Laura Tingle has finally had enough. Getting nastily trolled on Twitter about your family, days after the death of your ex-husband, will do that to you.
Finally, late on Saturday night, the 7.30 chief political correspondent decided it was time to hit back. “F..k you Twitter trolls,” she tweeted. “My life is full of love and happiness. No more so than that which I share with my beautiful Daughter #ToscaRamsey of whom I am SO proud.”
At last count, the tweet had 12,000 Twitter likes. But as even senior ABC on-air talent were asking on the weekend, what triggered the Saturday night outburst?
When Diary reached Tingle on Sunday, she revealed her tweet was in response to a round of particularly nasty and personal trolling on Twitter last week, after the death of her former husband (and father of Tosca), Alan Ramsey, who died on November 24.
“There were some unpleasant tweets in the wake of my ex-husband’s death,” she said.
“Every so often, you just go: ‘enough!’
“It gets to the point where you don’t want to validate or give publicity to people who do that stuff by responding individually. But over a week or two, there were just some really unpleasant things written.”
Asked if she was thinking about getting off Twitter, she replied: “I certainly am.” At another point she said: “Should I get off Twitter? Probably. There’s been patches where I don’t tweet very much.”
Tingle’s trolling comes just days after her close colleague, 7.30 host Leigh Sales, copped yet another round of vicious trolling both before and after her first interview with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in several months — prompting her to also issue a public smackdown to her online critics via Twitter.
Tingle told Diary that as a general rule for public figures, online trolling was “much more vicious for women than men”.
“The sort of trolling I get is nothing compared to the absolutely revolting stuff faced by Leigh Sales and other women such as Magda Szubanski. But none of it is acceptable.”
Tingle said she was unfazed at a personal level: “I’m a reasonably tough person, and it doesn’t get to me,” she said.
“They’re not going to leave me weeping in a corner. They don’t scare me or belittle me.”
However, she said what made things different with these latest tweets was the fact it was said about the people she holds dearest.
“You can say what you want about me. But these were nasty things about my family. My family is really great and they make me really happy,” she said.
She said the trolling came from “sad characters, who haven’t got anything better to do than make really nasty remarks”.
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Neil Mitchell wars with Dan fanatics
Laura Tingle is not alone in copping a Twitter pile-on. The end of Melbourne’s lockdown has only escalated a white-anting campaign against the city’s morning radio king, Neil Mitchell, by #IStandWithDan trolls.
The pro-Dan Twitter crowd aren’t about to forget Mitchell’s vigorous moves during the lockdown to hold Andrews to account over the state’s well-chronicled hotel quarantine problems.
And that means even innocuous pronouncements by Mitchell cop the full treatment on Twitter. When he tweeted a few days ago that “dawn was beautiful this morning”, Mitchell copped a variety of angry replies from Dan fans. That response only intensified when he hosted Treasurer Josh Frydenberg last week, with a host of angry tweets about the pair.
Mitchell tells Diary: “I can’t say who is behind it but there are two threads: some strongly defensive of Daniel Andrews, and others usually coming from new accounts with very few followers.
“If I feel like being dumped into a bath of bile, all I need to do is criticise the Premier on Twitter and in it comes.”
Mitchell reckons he could “discover a cure for cancer” and still be abused. “This is a very ugly side of human nature,” he says.
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Nine dumps its China bureaus
As relations between Australia and China reach a historic low after last week’s “fake tweet” saga, some media organisations are resigned to relations not improving any time soon.
Diary has now learnt that Nine’s major newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Australian Financial Review, have decided in quick succession to shut down their operations in China altogether.
As we know, there are already no correspondents for Australian media outlets on the ground in China, after the AFR’s Mike Smith was, along with the ABC’s Bill Birtles, forced to hurriedly return to Australia in September amid deteriorating relations. But when they came home, Nine’s various China bureaus were initially kept open.
Three months later, there’s been a marked change of stance. The SMH, Age and AFR have now all closed offices and residences in China, and paid out news assistants they had been employing on the ground.
Congratulations to @ChrisBarrett_ appointed South-East Asia correspondent for @smh @theage ... he’ll join @ErykBagshaw in our new Singapore base for the region in early 2021. Fantastic duo to tackle the complex and vibrant region.
— Lisa Davies (@lisazdavies) December 1, 2020
The SMH and Age have decided on Singapore as the best base from which to cover China going forward. Eryk Bagshaw, who was to have been the SMH’s China-based correspondent, will now relocate to Singapore, from where he will now cover North Asia including China, while former senior cricket writer Chris Barrett will take over the South Asian beat.
That has left no room to keep paying for a China office for the two papers. As one insider dryly puts it: “Two people in Singapore is quite expensive with an empty office in Beijing.”
For its part, the AFR has also given up on having a China office for the medium term, but has not yet made plans on how Smith should cover it going forward. The Nine smart money is on him moving to Tokyo or Singapore. But getting scoops out of China from a base thousands of kilometres away may prove challenging.
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Credlin tries radio hosting gig
With most regular radio hosts winding up at the end of the week, the major talk stations such as 2GB and 3AW will move into full experimentation mode for the summer holidays.
Diary hears the most interesting move will be Nine’s trialling of none other than Sky’s Peta Credlin to host Deb Knight’s afternoon show on 2GB and 4BC during the silly season.
Credlin has dipped her toe in the radio waters this year with a Monday guest spot on John Stanley’s night-time show on 2GB and 4BC, which has apparently given her the taste for some more radio action. Credlin will divvy up Knight’s afternoon slot for the silly season with Joe Hildebrand.
Meanwhile, on 2GB breakfast, Ben Fordham will hand over to 2GB/Sky host Chris Smith from next week and Mark Levy will stand in for Ray Hadley.
Meanwhile, at 3AW, Nine Melbourne sport anchor Tony Jones is from Monday standing in for Neil Mitchell, while another sports jock, Stephen Quartermain is helping to steward the ridiculously high-rating 3AW breakfast show of Ross Stevenson and Russel Howcroft through the summer.
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PVO unleashes new curse on ScoMo
The Project host Peter van Onselen unleashed what turned out to be the ultimate curse on Bill Shorten at the last election when in the lead-up he predicted: “There’s no way Scott Morrison can win it and I’m happy to have that replayed time and time again to my shame if he does win it.”
Now PvO seems to have embraced the curse.
In the first excerpts from How good is Scott Morrison, his new book with academic Wayne Errington that’s due out in April, it’s no coincidence that PvO has almost replicated his quote about Shorten for ScoMo.
“Scott Morrison’s political dominance is such that it’s hard to conjure up circumstances that would see him lose the next election,” the book states.
Part of what has led PvO to the conclusion that ScoMo is about as impregnable as Shorten seemed in 2019 is what the book dubs as the PM’s “magnificent seven”.
They are the politicians and backroom players who PvO — also a columnist for The Australian — claims have been most pivotal to ScoMo’s success.
In no particular order, they are Ben Morton, the assistant Minister to the PM and Cabinet; Yaron Finkelstein, the Prime Minster’s principal private secretary; Stuart Robert, the Government Services Minister; Phil Gaetjens, the secretary of the Department of PM and Cabinet; former Liberal backroom player Scott Briggs; Alex Hawke, International Development Minister; and John Kunkel, ScoMo’s chief of staff.
But the book will also claim that ScoMo’s focus on his “magnificent seven”, as well as the creation of the national cabinet of state premiers, has caused the odd tension among senior federal cabinet ministers that feel “left out in the cold”. More, no doubt, to come.
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Inside Triple J’s breakfast break-up
Turns out Alan Jones leaving 2GB isn’t the only big breakfast radio split of 2020.
Among the effortlessly cool 20-something crowd over at Triple J, there’s been a break-up for the ages. After just one year in the premium Triple J breakfast slot, the on-air pair of Sally Coleman and Erica Mallett both abruptly stepped away mid-last month, effective immediately.
And Diary’s radio insiders hint the rapid departure may have been the result of a rather large falling out between the pair, which some insiders have put down to “musical differences”.
They claim it even got to the point where the Sally & Erica show pair couldn’t coexist in the same studio.
Certainly, Mallett hinted at a “conclusion” to their relationship as “people” in an Instagram post last week, despite also noting that the show itself was going “great guns”.
“I wanted breaky to continue … with my whole heart,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, the reality was that although Sally and Erica — the show was going great guns, Sally and Erica — the people were coming to the natural conclusion of their eight-year creative ride together.”
Mallett’s comments also indicate the decision by the former hip hop duo to split, from both Triple J and each other as professional partners, was arrived at rapidly. She cryptically noted: “Until recently, we were all planning for a 2021 where Sally and Erica would grow and grow.”
That dream is now over, with the Triple J production line already rolling out a fresh pair of hip hop-loving 20-somethings, Bryce Mills and Ebony Boadu. God we feel old!
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Studio 10 sinks to 24,000
Spare a thought for the hosts of Studio 10, Sarah Harris and Tristan McManus. Since Ten’s version of morning TV dumped its multi-host format, axing names like Kerri-Anne Kennerley and Joe Hildebrand in a big cost-saving move, the show’s ratings have gone into a tailspin.
Last Monday, things hit rock bottom for the respected Harris as well as McManus, with the show’s figures collapsing to a shocking 24,000 viewers in the five capital cities for the 8am-to-midday timeslot. That’s a paltry 9 per cent of Sunrise’s numbers that day, and just 12 per cent of Today’s.
It’s also around half of what Studio 10 was doing before the departures.
And things didn’t get much better with 28,000 on Tuesday. But they at least managed to struggle back over the 30,000 mark later in the week.
Still, with Ten’s new co-CEO Jarrod Villani having until very recently been a corporate undertaker with “restructuring” firm KordaMentha, Studio 10 staff might be a touch nervous about 2021.
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ABC board talks Four Corners story
Amid little fanfare, Ita Buttrose chaired the ABC’s last board meeting of the year on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.
And not surprisingly, Diary is told Communications Minister Paul Fletcher’s letter of protest about Inside the Canberra Bubble, Four Corners’ #MeToo story on government frontbenchers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter, was quite the late antidote to the board’s normally sedate proceedings.
Board insiders noted that “any letter from a minister is going to be taken seriously”.
Fletcher even made a personal appearance by Zoom, which apparently was already scheduled. We’re told he briefly brought up the Four Corners episode during his appearance, but was politely moved on from the subject.
Apart from the Four Corners discussion, what was also interesting about the meeting was that it was the ABC’s first held in person since the COVID-19 pandemic hit early this year.
With borders just reopened, Queensland-based director Georgie Somerset jetted down to physically attend.
But boringly, there was no Christmas partying — not even a single bevvy, we’re told — and just to dampen the mood a little more, the meeting was short two female directors.
With the terms of ex-deputy chair Kirstin Ferguson and fellow former director Donny Walford expiring in recent weeks, there were just seven board members present.
It’s now highly likely the replacements for Ferguson and Walford won’t be announced until the new year.
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Odds shift in Nine CEO hunt
Matters seem to have progressed in the great Nine CEO hunt to replace Hugh Marks — and it doesn’t seem that positive for Mike Sneesby, the boss of the group’s streaming service, Stan.
From what our sources tell us, Sneesby has drifted in internal betting since starting as favourite. The big query is: can Sneesby make the transition from a division with 80 staff to running a media giant across TV, radio, print and digital with 4000 staff?
Of course, with a divided board at Nine, which is split between the faction led by chairman Peter Costello, and an ex-Fairfax faction headed by deputy chairman Nick Falloon, anything is still possible.
But the internal suggestion at of the weekend is that in the CEO process, run by headhunter Spencer Stuart, Sneesby may have dropped in the pecking order behind warm favourite, Nine’s publishing and digital boss Chris Janz, and even external candidates like Foxtel chief commercial officer Amanda Laing.
Meanwhile, Laing is firming in the betting, with Diary hearing several major shareholders are quietly backing her.
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