Media Diary: ABC’s Media Watch sparked Alan Jones ACMA probe
Media Watch had to scramble to get a final shot in at retiring broadcaster Alan Jones. Mission accomplished.
It has long been joked in 2GB’s corridors that the nation’s media regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has an “Alan Jones Department” dedicated exclusively to finding flaws in the broadcaster’s show.
So with Jones’s final departure looming this Friday, ACMA’s Alan Jones department would have been doubly keen to push one last on-air correction last week before his 2GB exit. That happened last Thursday, with Jones publicly correcting what ACMA ruled were “inaccurate” comments on climate change in August last year.
But Diary understands the major impetus for ACMA’s latest investigation on Jones did not come from 2GB listeners. Instead, complaints rolled in to ACMA after a critique of Jones on another program with its own Alan Jones department: the ABC’s Media Watch.
The Monday after the radio segment in question, Media Watch heavily criticised Jones for his now famous “sock down her throat” comments about Jacinda Ardern in the same segment.
Jones’s “sock” comment opened up a Pandora’s box. ACMA ended up investigating not only the Ardern comment but the whole Jones segment, including the accuracy of the climate change remarks.
Meanwhile, the media rumour mill was in overdrive last week about whether the ACMA finding had anything to do with Jones’s departure.
Nine claims to Diary the two events had “absolutely no relationship”, and that the ruling followed six months of to-ing and fro-ing between ACMA and 2GB.
But there are also suggestions that ACMA was desperate to finally land a telling blow on its prey, after he had taunted it for decades. There are even unconfirmed claims that ACMA was trying to ban him from talking about climate change altogether on his radio show.
But with Jones’s imminent departure, 2GB insiders joked last week about possible cuts at ACMA, now that its Alan Jones Department is about to shut its doors.
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Herald’s own goal
With Alan Jones said to be considering his legal options over an editorial that ran in the Nine-owned Sydney Morning Herald on Friday, it seems deeply ironic that one of the key problems that supposedly contributed to his early departure was his litigation risk.
The SMH scored the own goal of own goals on Friday, after a clumsy valedictory editorial in all of its print editions about Jones overreached in its eagerness to give him a slap on the way out, by accusing him of encouraging “sexual violence”.
Bosses at Nine had intended this week to be a fitting farewell to Jones, the most famous star of its radio operations.
But the SMH editorial threw a spanner in the works. While the SMH issued an online correction on Friday that there was “no suggestion that Alan Jones encouraged violence in a sexual context”, the word on the weekend from sources close to the Jones camp was that he remains “disappointed” by the SMH’s accusation.
Jones, of course, was disciplined by his bosses in 2018 after 2GB was forced to pay $3.7m in damages to the Wagner family over defamation — a story, incidentally, that the SMH gave plenty of space to at the time.
But is the boot on the other foot now? Perhaps so. As one source said of the SMH on Sunday: “They’ve shot from the hip – and blown their own toes off.”
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‘Worries’ over Turnbull’s tell-all tome
In late March, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull had an uncharacteristic moment of self-doubt about whether it was the right time to be putting out his 700-page autobiography, A Bigger Picture, just three weeks before its scheduled release date.
“I’m worried,” Turnbull told his publisher and confidant Sandy Grant, of Hardie Grant, according to Diary’s reliable version of events.
“I’m not sure people have the bandwidth for someone wanting to talk about himself in the middle of a crisis.”
Ultimately, Turnbull held his nerve. Grant now tells us: “We were hesitating, hesitating. It was a gamble. But finally, we rolled the dice (on the book launch).”
And in sales terms, the counter-intuitive strategy of releasing a book in the middle of a pandemic (when many physical bookshops had shut their doors) seems to have paid off.
The book has been reprinted twice in a month, after an initial print run of 40,000, with 60,000 physical copies released in total. As of Monday, about 40,000 have been sold, along with 10,000 e-books and 5000 audiobooks, featuring Turnbull’s own voice (and his unique impersonations of Donald Trump and Alan Jones). Grant is now eyeing the 75,000 copies of Julia Gillard’s My Story as the next milestone.
One of the reasons for the high sales is the fact other publishers pulled books during the same period, making the Turnbull tome the only big lockdown new release for those with time on their hands.
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Hunt for ‘pirate zero’
As Malcolm Turnbull’s A Bigger Picture continues to sell, an investigation continues into how widely pirate e-book copies of the book circulated.
Nico Louw, a senior government economic staffer, has apologised for distributing the book to 59 of his friends.
But it is copies distributed before it got to Louw that Turnbull’s publisher Sandy Grant says he is really interested in.
Grant puts it in COVID-19 terms by saying he is “contact tracing” all the way back from Louw to “pirate zero”, as he investigates a theory that the e-book version of Turnbull’s memoir may have been hacked on Thursday, April 16. That’s four days before its April 20 release date.
At one point on the Saturday before it was released, the book was spreading like wildfire, going to “15 people in three hours”, Grant says.
Of those who were sent the book, he estimates that “40 per cent deleted it as soon as they received it”, including Foreign Minister Marise Payne. Grant says a further 30 per cent “distributed it in a very small way” and have now compensated the publishers for the pirate copies, while “a certain number haven’t responded or will get back to us shortly”.
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The letter that started an ABC war
A high-stakes battle has emerged over the issue of pay rises at the ABC with Scott Morrison’s government on one side, and the ABC, its staff and unions on the other.
Diary has obtained an explosive letter sent by the head of the Australian Public Service, Peter Woolcott AO, to the ABC’s managing director, David Anderson.
Woolcott’s letter had one purpose: to make it clear that the government’s coronavirus-led, six-month pause on public service pay rises also applies to all “non-Australian Public Service (APS)” bodies funded by the taxpayer, most notably the ABC. “The minister has written to me and has confirmed the government’s decision (on a pay rise pause) also applies to non-APS agencies,” Woolcott wrote. “The government expects non-APS agencies to exercise all discretion to give effect to its decision over the next 12 months, where possible.”
Woolcott’s letter was sent to Anderson on April 9 because the government believes the ABC needs to be financially responsible at a time when the entire private sector is facing unprecedented cuts to jobs and pay because of COVID-19.
There would be a $5m saving on the ABC’s $500m wages bill if it delayed a 2 per cent pay rise, scheduled for October 1, by six months. That could save jobs at a time when groups like GetUp argue the ABC is starved of cash.
But as of last week, a month after Woolcott’s letter was sent to Anderson, Diary hears the ABC had not sent as much as a text back to the public service boss. This is despite detailed responses to an identical letter from other non-APS bodies such as fellow media group SBS.
Aunty’s silence on Woolcott’s letter finally prompted a “please explain” note to Anderson last week from Communications Minister Paul Fletcher, in which he said he expected the ABC to at least respond to the public service boss, and investigate all options to pause wages.
But news of Fletcher’s intervention prompted a furious response from the ABC’s media union, the MEAA, with its boss, Paul Murphy, accusing the government of turning the pay pause “into an issue of ABC independence”.
In an email to ABC staff last week, Anderson also pointedly noted “the independence of the ABC from government direction is set out in the ABC Act”.
That sounds a lot like what then-ABC chair Jim Spigelman wrote in 2016 to ex-public service boss John Lloyd about another staffing dispute under then-PM Malcolm Turnbull: “Your assertion of authority to control the internal staffing policies of the ABC is a fundamental challenge to the independence of the ABC from government interference.” The fun between ScoMo and the ABC, it seems, is just beginning.
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Smith’s ‘late scratching’
The race for Ben Fordham’s now-vacant 2GB drivetime slot has taken a surprising turn.
Bookies favourite Chris Smith has revealed to Diary he’s ruling himself out of the contest, following a midweek meeting with Nine radio chief Tom Malone.
“I’m a late scratching,” he told us on Sunday. “I’m very happy to leave my balance between 2GB and Sky as it is. I’m on a good wicket, and my kids need my attention now.”
In the last fortnight, Smith has won full custody of his two teenage kids from his first marriage. A weekday drive slot would be near impossible, given the time demands of a total of four kids at different stages of development.
He’ll instead stick with weekend mornings on 2GB and 4BC. Meanwhile, talk persists about Seven Sydney news boss Jason Morrison returning to 2GB for drive, while interim stand-in Mark Levy will take his shot to prove himself starting on Monday.
Meanwhile, a Radio Today reader poll on who should take the plum slot surprisingly saw 2GB graveyard shift host Michael McLaren come out on top ahead of bigger names Smith, Peta Credlin, Karl Stefanovic and Peter FitzSimons.
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Hanson slams Rudd
Kevin Rudd may have designs on becoming a media identity, but at least one prominent fellow Queenslander doesn’t rate his chances.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has not held back on Rudd, in the wake of our Diary item last week floating him as a possible future shock jock.
“Oh my God, no way in the wide world!,” she unloaded to Sky News on WIN evening host Peter Gleeson, as she dubbed Rudd “Mr Sheen”, after the household polish mascot (even we have to admit there’s a strong resemblance between the pair).
Hanson went on to accuse Rudd of seeking to increase his media profile because of relevance deprivation.
“You know, he’s probably having withdrawal symptoms because he’s not in front of the camera all the time. He’d bore me to tears.”
She ended with a message for any prospective media bosses considering putting Rudd on air: “Please reconsider if you’re thinking of offering him a job. My God.”
Tell us what you really think, Pauline.
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ABC Ray vs SBS Ray
You’ve heard of “State vs State” and “Mate vs Mate”. But now there’s the TV battle to end all battles: Ray vs Ray.
So in demand is Ray Martin at both public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, that at 9pm on Wednesday a rare ratings showdown will take place: Ray on the ABC, versus Ray on SBS.
As Martin tells Diary: “It’s ridiculous. I’m up against myself. And I’d be happy to be on either network.”
On the ABC, Martin will feature on At Home Alone Together, his new show trying its hand at COVID-19 isolation comedy. But it will be up against his documentary An Australian Hero on SBS, about Victoria Cross recipient Keith Payne.
Martin is now a darling of public broadcasting, with his domination of Wednesday on ABC and SBS marking a transformation for the man who was once Kerry Packer’s most decorated TV star at Nine with five Gold Logies.
Since he left Nine, his career has taken a surprising turn away from ratings-obsessed commercial TV, starting with his 2015 audit of the ABC’s Q&A that found the show wasn’t a “lefty lynch mob”.
Now he’s trying his hand as an ABC comedian, and as Martin wryly notes: “In weird times, what could be weirder than Ray Martin fronting a comedy show?”
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