The recent flashpoint in Gaza has clearly been a particularly sensitive subject for many broadcasters. For the ABC, one particular point of sensitivity appears to be the use of the inflammatory term “apartheid” in reference to the Israel/Palestine conflict, as the public broadcaster strives to be as objective as possible in its coverage of the situation.
An internal advisory note obtained by Diary spells out that the ABC now doesn’t want the use of the term in its reporting of the most recent Israel/Palestine flashpoint. The advisory note states: “The ABC does not apply the term ‘apartheid’ (others may choose to) because it has a specific meaning in South African history.”
ABC reporters like its Middle East Correspondent Tom Joyner have observed that stance, with no use of the word “apartheid” on his TV news reports about Gaza since the conflict erupted.
But the word “apartheid” did pop up everywhere on Thursday night’s edition of Q+A, as the perils of live TV struck again. “Apartheid” ended up being used 11 times, with prominent local Palestinian advocate Randa Abdel-Fattah leading the way, continually insisting that Israel was based “on a racial apartheid system”.
The show’s host Hamish Macdonald and Sydney Liberal MP Dave Sharma were left as the only voices advocating against the use of the incendiary term on the show.
Sharma said he didn’t accept “any” of Abdel-Fattah’s “characterisations”, while Macdonald spoke up to dispute her claims about Israel as an “apartheid state”.
But that only emboldened Abdel-Fattah to double down on her use of the a-word, to repeat rounds of applause from the Q+A audience, and support from human rights lawyer and fellow panellist Jennifer Robinson.
Suzanne’s son lives in Israel. They have had to take cover in a safe room from missiles fired at Tel Aviv. She wants to know why innocent citizens are being attacked? #QandApic.twitter.com/Vo6p7S1MnR
— QandA (@QandA) May 27, 2021
It’s clear the ABC is aware the Israel/Palestine issue is a potential landmine for its journalism. When grilled on the issue in Budget Estimates on Thursday, ABC boss David Anderson indicated that Aunty was closely monitoring its own coverage of the conflict.
“I will say that when there are conflicts such as this, on very complicated matters, there are certainly things that we’ve looked into that have already been published to ensure they’re accurate,” he said.
Anderson also revealed that some reporters who “sought advice” about signing a petition calling for more “sympathetic coverage” of the “Palestinian perspective” were reminded “that – along the lines of our use of personal social media – that they should not do anything that otherwise compromises their ability to be seen to be impartial in reporting any matter”.
That hasn’t stopped complaints from both sides to the ABC, a slight majority being made by the pro-Israel camp. Anderson revealed that there have been 29 complaints (or 51 per cent) alleging the ABC’s reporting was anti-Israel and 24 complaints (or 42 per cent) alleging an anti-Palestinian bias.
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Nine’s internal debates about Magda’s tweet
We normally hear about ABC personalities getting into trouble through partisan tweets. But in recent weeks, the top-rating commercial network Nine has been forced to deal with the fallout of one of its biggest stars wading into politics.
Now Diary has confirmed from Nine insiders that The Weakest Link host Magda Szubanski’s controversial tweet last month about the Prime Minister’s wife, Jenny Morrison, did indeed cause a stir at the network’s highest executive levels.
As one Nine insider has put it: “The one thing you don’t want before a show launch is a scandal involving comments singling out one side of politics. No one wants to offend half of the potential audience.”
The first episode of The Weakest Link reboot last week attracted a lukewarm 423,000 viewers in five cities at 9pm — when it was beaten by the ABC’s Love on the Spectrum. That led to obvious questions about whether Szubanski’s social media activity had lowered Nine’s final number.
I genuinely thought this was a photoshopped Handmaid’s Tale meme. But no. It’s 21st century Aussie life. https://t.co/S5NckoHv1q
— Magda Szubanski AO (@MagdaSzubanski) April 11, 2021
Her original tweet — with an attached photo showing the Prime Minister’s wife standing behind him as he signed a condolence book about Prince Philip’s death — stated: “I genuinely thought this was a photoshopped Handmaid’s Tale meme. But no. It’s 21st century Aussie life.”
Szubanski followed up with several posts defending her initial tweet, and a clear attempt at damage control a couple of days later, via an interview with Tracy Grimshaw on Nine’s A Current Affair in which she noted she hadn’t “anticipated” the reaction to her post.
We’ve confirmed that robust discussions took place at senior executive levels in April about the potential impacts. While some were worried, others suggested it may have been good for The Weakest Link — the “all publicity is good publicity” school of thought.
Nine remains adamant the delay of the show by a month or so had nothing to do with the tweet. Nine says it was trying to find the show’s best lead-in, which it deemed to be Celebrity Apprentice rather than the youth-oriented Lego Masters.
But Szubanski’s social media spree in April, her Twitter feed has steered away from politics. Most posts have been retweets, or short messages with uncontroversial views.
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Aggro Merlino no media match for Andrews
Generally mild-mannered acting Victorian Premier James Merlino finally discovered his inner aggro on Sunday, playing to the very loud Victorian government diehards on Twitter when he used a Covid-19 press conference to metaphorically shirt-front Scott Morrison.
“Victorian workers deserve more from the federal government, and I am beyond disappointed that the answer from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer has been no,” he fumed.
Predictably, the Victorian government’s extremely loyal Twitter following attacked Morrison in the wake of Merlino’s rousing rallying cry yesterday – insisting it was instead ScoMo who was solely responsible for Victoria’s fourth lockdown.
But while Victoria’s temporary Premier got his government’s Twitter fans revved up yesterday, overall he still doesn’t attract the same interest as the real Premier, Dan Andrews, the man whose shadow stubbornly looms large over his state while it patiently awaits his return next month.
Research conducted for Diary definitively shows that Merlino simply doesn’t attract the same level of news interest from the media pack as Andrews — despite the fact that the latter is still virtually invisible as he continues to recover from his much-publicised fall in early March.
Love him or hate him, the research by media monitoring group Streem shows the Cult of Dan remains undiminished for the Victorian media, despite his near-three month absence from our screens.
Streem compared the number of media mentions for Andrews in the lead-up to Victoria’s five-day lockdown in February, compared with the mentions for Merlino in the lead-up to the current seven-day lockdown.
Andrews was 50 per cent more likely to be mentioned in lockdown stories in February than Merlino has been in May. And on Twitter, Merlino continues to live in Andrews’s shadow. The evergreen hashtag, #IStandWithDan trended once more through the weekend, after the Twitterati largely gave up on an attempt to push the alternative #IStandWithJames. Doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it.
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Maiden’s #MeToo book to hurt Labor, Libs equally
Labor and Liberal types in Canberra, beware. As we revealed last month, news.com.au political editor Samantha Maiden will be releasing a new book on the “toxic culture” of both sides of Parliament House – and we’ve got the full details. In short, it’s looking increasingly likely that it will cause collateral damage everywhere.
In the wake of Maiden’s scoop in February about the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in federal parliament, she isn’t easing off on the pollies any time soon. She tells Diary more details of her new book, making it clear it will be an equal opportunity offender of the teams of both Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese. The as-yet unnamed tome will be moving far beyond Higgins, she says, and make “new revelations and shine a light on allegations of abuse and misconduct in both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, inspired by a new generation that refuses to play by the old rules”.
Another interesting aspect, we’re told, is that the book will for the first time tell the backstory of how Maiden met Higgins in the first place.
The late March auction process for the book, brokered by literary agent Jeanne Ryckmans, was one of the hottest for any book, fiction or nonfiction, in 2021. It involved more than a dozen publishers, before eventually being whittled down to a final shortlist of three.
In the end, the rights were won by Harper Collins for a reputedly generous six-figure advance.
What looks like making things really interesting is that the potentially explosive book could lob right into the middle of the next federal election campaign. With ScoMo having until May 2022 to hold an election, Maiden’s book will be published next March. If there’s no early election, it could provide a hungry campaign media pack with plenty of political morsels to feed off.
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Fordham’s biggest 2GB test since Jones
Tuesday this week marks exactly one year since the momentous day that Ben Fordham inherited the most daunting job in Australian radio, by taking over the 2GB breakfast slot after the radio retirement of Alan Jones.
And wouldn’t you know it? There’s a crucial ratings survey being released on the very day of Fordham’s big one-year anniversary – and it’ll be a pivotal marking point in assessing how far Sydney’s breakfast radio leader has come. In the weeks leading up to Fordham’s takeover of the 2GB breakfast shift, bosses at Nine Radio were carefully managing expectations about Fordham’s numbers after Jones departed.
Privately, Nine and 2GB claimed they’d be happy if Fordham achieved a 12 per cent rating in breakfast — about a third below Jones’s 17.9 share in his last survey before he left in May 2020.
Turns out the in-house predictions were overly pessimistic. Fordham comfortably retained the No.1 spot with a 17.3 in his first survey after Jones’s departure last September, and even went above 18 at one point.
But in the most recent survey, Fordham dipped to 15.5, his lowest number so far. Admittedly, that’s still some way above the second-placed ABC702 team of Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck, but Nine will be hoping it’s a blip, not a trend.
So that means Tuesday’s one-year anniversary will double up as the most significant day so far in Fordham’s reign over Sydney breakfast radio.
However, Nine Radio has much bigger concerns than Fordham — mainly in its pivotal drive slots in Sydney and Brisbane.
In 2GB drive, industry nice guy Jim Wilson could only manage sixth place with a rating of 7.0 in the most recent April survey, while in Brisbane on 4BC, ex-Campbell Newman government minister Scott Emerson was a woeful eighth, with less than 4 per cent.
Nine will be praying that both drive shows improve, and fast.
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Eddie lands Melbourne lockdown scoop
Watch out, Chris Uhlmann, Mark Riley and PVO: you’ve got a new TV competitor when it comes to breaking the nation’s biggest political stories.
On Wednesday night’s edition of the network’s 9.30pm show Footy Classified, none other than Eddie McGuire — co-hosting the show with Caroline Wilson — unleashed the scoop that Victoria was to go into an extended lockdown the next day.
“My information from government sources is tomorrow morning it may well be announced there will be a five-day lockdown in Victoria,” he told the show’s viewers.
Almost as an afterthought, he also delivered the big news from a footy fan’s perspective: that there would be “no crowds at the football” in Victoria over the weekend.
The revelations single-handedly led to McGuire — whose brother happens to be a backbencher in the Andrews regime — becoming one of the big trending topics on social media on Wednesday and Thursday, with the Twitterati amused that they had found out about the lockdown through a sports jock.
When we reached McGuire on Thursday, he seemed unsurprised. “Obviously, I have contacts everywhere, and Caro does as well,” he told us. “You pick up all the big stories in Melbourne at the footy, the boxing and the races. Remember, all roads lead to footy.”
Get ready for the next step: Eddie heading from Collingwood to Canberra to bust the big federal political stories for Nine. “And in the world of multiskilling, I’m also looking forward to crossing to Chris Uhlmann in the AFL dressing sheds,” McGuire adds. You heard it here first.
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Hot Seat’s Melbourne Covid pause
On the subject of Eddie McGuire, Victoria’s announcement of lockdowns has presented mixed fortunes for two of his shows: one local and one international.
One the one hand, production of Nine’s Hot Seat has been paused for a week.
After the latest lockdown in the state, McGuire tells Diary he opted for caution.
“It was all set to go, but in the end, because of the number of contestants and interstate travel, we have pushed it back until after the lockdown,” he confides. “We have plenty in the can, so rather than do a Masked Singer (which had a high-profile Covid-19 outbreak that hit 17 staff last year), we decided to take the pressure off and reschedule.”
Luckily, he squeezed in the filming of 24 episodes of Nine’s lead-in to the 6pm news, game show Hot Seat, in the fortnight before lockdown.
But there’s better news in another show that McGuire’s own production company JAM TV quietly started making this month for US giant CBS in Melbourne.
The show is Come Dance with Me, made for an American audience, and featuring Jenna Dewan, Channing Tatum’s dancer ex-wife, as its most prominent judge. JAM TV lured the show from coronavirus-affected Los Angeles to Victoria last year.
McGuire tells Diary the show now has the government green light to proceed through the lockdown, with only one change: crew will now fill the audience seats.
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