.
But now its latest successful brand runs the risk of being tainted by events unrelated to the show — just as the SAS finale airs on Tuesday night.
Remember, this is an era in which advertisers are jumpy about any possible risk of negative publicity for their companies. Witness, for example, the domino effect of advertisers who last week dissociated themselves from former MKR host Pete Evans in the wake of his use on social media of a symbol linked to neo-Nazis. In record time Ten, Woolworths, Big W, Coles, Target, Kmart and Dymocks all broke ties with Evans.
So in relation to last week’s SAS scandal, have any conversations been initiated by advertisers and sponsors of the SAS show with Seven? Interestingly, a Seven spokesman said on Friday that none had been in touch — so far.
-
Sky News shootout
With Alan Jones off on holidays at the end of next week, Sky News is staging a shootout between holiday season stand-ins for his Monday-to-Thursday 8pm show while he is away.
There will be, we’re told, four two-week stints, divided between Rita Panahi, her fellow Sky Outsider Rowan Dean, ex-senator Cory Bernardi and commentator Cate McGregor.
We’re told their stints will be something of an on-air audition. There’s talk of a new show in the 2021 schedule for whoever is the best performer.
-
Hartigan: ‘Staff are running the ABC’
Long-time former News Limited executive chairman John “Harto” Hartigan has rejected a bid to persuade him to put himself up for one of two vacant positions on the ABC board.
When Diary contacted him on Thursday, Hartigan confirmed whispers your columnist had heard earlier in the week: that he’d knocked back the ABC overtures. Harto’s reasoning? That he would be “unable to bring about sensible reforms” on the ABC board because “the staff are in control of the organisation”.
Harto thinks the tail is wagging the dog at Aunty. He tells Diary: “I have enormous respect for the majority of things the ABC is involved with. But as an ABC board member, I don’t think the things that they fail in are things that I would have been able to remedy.”
Pressed on this last point, Hartigan said he had observed the often-difficult experiences of peers who had already had board stints at the public broadcaster, directly naming former ABC chair Maurice Newman and The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen.
“People of a similar persuasion to me have tried, and failed, to make changes,” he said. “I don’t think my presence could make a difference. I think the staff are in control of the organisation, rather than the best endeavours of the management. And the board doesn’t exert enough pressure for the changes that are needed.”
Hartigan stresses he is “not an ideological warrior”, with the ABC doing “a lot of great things”.
“They’re not wholesale changes that are needed. They’re around the edges, but they go to the heart of what the ABC is. It’s about its focus and independence. I just think there are some sensible changes that need to be embraced, partly because the organisation is so broad.”
But Harto thinks something happens to people once they join the ABC board, claiming: “They drink the ABC Kool-Aid, and their judgments from when they accept the role change.”
-
Crisafulli’s media CV a Palaszczuk target
Our item on new Queensland LNP leader David Crisafulli’s poetic licence in inflating his experience as a journalist with this very newspaper has already been seized on by Annastacia Palaszczuk’s right-hand man, deputy premier Stephen Miles.
Miles went straight on the attack last Monday, the day Crisafulli named his shadow cabinet, immediately calling on him to “explain his actions in exaggerating his CV”.
But Crisafulli continues to stubbornly maintain on his personal website that he was a “correspondent” for both The Australian and Brisbane’s Sunday Mail, despite the fact the sum total of his experience is a few sports match reports.
Meanwhile, Crisafulli is about to get a boost to his team of spinners. Lane “Dorothy Dixer” Calcutt’s No 1 in the Brisbane press gallery for Nine, Rob Morrison, has defected to become the LNP leader’s head of media.
Morrison’s recruitment follows the resignation of Shaun Rigby following Deb Frecklington’s election drubbing. Morrison will link up with another former TV talent, ex-Sky News presenter Greg Thomson.
Rigby, Frecklington’s director of media, is understood to have moved on after the LNP’s election defeat. Out of all this, that just leaves one question: who will replace Morrison as Calcutt’s No 2 for Nine on the Brisbane political beat?
-
Marks calls in the lawyers
Tensions are rising between Hugh Marks and media outlets over coverage of the aftermath of his abrupt resignation as CEO of Nine Entertainment nine days ago.
Marks hired prominent defamation lawyer Mark O’Brien on the weekend to fire off a letter to the Saturday Telegraph, following a tough piece by columnist Annette Sharp about the professional side of his relationship with departed Nine commercial boss Alexi Baker.
Diary understands the gist of O’Brien’s letter was to demand that the Telegraph take the column down altogether, giving a deadline of Monday morning.
But as of late Sunday, we’re told editor Mick Carroll was remaining defiant, and had not either withdrawn or changed the Sharp column.
Meanwhile, a less formal complaint was made on behalf of Marks — also on Saturday — to the journalistic stenographers at the Daily Mail, who had run a story which was something of a replica of what was in Sharp’s Saturday Telegraph piece.
That approach by Nine ended with the Daily Mail agreeing to take the story down.
Meanwhile, the Sunday Telegraph doubled down in support of its Saturday sister paper, running yet another tough story in the aftermath of the Marks departure — this time about the Nine board. This week could get lively.
-
Warring Nine board’s CEO divide
The intrigue is rising over the potential replacement for Hugh Marks as Nine CEO. It’s been an open secret for some time that the Nine board has been in an increasingly bitter divide between two factions — one led by chair Peter Costello, including those who were with Nine when it was just a TV company, and another led by deputy chair Nick Falloon who joined from Fairfax Media after the companies merged in 2018.
The board war is ongoing, with Diary told the camps are now divided on which internal candidate should replace Marks. The Costello faction likes Stan boss Mike Sneesby; the Falloon camp likes Nine’s publishing and digital chief Chris Janz.
But with the choice of a new CEO for Nine looking increasingly political, is there room for a ‘‘Switzerland’’ candidate agreeable to both camps?
We’ve heard one may be Foxtel’s chief commercial officer since 2018, Amanda Laing, who left Nine as its managing director and No 2 in 2017, before all of the board factionalism emerged in the wake of the Nine/Fairfax merger.
Diary is told Laing has cordial relations with the leaders of both Nine board factions, Costello and Falloon.
Costello was chairman of Nine before Laing left, while Falloon got to know her when he was still CEO of James Packer’s PBL media conglomerate 20 years ago, at a time she was general counsel for Packer’s magazine empire.
Recently, Diary understands a serious approach was made by US media giant ViacomCBS to Laing about taking the role as joint boss of the Ten Network with Bev McGarvey.
We’re told Laing knocked back that approach, with the role ultimately filled this month by KordaMentha’s Jarrod Villani.
-
PvO steps up as Project superhost
Ten has finally confirmed its worst kept secret: that Peter van Onselen is the permanent replacement for Hamish Macdonald as Lisa Wilkinson’s co-host on the Sunday and Friday editions of The Project.
The confirmation comes nearly a year since Macdonald moved on to the ABC’s Q&A, with PvO having been trialled in the role throughout 2020.
The Project’s executive producer Craig Campbell tells Diary: “We’re very, very comfortable with PvO being in the gig. He is very much part of Ten, and it’s a very easy extension for him to do Fridays and Sundays.”
The busy van Onselen, who is also Ten’s political editor and a columnist with this newspaper, will also be used as the main stand-in for The Project’s weekday host, Waleed Aly, when he’s away, as well as other weekday spots as required.
Campbell says PvO had formed a winning on-air partnership with both Wilkinson and comedian Tommy Little that had cemented the role. “PvO is a great foil for Tommy, as the unfiltered guy who says what’s going on in his head.”
PvO will also be the main male host for the Sunday-to-Thursday versions of the show in January when Aly goes on vacation.
-
Lisa’s trip down TV’s memory lane
Appropriately, it was Richard “Dickie” Wilkins who formally farewelled Nine’s Willoughby studios on Saturday’s edition of Weekend Today with the words “Thanks for the memories”— 64 years after Bruce Gyngell had first told Australian viewers, “Welcome to television”, in the same place.
Dickie, of course, is well practised in farewells, having announced on air the deaths of Michael Jackson, Kerry Packer, and, most memorably, Jeff Goldblum — although, as we all know, that last one turned out to be a touch exaggerated.
Even The Project’s Lisa Wilkinson, an ex-Today Show host, made a trip down memory lane on Saturday with her husband, Peter FitzSimons, to snap off an Instagram selfie to farewell the place. She also revealed two big Nine connections that brought them together:firstly that they had first met in the Willoughby make-up rooms in preparation for separate Today segments, and secondly, that it was 60 Minutes’ Liz Hayes (then host of Today) who ultimately matchmade them.
“A special someone (thank you @thelizhayes) decided to play matchmaker and nine months after that, we were walking down the aisle. Well, three kids, four changes of address, five animals, the occasional disagreement and a million good times later, the marriage has survived.”
For Wilkinson, Saturday was bittersweet: “In the coming days, the place where we first met will be reduced to a pile of rubble as the Channel Nine Sydney site is redeveloped into multi-storey apartments.”
News flash: Editor caught naked on camera
The national editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age performed an inadvertent strip tease during the mastheads’ news conference this week … before releasing his camera was still rolling.
Clemenger Group CEO steps down as buyout deal looms
Clemenger Group CEO Les Timar is the latest executive to depart the business as it prepares to be bought out by BBDO Worldwide and Omnicom.
The media is licking its lips in anticipation of next week’s box office defamation case between the Australian Financial Review’s marquee columnist Joe Aston and Elaine Stead, ex-director of the collapsed Blue Sky Alternative Investments.