Media Diary: ABC on hunt for Andrew Probyn replacement
After making its high-profile press gallery star redundant earlier this year, the new Canberra-based job is not being advertised as political editor, but ‘Editor, Politics’.
The ABC is on the lookout for a new Canberra-based political editor. Despite making its previous political editor Andrew Probyn redundant earlier this year, the new job ad states the role will instead be called “Editor, Politics”.
Aunty is on the hunt for someone who has the “authority, experience, ideas and resilience to lead the ABC News team’s daily coverage from Canberra Parliament House, while also contributing to our reporting on politics and democracy at all levels of government”.
The successful candidate will also need to have a track record of “compassionately managing staff” and sorting rosters.
The ABC is also set to recruit a number of video presenters/producers who have used TikTok or Instagram before. To be eligible, candidates must have 10,000 followers on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube. Bonus points if they have also produced a vertical video that has clocked up more than 100,000 views.
It will pay the successful applicants between $93,000 and $114,000 for six months to “collaborate with experienced creators and with ABC teams to produce innovative digital videos that resonate with Gen Z and millennial audiences”.
The move to attract new audiences has been applauded by new media investors and tech founders, including George Bancs.
As well as launching the workplace OH&S digital tool Talk5, Bancs has recently acquired the social media following of Roxy Jacenko’s public relations firm, Sweaty Betty, in order to launch a new video discovery social media platform called Wweevv.
A concept that Nine’s chief executive, Mike Sneesby, has reportedly shown an interest in.
“It’s good to see organisations moving toward digitisation, the future of new audiences and trying to build audiences around short-form video content, which is a heck of a lot cheaper to make than studio productions,” Bancs told Diary.
Yet he’s concerned we could see a repeat of the social media companies again holding all the cards and trying to extract money – taxpayer money – from the national broadcaster.
“Where I’m against the strategy somewhat is for traditional journalists … bringing in so much more competition to an already suffering setup, which is what we’ve all been fighting with Meta about by trying to get them to pay for our content. Now you’ve got ABC hiring creators and bringing them into the space.”
Don’t @ me: Albo’s online war
Anthony Albanese has long been a popular figure on social media, even before the 2022 election. But lurking among his 350,000 Instagram followers is a vocal and growing group of anti-Israel trolls who are hounding his every online move.
If he doesn’t have enough trouble with the pro-Palestinian members of his parliamentary caucus (and cabinet) challenging him over Israel, every post – from pics with beloved cartoon hero Bluey to cancer charity events – are being trolled and overtaken by hundreds of negative comments about the conflict in Gaza.
“Palestine children are our children. Stop with the distraction campaign. Stop the genocide,” was one of 235 comments posted under a photo of a child benefiting from the Redkite cancer charity at the weekend. It was then liked 50 times.
Since the beginning of the conflict last month, the trolling and negative comments have increased.
Engagement is up – comments have increased to an average of 300 per post and are predominantly negative, with the majority now dedicated to calling on Mr Albanese to demand a ceasefire in the Middle East.
“Are you taking the piss mate? Is this appropriate? 16 days of unrelenting genocide and you are taking holiday snaps. Your political base are screaming in the comments for you to do something helpful and you give them this cheesy photo,” said a comment with 419 likes under a photo of the PM in Washington last month.
The honeymoon is over with at least one of his celebrity followers too.
Under a post published to promote his historic visit to China after his US State Visit, comedian Nazeem Hussain took the PM to task.
“Did you tell him (China’s premier Li Qiang) that China has a right to defend themselves against Uyghurs in concentration camps,” Hussain commented, chalking up more than 400 likes.
“Can you put one in Gaza?” asked a follower under a post regarding new Medicare urgent care clinics.
“Honey we see you deleting comments about Palestine,” another annotated a video interview where Albanese was explaining how the government is tackling the housing crisis.
“Read the room”, “delete this”, “tone deaf” and “cost of living?” are among some of the most common comments being left on Albo’s account since October.
Logies & order
The civil defamation trial brought by former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann against Network 10 and presenter Lisa Wilkinson was played footage from the Logies last week.
But the cosy Federal Court room 22A in Sydney also apparently developed something of a stage show aura after “Reserved” signs were placed on seats in the front row to ensure the concerned parties had somewhere to sit.
Diary determined to get to the bottom of this, especially after a number of sources said that legal teams for Wilkinson and Ten had to request allocated seating after men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt refused to make room for Wilkinson in the front row on Wednesday.
This contradicted a front-page story in The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday claiming Arndt was “gracious” in her request to make room for Wilkinson.
“Some people leapfrogged seats to make way for Wilkinson, giving way to an invidious new scenario in which she would be required to sit next to … Bettina Arndt … But Arndt was gracious enough to move down the aisle, leaving a vacant seat at the end of the row for Wilkinson to light upon at the precise moment she turned from conferring with her lawyers, and she sank into it as naturally as a queen assumes her throne,” the report said.
“Gracious? Are you joking?” a source from the legal fraternity in court on Wednesday told Diary. “She begrudgingly moved after being asked a number of times by Dr Matt Collins KC and his team. Then Sue (Chrysanthou SC) arrived and had to practically plead with her and other people to make room so Lisa could sit close to her lawyers to confer with them. It was a circus.”
Recollections vary and Ms Arndt’s is not as “juicy”.
“Not true,” she told Diary. “There was then much confusion and milling around and at one point a lawyer approached the group of us at our end to see if we could move somewhere else. Then some people further down in our row appear to have moved to a row further back, the men next to me moved along and I moved too.”
Meanwhile next door
Nine Entertainment is set to pay US finance expert and former banker Peter Schiff more than $1m over a story by Walkley-winning journalists Nick McKenzie and Charlotte Grieve.
Schiff was interviewed by McKenzie, after being approached by Grieve, via videolink in late 2020. Schiff says he believed it was to be a story about the global economy and inflation. He was then asked questions about an international tax evasion investigation by tax authorities which involved Euro Pacific Bank, of which he was the chief executive and founder.
Then the TV report was aired and articles were published in the Nine newspapers and online, which detailed how Schiff’s bank operated out of Puerto Rico and was used by Australians to hold money offshore.
Schiff launched defamation action against Nine, McKenzie and Grieve claiming “allegations of criminality” had been made in the TV report and articles.
The legal saga ended with Nine agreeing to settle with Schiff and pay him $550,000 in damages plus his court costs, meaning the total bill will likely be more than $1m.
“This win is a drop in the ocean,” he told Diary after his win in the Federal Court last week.
“I lost my bank, which had the strongest and strictest compliance measures and KYC (know your customer) checks. I’ve lost my livelihood and more than $US25m from this. This is not the end,” Schiff said, referring to the articles published in the Nine newspapers by Grieve which are still available online.
The 60 Minutes segment has been removed.
A Nine spokesman told Diary. “We stand by our journalists – two of Australia’s most accomplished journalists in Nick McKenzie and Charlotte Grieve – and the articles, which were found not to be defamatory, will remain online. 60 Minutes accepts that the Federal Court found the program conveyed meanings that were not intended by the program, noting the barriers posed by the current state of defamation law in Australia to important public interest journalism.”
Schiff was right. It wasn’t the end.
Following the settlement and inquiries made by Diary to Nine last week, the media company made an urgent Federal Court application to stop Schiff from threatening to “engage in a vendetta against the two journalists involved”, Nine’s lawyer Dauid Sibtain SC said on Friday before he requested a short pause to take instructions.
He then withdrew the application after a 14-minute adjournment. Justice Ian Jackman (brother of Hugh) then ordered Nine pay for Schiff’s legal costs – again. No charges have been laid against Schiff or his financial institution.
As a postscript, Grieve was named Citi Australia’s Young Business Journalist of the Year in 2022: Schiff wants her stripped of the award. Diary approached Citi for comment.
ABC given all-clear
The devil works hard but Fiona Cameron works harder.
The ABC Ombudsman has been flatout like a lizard drinking in the past month, adjudicating thousands of complaints regarding the national broadcaster’s coverage of the war in Gaza.
However, there were 13 complaints made following the voice referendum last month regarding the triple J program Blak Out that aired the day after the failed vote and played Yothu Yindi’s Treaty on loop in protest.
“Last night was the most overt, most unconcealed manifestation of racism I’ve ever experienced in my whole life,” triple j presenter Nooky said.
As reported by Diary, Treaty was then played on repeat for the entire hour of Blak Out – the weekly show hosted by the Yuin and Thunghutti man from Nowra in southern NSW.
The complaints ranged from listeners taking issue with the program featuring personal opinions of ABC staff, to others saying the episode was “offensive to No voters and incited violence”, to assertions that playing Treaty on repeat was a “poor programming choice and not impartial”.
Cameron ruled no breach after assessing the show against the ABC’s editorial standards for independence, integrity and responsibility, impartiality, harm and offence.
On top of the outcry before the recent Israel-Hamas war episode of Q+A, Cameron also had to get through 882 complaints filed after the poorly rated show aired.
The program, hosted by Patricia Karvelas, featured UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and Australia Palestine Advocacy Network boss Nasser Mashni, and attracted a slew of sternly worded letters.
That’s despite only 209,000 people tuning in and it failing to make it into the top 20 daily programs for Monday, November 13. The complaints ranged from Q+A having “two Jewish spokespeople on the panel and only one Palestinian spokesperson” to “giving little time to Francesca Albanese”.
Cameron found no breach and concluded: “The program included highly polarised views which were appropriately challenged by the host and critically discussed by other panellists, including views that were likely offensive and hurtful to some viewers.”
On the flip side to all the drama, love was in the air on Thursday as the broadcaster celebrated the 100th birthday of ABC Radio Sydney with a live broadcast hosted by Sarah Macdonald at the State Library of NSW. Guests included Anthony Albanese and ABC legend Angela Catterns.
Outgoing chair Ita Buttrose swung by to reminisce and spoke of her father – a former ABC assistant general manager – and how she wished he was still alive during her tenure at the top “to talk to him about certain challenges that face the chair of the ABC. It’s a constant, daily battle,” she said.
Instead of receiving gifts, the ABC lost some of its bells and whistles. Literally. ABC Sydney has now turned off the “pips”, the beeps that play at the top of the hour just before the news theme plays.
According to ABC Radio Sydney’s manager, Steve Ahern, the pips were cancelled for being outdated. “We thought if you’re going to mark a symbolic change between the wonderful history of the last 100 years, and the future history of the next 100 years, which will be different, digital, amazing. Why not do something like that?” he said.
Nick Tabakoff is on leave.
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