Chinese state media slams Sky over Peter Stefanovic special ‘promoting anti-China sentiment’
If you’re an Australian media outlet sledged at length by one of the Chinese government’s key propaganda mouthpieces, could it be you’re doing something right?
On Friday morning, China’s Global Times – the English language tabloid newspaper under the People’s Daily umbrella – singled out Sky News for some special treatment over a Peter Stefanovic special that ran on Wednesday night, titled Are We Ready For War?
The Global Times – whose former editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, once described Australia as being “like chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes” – turned its trademark colourful assessments on to Sky’s Stefanovic special. It wrote of the program: “To play up the threat of war, a right-leaning Australian media outlet has made a video of a quasi-Hollywood blockbuster level, showing how hard it has tried to promote the anti-China sentiment.”
The Chinese mouthpiece pointed to what it described as a “clickbaiting and sensationalist title” on YouTube: China’s aggression could start new world war.
The Global Times piece went on to claim that it wasn’t “surprising” that “a media outlet like Sky News Australia has increased its hype on the so-called China threat” at the present “critical juncture” in bilateral relations: “The current improvement of China-Australia relations has incurred strong reaction from some anti-China forces in Australia, who want to impede the proactive process by trying to rewind the progress of history.” The Chinese paper concluded by claiming that “the Australian public should be more vigilant against those unscrupulous local presses that only care about creating sensations”.
But if Sky is bothered by the criticism, it isn’t showing it. One insider has told Diary that the critical article from the Chinese mouthpiece was regarded internally as a “badge of honour”.
TV’s most trumpeted one-minute hosting job
After disappearing from our screens for eight months, former 7.30 host Leigh Sales will finally make her long-awaited return to television next Monday as the new host of Australian Story.
In what has to be the most trumpeted one-minute-a-week slot in recent TV memory, Sales will become the first formal presenter of Australian Story in more than six years, since the late Caroline Jones retired from the show at the end of 2016.
Diary has learnt that Sales’ first episode fronting the ABC magazine show will feature inventor Saul Griffith, and his ambitious plan to fully electrify homes throughout Australia by using renewable energy.
In coming weeks, the ex-7.30 host will also front episodes featuring better known Australian identities, including filmmaker and legendary 87-year old shark whisperer Valerie Taylor, and actor Claudia Karvan.
There has been plenty of speculation about whether Australian Story will occupy all of Sales’s time upon her return. Diary’s sources around the ABC’s Ultimo headquarters tell us that while Sales will now be a constant presence on the Monday night magazine show, her overall on-air footprint could be smaller than before, with both on and off-air possibilities being thrown around.
Under current proposals, Sales will wisely stay well away from the patch of her 7.30 successor, Sarah Ferguson, when it comes to breaking news. Sales is said to be relieved to have left the turf she occupied for more than a decade in nightly interviews with political leaders, and has no appetite for returning, at least for the time being.
One suggestion, we’re told, is for Sales to be used as a heavy hitter for the ABC to deploy for one-off interview opportunities with major international names, although we’re told that a full-blown weekly talk show is not on the agenda at his point.
Meanwhile, Diary also hears that there is a real possibility that Sales could pursue a number of roles at the ABC that don’t involve her appearing on air.
Already, since returning from her six-month break, we’re told she has volunteered for work behind the scenes on management strategy, and is said to be interested in a mentoring and training role for younger journalists.
We’re told Sales has also been preparing to launch a new book within weeks, her first solo effort since her autobiographical 2019 tome, Any Ordinary Day.
The new book – Storytellers: Questions, Answers and the Craft of Journalism – will be very different to her previous book, pitched as a detailed insight into what Sales describes as the “vital and much misunderstood profession” of journalism. The book will apparently feature Sales asking journalists and interviewers from virtually all major media organisations for their trade secrets.
The list is something of a who’s who, including The Australian’s Hedley Thomas and Trent Dalton, news.com.au political editor Samantha Maiden, Today host Karl Stefanovic and ex-Nine heavy hitters Tracy Grimshaw and Laurie Oakes, the SMH’s Kate McClymont, Ten’s Waleed Aly, and Aunty’s David Speers, Lisa Millar and Annabel Crabb.
‘Hollywood Anna’ dumps the red carpet
There is a growing belief in Queensland politics that Annastacia Palaszczuk’s addiction to red carpet photo opportunities with anyone from Chris Hems-worth to Tom Hanks, Baz Luhrmann and Elton John is causing damage to her brand.
Diary has learnt that Labor sources familiar with internal polling privately concede that “Hollywood Anna’s” relatability factor – considered one of her greatest assets in her victories in three successive Queensland elections – is now under threat from her repeated forays on the red carpet.
And now it seems even Palaszczuk herself is starting to twig that the sugar hit of being snapped with stars from the media and entertainment industry may not be a vote-winner after all.
Palaszczuk was a shock absentee from last month’s announcement in Burleigh Heads by Hollywood A-lister Russell Crowe that Queensland and the Gold Coast had snatched the rights to host the annual AACTA awards from Sydney for three years.
In her place, the much less charismatic presence of Tourism Minister Stirling Hinchliffe represented the government in trumpeting the good news.
What made Palaszczuk’s absence an even bigger surprise was that it took place a mere 50 metres from the multimillion-dollar luxury apartment overlooking Burleigh Beach – and owned by her surgeon partner Reza Adib – where she now spends virtually all of her weekends.
Word has reached Diary out of the Labor camp that the Premier was directly advised not to attend, allegedly because of the risk to her polling by being photographed with yet another Hollywood A-lister.
Further, there are some suggestions within Queensland Labor that she will dramatically pare back her red carpet appearances in 2023.
A YouGov poll published in The Courier-Mail last July found that 50 per cent of Queenslanders believed Palaszczuk enjoyed the “high life” – compared with 19 per cent who disagreed with this proposition, and 31 per cent who said they didn’t know.
Indeed, 2022 was a year of numerous red carpet appearances by the Premier, which included being photographed with Hanks and Luhrmann at the Elvis premiere, French champagne brand gala balls, the Logies and attending VIP enclosures at Queensland’s top race meetings, including the Magic Millions and the Stradbroke Handicap.
There was also her attendance last year at the world-famous Hamilton Island Race Week, where the rich and famous publicly mingle on their superyachts, amid claims she cancelled a cabinet meeting in order to attend.
But there is understood to be private polling by both major parties in Queensland confirming the broad point made in last July’s YouGov poll: that the red carpet appearances were impacting upon her down to earth appearance to the average Queensland voter.
Maybe that’s why, publicly at least, 2023 has started off in notably different fashion.
Not only did the Premier give Crowe a miss at the AACTA announcement in Burleigh, but she also surprised many by skipping the Magic Millions, as she instead took a holiday with Adib in Europe.
In a rare interview last week with The Courier-Mail – which has been one of the loudest critics of her apparent love of hobnobbing with the stars – Palaszczuk dismissed questioning about her love of the red carpet.
Asked directly about the criticism of her as the “Red Carpet Premier”, she claimed she “just ignores” it, adding: “My track record speaks for itself.”
Media calls the last straw for Dan’s ban
Daniel Andrews’ Victorian government has made plenty of noise about becoming more environmentally friendly by banning plastic straws across the state.
But that edict appears to have been forgotten very close to Dan’s political home in Victorian Parliament House cafeteria, where plastic straws were still available more than a week after the February 1 deadline.
Prominent members of the media pack, including The Australian’s Victorian political reporter Rachel Baxendale, were calling out the last straw for the Premier.
Stephanie Waclawik, the state political reporter for Melbourne’s top-rating station, 3AW, opened the attack, asking why the straws were still available. The Premier came back with an archetypal Dan response – placing responsibility for the oversight elsewhere: “That’d be a matter for the speaker, and/or the president. I don’t run the cafe. And I make no comment about the cafe upstairs.”
But Baxendale wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “If the cafe upstairs is having difficulty complying with the new laws on plastics, how can hospitality businesses across the state be expected to comply?” she asked.
Andrews defended the cafeteria, claiming the transition away from plastic straws was tough for everyone. “I expect that there‘s a number of businesses across the state that are finding this transition challenging,” he said. “That’s why our approach is to work with those businesses to try and support them to follow the new rules.”
Baxendale later asked Andrews whether his government needed to do more “education” to create “awareness” among Victorian businesses.
Andrews’ reply was about as close as the Premier would get to an admission that more needed to be done. “Possibly,” he replied. “Whenever you make reform, whenever you make change, there‘ll always be reasons for people not to necessarily be compliant with the laws … If it was easy, someone else would have done it a long time ago.”
Meanwhile, it seems the Premier finally becomes eligible for his long-awaited statue on Monday – although he claimed that he hadn’t been counting the days.
“Monday is the day, apparently,” he said. “I had to be told that. Obviously I wasn’t sitting down and working it out for myself.”
Obviously.
Jim Wilson leaves Nine after 2GB struggles
Amid sagging ratings, the former drive host of the Nine-owned 2GB, Jim Wilson, departed in November, replaced by former Nine political reporter Chris O’Keefe.
At the time, it was noted that Wilson – who still had some time left on his contract – would be popping up on Nine’s TV screens. A press release put out by Nine at the time noted that
Wilson would “pursue other opportunities with Nine television”.
But Diary can now reveal those alleged “opportunities” haven’t materialised. Insiders at Nine have confirmed that in recent days, Wilson and Nine quietly parted ways, amicably, for good. “Unfortunately, Jim was hired as a radio person, not for TV,” was how one Nine source put it.
We’re told that there had been some plans in December to give Wilson a shot at landing the role as the male host of Nine’s Weekend Today, after it was vacated by Charles Croucher, who was promoted to take over the role of Nine’s political editor from the retiring Chris Uhlmann.
Diary is told that at one point, Nine’s head of news and current affairs, Darren Wick, appeared interested in the recruitment of Wilson to Weekend Today, and had pencilled in some dates for him to effectively audition on air during the holiday season. But those auditions didn’t materialise, and by the new year the talk of Wilson moving to Weekend Today appeared to dry up.
There are now questions as to whether Wilson could return to his former long-term home at Seven, where he had previously worked as a sports anchor.
Could the ABC go ‘online-only’?
The ABC board and senior members of the management team will convene in Sydney on Monday for a “strategy day” – and Diary hears there will potentially be some big issues on the table.
One matter likely to be at the front of the minds is the seismic statement by BBC director-general Tim Davie in December that the Beeb is preparing to shut down traditional TV and radio programming to become an “online only” operation in the next 10 years.
Davie hinted that the internet-only world of the 2030s could involve “bringing the BBC together in a single offer” – code for making its various entertainment, news and educational offerings available in a single app.
As the first step towards that goal, the BBC has already announced that the likes of BBC Four and Radio 4 Extra will become online-only services.
Monday’s strategy meeting, to be chaired by Ita Buttrose, is likely to take a detailed look at the ABC’s five-year plan. In the words managing director David Anderson, that plan focuses on how Aunty will shift from being “a traditional broadcaster to the nation’s most trusted and valued digital content provider across all platforms”.
So what similar moves could the ABC make to shift away from traditional broadcasting? We’re told the public broadcaster has already started to look in recent years at how to reduce the sometimes prohibitive costs of analog broadcasting, and moving as much content as possible to DAB+ digital radio and/or online.
One issue that has been discussed in the past is the ABC’s obligation to broadcast parliament – including the usual political argy bargy of question time – on analog radio.
Currently, all parliamentary sittings are broadcast to only a handful of interested listeners on ABC News Radio, and it would be a significant cost saver to shift them to digital.
Another option that has been canvassed in previous years is the possibility of moving ABC Classic FM off analog to become a purely digital offering.
Chinese state media’s fury at Sky special
If you’re an Australian media outlet sledged at length by one of the Chinese government’s key propaganda mouthpieces, could it be you’re doing something right?
On Friday morning, China’s Global Times – the English language tabloid newspaper under the People’s Daily umbrella – singled out Sky News for some special treatment over a Peter Stefanovic special that ran on Wednesday night, titled Are We Ready For War?
The Global Times – whose former editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, once described Australia as being “like chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes” – turned its trademark colourful assessments on to Sky’s Stefanovic special. It wrote of the program: “To play up the threat of war, a right-leaning Australian media outlet has made a video of a quasi-Hollywood blockbuster level, showing how hard it has tried to promote the anti-China sentiment.”
The Chinese mouthpiece pointed to what it described as a “clickbaiting and sensationalist title” on YouTube: China’s aggression could start new world war.
The Global Times piece went on to claim that it wasn’t “surprising” that “a media outlet like Sky News Australia has increased its hype on the so-called China threat” at the present “critical juncture” in bilateral relations: “The current improvement of China-Australia relations has incurred strong reaction from some anti-China forces in Australia, who want to impede the proactive process by trying to rewind the progress of history.” The Chinese paper concluded by claiming that “the Australian public should be more vigilant against those unscrupulous local presses that only care about creating sensations”.
But if Sky is bothered by the criticism, it isn’t showing it. One insider has told Diary that the critical article from the Chinese mouthpiece was regarded internally as a “badge of honour”.
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