How many ABC staff took a stand on Australia Day?

ABC staff have the option of working on Australia Day and taking a more ‘culturally appropriate’ day in lieu. So how many rocked up to work?

The ABC headquarters in Ultimo in Sydney. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

Remember when the ABC gave its presenters and staff licence to refer to Australia Day as Invasion Day a few years back, publishing an online story with the provocative headline: “What to do on Australia Day/Invasion Day in 2021”?

That infamous story described January 26 as “one of Australia’s most contentious dates”, but the headline itself only survived a few hours before it was amended amid widespread outrage.

Australia Day has been a hot-button issue within the ABC – as it has in many workplaces across the country – for several years, but the flashpoint at Aunty came in 2018 when the broadcaster’s youth station, Triple J, moved its annual Hottest 100 countdown from its traditional January 26 timeslot to the fourth weekend of that month, acknowledging at the time that it was a “complex issue”.

It remains a debate with many sides, and in recognition of the fact that many ABC workers have firm views on celebrating Australia Day on January 26, staff at the media organisation have the option of working on that date and taking a more “culturally appropriate” public holiday day in lieu.

As of this year, that option is also open to hundreds of thousands of other Australians, including all public servants, and some staff at leading companies such as Woolworths, Telstra, Deloitte and PwC.

ABC managing director David Anderson. Picture: Gary Ramage

ABC boss David Anderson was grilled at a Senate hearing in February about how the taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s staff actually observed the national day in 2023.

How many staff took up the option of working on January 26, and deferred their day off to another date?

Mr Anderson took the question “on notice”, and last week, almost two months after the question was asked, all was revealed.

Three.

Out of thousands of staff at the ABC, just three people took a personal stand and decided to rock up to work on Australia Day and take a different day off further down the track.

Of course, some journalists were required to work as per the terms of their contract, so it wasn’t as if the joint was entirely empty.

But it seems this year, the vast majority of ABC staff spent Australia Day kicking back, enjoying the public holiday.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that ….

Sky dumps TikTok but Vic Premier hasn’t yet

Australia’s highest-reaching news outlet on social media is removing itself from TikTok, citing national security issues.

Sky News Australia (owned by News Corp, publisher of The Australian) will no longer publish content to TikTok, following last week’s decision by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to ban the social media platform from all government-issued devices operated by politicians and public servants.

Sky News Australia is the first media outlet in Australia to remove itself from TikTok on security grounds; the BBC asked staff to delete TikTok from their phones two weeks ago, but the British public broadcaster still operates its own account, with 4.4 million followers.

In recent weeks, governments in the UK, US and New Zealand have also banned employees from using TikTok, amid heightened security fears.

Paul Whittaker, chief executive of Sky News Australia, said while the network’s TikTok account had amassed a large following, it was not worth the risk to stay on the platform.

Sky News Australia chief executive Paul Whittaker.

“Following recent developments, specifically last week’s advice from intelligence and security agencies to the Attorney-General regarding the intense security risk associated with having TikTok on mobile devices, we have made the decision to cease publishing to the platform as a matter of precaution and principle,” he told Diary.

Sky News launched its TikTok account in late 2022 and racked up 65,000 followers and many millions of video views over the past six months.

But while the network will no longer be publishing to the platform, it won’t be ordering staff to remove the app on their own personal devices (if they are not company property), nor will it be advising its viewers on the matter.

“That is not how we work and people can make their own decisions,” an insider said.

“But Sky News will not be part of a spy network of an authoritarian regime known for its hostility towards journalists.”

Diary asked other media outlets if they would follow the lead of Sky News Australia, but none wished to comment. Nine Entertainment, which last month ran a three-day series, “Red Alert”, which suggested China could potentially engage Australia in “full-scale war” within three years, heavily promoted the newspapers’ investigation on TikTok.

Cyber-safety expert Susan McLean recently told The Australian that journalists should not use the Chinese-owned platform – which has more than one billion users – because it put their sources at great risk.

“TikTok has been proven to collect more data than other platforms, and despite what they will tell you, the information goes back to China,” Ms McLean said.

“If most people stopped and thought about that, they would think that’s not OK.”

Information that can be potentially harvested by the platform includes a journalist’s location, their internet history being recorded, and personal details of their contacts.

Opposition cyber security spokesman James Paterson, the chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Interference Through Social Media, has warned: “Journalists need to put in measures to protect their sources because we know TikTok has used it to get their sources before.”

But Dan’s still ticking

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews recently returned from a trip to China – a journey shrouded in secrecy and minus any media – but just days after he unpacked his suitcases in Melbourne, he curiously revealed to the media he was dumping TikTok.

Among the nation’s politicians, Dan has amassed one of the largest social media followings in the country.

Daniel Andrews. Picture: Supplied

He has nearly 110,000 followers on TikTok, but after national security concerns were raised about the platform, Dan decided to ditch it.

However, he did concede that he didn’t mention any security concerns the government, including Anthony Albanese, had with TikTok when he was visiting China, noting that it would have been inappropriate to do so.

But when Diary did a check on the social media platform on Sunday, sure enough, Dan is still there and so too are dozens of his videos, including one where he tells viewers it’s time to “get on the beers”, which has been played nearly one million times.

Diary asked the Premier’s PR spinners why he hasn’t yet shut down his account, but we didn’t hear back.

3AW’s musical chairs

There was some “disquiet” about certain on-air movements at Melbourne’s 3AW last week, Diary hears.

While regular morning show host Neil Mitchell has been on leave, his slot has been filled by drive show host Tom Elliott, who stepped out of his own program to fill in for the veteran broadcaster.

Tom Elliott at 3AW. Picture Jay Town

But this meant that the station had to find a replacement for Elliott, so his show was hosted by sports presenter Tony Jones, who in the past has often filled in for Mitchell.

Elliott filled in for Mitchell all week except on Friday when the regular host returned to take part in the Good Friday Appeal.

And broadcaster Eddie McGuire was back on Mitchell’s show on the Ideas Factory segment, but instead of going head-to-head with his old foe, he chewed the fat with Elliott.

Not everyone was happy with the shift in shifts, Diary hears.

Nothing to see here

On March 29, the (UK) Guardian’s editor-in-chief Katharine Viner issued an apology for the not-insignificant matter of the masthead’s links to one of the most shameful episodes in human history, the transatlantic slave trade.

“We are facing up to, and apologising for, the fact that our founder (John Edward Taylor) and those who funded him drew their wealth from a practice that was a crime against humanity,” Viner wrote.

“As we enter our third century as a news organisation, this awful history must reinforce our determination to use our journalism to expose racism, injustice and inequality, and to hold the powerful to account.”

Independent researchers discovered that Taylor, who founded the Manchester Guardian in 1821, had links to slavery through his partnership with a cotton merchant company involved in the importation of vast amounts of raw cotton produced by enslaved labour in the West Indies, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname and the southern US.

In response to the findings, the Guardian launched “Cotton Capital”, a series that “explores how transatlantic slavery shaped the Guardian, Manchester, Britain and the world”.

But for a title that has so often taken the high moral ground on social issues, the revelation that the esteemed media brand was inextricably linked with slavery must have been a hammer blow for the Guardian’s editors, journalists, and of course, its readers.

So what has been the fallout from the explosive research findings?

It seems the scandal has barely caused a ripple in reader land — perhaps not surprising, given the almost universal silence about the matter from the masthead’s leading journalists both in the UK and Australia.

Why the lack of outrage, we wonder? Diary approached Lenore Taylor, the editor of the Guardian Australia (which is featuring the Cotton Capital series on its site), to ask if the revelations had been bad for business. Apparently not. “Globally, we have had a handful cancellations where readers have mentioned this project, but these are easily outweighed by messages from existing and new supporters supporting the project, our journalism, and our plans to invest in restorative justice and a number of media diversity initiatives, including in Australia,” a spokeswoman for the masthead told Diary.

Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner.

“We are not aware of any Guardian Australia subscribers cancelling their subscriptions over the legacies of enslavement project. We’ve had a very positive response from our readers to our reporting and our approach to this issue.”

No staff have left the masthead in protest, and advertisers are holding firm, too, with the Guardian Australia reporting that none of its clients had pulled their cash from the platform in the wake of the slave trade links.

But it remains to be seen if the damning research findings will change the Guardian’s often-preachy stance on social issues.

As American novelist and journalist Ashley Rindsberg wrote earlier this year, the probe into the masthead’s murky association with slavery is problematic, not least because over the past two decades “the Guardian’s approach to the topic of race has been nothing short of total”.

“Since the 2000s, the Guardian’s race coverage has left no element of existence, human or otherwise – as a piece on why driverless cars are racist attests – unbent by its racial prism,” Rindsberg wrote in a piece published on British news and opinion website UnHerd. “By the Guardian’s telling, post-Brexit Britain has been beset by a ‘frenzy of hatred’.

“British schools are racist. Twitter is racist. The Covid response was racist. Dog walkers are racist. Chicken is racist. Cricket is racist. And if you consider asking someone to explain why something is racist, don’t: it is, according to another Guardian piece, extremely racist.”