Nine appeared to ban Hanson last Monday morning, soon after she branded some residents trapped inside Melbourne’s housing commission towers as “drug addicts” who should have “learned English” before coming to Australia.
Soon after, Nine put out a statement that Hanson would “no longer be appearing on our program as a regular contributor”.
But Diary hears that’s not the end of the matter.
Nine’s statement that Hanson would no longer be a “regular contributor” might have seemed final. But it deliberately left Today some wriggle room to quietly bring her back on air if and when the furore dies down. Tellingly, Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon carefully avoided any criticism of Hanson — or any mention of her at all — on Tuesday’s Today show.
But Hanson is now nursing a grudge. When Diary called Pauline’s right-hand man James Ashby on the weekend, he furiously rejected a Hanson comeback. “If she’s not good enough to come on Today on a regular basis, the question has to be asked: ‘Why bother?’ It was a glass jaw decision. I don’t know what else to say.”
ABC election ‘bias’ review
Remember the ABC’s coverage of last year’s federal election, culminating in its May 18 election night coverage (that memorably featured Penny Wong looking grimmer and grimmer as the ScoMo “miracle” unfolded)?
Diary can now reveal that the ABC board commissioned a review specifically to look at whether there was any political bias in its campaign coverage leading up to that eventful night.
We’ve learnt the review was conducted by an external expert, Kerry Blackburn, an ex-adviser to both the BBC and ABC. And if you thought Blackburn had her hands full in investigating any bias at the ABC, that’s nothing on her new job. Today she’s in a world of pain in COVID-ridden Victoria, as one of the principal policy advisers in Daniel Andrews ’ Department of Premier and Cabinet.
But in the pre-COVID world of last year, we’re told Blackburn — whose review was presided over by ABC editorial director Craig McMurtrie — analysed a random week of the ABC’s campaign coverage.
It wasn’t the first bias review Blackburn has prepared for the ABC. In 2016, she was paid $60,000 to investigate the ABC’s business coverage, with input from former ANZ chief executive Mike Smith. She ultimately concluded the ABC had no “anti-business” slant.
But what has happened to Blackburn’s 2019 bias review? And what did it find?
When we asked a spokesman, he would only say that the ABC “regularly commissions a mix of internal and external debriefs, particularly after … a federal election”.
He added that these were “intended for content makers and part of the ABC’s continuous improvement process”.
But Diary does hear one development: that Blackburn’s findings were used internally as an “education tool” to rethink balance with guests and opinions on shows like Q&A and Insiders (both of which have since installed new presenters in Hamish McDonald and David Speers), as well as The Drum.
Blackburn’s findings were also apparently taken into account in a separate seven-page August 2019 ABC report into the election coverage.
That report shows that the ABC received 322 written audience complaints about its election
coverage, with 249 about “allegations of bias”. Of those complaints, 61 per cent alleged that the ABC’s 2019 coverage favoured Labor, while 28 per cent alleged it favoured the Coalition.
Kerry’s call
One ABC elder statesman clearly not afraid of making a political call these days is Kerry O’Brien. Five years on from his ABC retirement, O’Brien turned electoral lobbyist during the recent Eden Monaro by-election campaign, with his own version of a how-to-vote form for locals wanting a “strong” ABC.
“As someone who has devoted most of my professional life to public broadcasting and the high ideals of the ABC”, O’Brien urged even “conservative voters” in Eden Monaro to vote against the government.
“This is not about Coalition versus Labor,” he told Eden Monaro constituents in the campaign’s last week through the ABC Alumni site.
“This is one moment in which even the most dyed-in-the-wool conservative voters can show their support for the ABC in the ballot box by registering a protest vote without threatening the government’s control of the parliament.”
Coy on Hanson
Still on Pauline Hanson, the first person to call out her remarks was on the same Monday Today show segment: Sarrah Le Marquand, columnist and editor-in-chief of Stellar and Body and Soul magazines in News Corp’s Sunday papers.
Le Marquand immediately pulled up Hanson on air on Monday morning for her controversial “drug addicts” comments, dubbing them “absolute nonsense”, winning a News Corp identity unlikely praise on Twitter.
We called Le Marquand on Friday to ask if she had anything to add. “I’ve been approached for lots of comments, but I don’t feel it’s necessary for me to engage,” she told us. “I felt what I said on the Today show spoke for itself.”
Nine reads staff the riot act
The Victorian coronavirus outbreak has prompted Nine to read staff the riot act to protect network talent like Tracy Grimshaw, Karl Stefanovic and Liz Hayes from the disease.
Diary is told Nine is very worried that just one case in its Sydney bunker, where most of its national news and current affairs shows like Today, ACA and 60 Minutes are based, could cripple its entire newsroom.
This fear is embodied in a strict internal note Diary has obtained, which was sent to staff last week by Nine news supremo Darren Wick to stamp out complacency. “We’ve all relaxed and dropped our guards in Sydney because the number of new cases … has been so low,” he says. “(But) Melbourne is an explosion we can’t ignore.”
Wick has reimposed strict COVID protocols from the first March lockdown. He has told Nine’s on-air reporters in Sydney: “All reporters using the voice booth — News, ACA, Today — must wipe down the microphone before and after use. There is NO EXCEPTION to this rule.”
Wick has also placed a ban on “outside talent” entering the newsroom “or any studios” for live shows, with “NO exceptions”.
News reporters have returned to “previous protocols where a number of the team stay out of the newsroom and work 100 per cent in the field”.
There will now be clear separation between Nine’s major shows: “60 Minutes will be isolated from other areas. ACA will again be isolated, with access restricted to staff working there.”
Wick reminded staff they faced a once-in-100-year health crisis: “The only way we can fight it is to starve it.”
Stokes’ AFL heist
It’s the hometown ratings blockbuster that Perth boy and media mogul Kerry Stokes could once only dream of.
With Victoria’s COVID crisis raging, Diary hears that in the last few days, the odds have shortened dramatically that Stokes’ personal Holy Grail, a Perth AFL Grand Final, could now become a reality.
We’re told that for all of Eddie McGuire’s talk last week of a Sydney decider, it’s COVID-free Perth that’s the AFL’s real dark horse.
And “King of the West” Stokes has thrown his sizeable media resources, particularly The West Australian newspaper, behind a Grand Final heist, with front page stories and mass WA petitions for the game to come to Perth.
The AFL is now looking seriously at staging the decider at Perth’s Optus Stadium on October 24, and having it screened live nationally on Stokes’ Seven network, with prospective Perth mayor, Basil Zempilas, calling the action.
Here’s the big clincher: a Perth Grand Final can single-handedly solve the TV-driven debate about whether the Grand Final should be in the day or at night. In Perth, it can be both.
Seven has long wanted a night-time Grand Final to maximise ratings. But with a 3PM opening whistle in Perth, it will be a 6PM starting time in Sydney and Melbourne because of daylight saving: ratings heaven for Stokes while keeping the daytime grand final tradition alive.
It may also be the best financial outcome for the code, because in finals games, it is the AFL itself, not the teams, that pockets gate and hospitality revenues.
Normally, playing at the 100,000 capacity MCG is a no-brainer financially. But today, the prospect of anything near full capacity at the MCG in October is remote.
For the AFL right now, 60,000 screaming fans at COVID-free Optus Stadium (in east coast prime time) looks hard to beat.
Olle’s off
One of the big events on the media calendar, the Andrew Olle Media Lecture, has fallen victim to the latest COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne, Diary can reveal.
It is the first time that the lecture, which is put on by ABC Radio Sydney, in honour of Aunty’s late, great broadcaster Andrew Olle, has been cancelled. It has been delivered by a who’s who of Australian media since the 1990s, including Jana Wendt, Lachlan Murdoch, Kerry Stokes and Laurie Oakes.
But an announcement is imminent to reveal that what would have been the 25th Olle lecture in November, hosted by ABC Sydney drive presenter Richard Glover, has fallen victim to the new Victorian-driven uncertainty about the coronavirus.
Olle’s death of a brain tumour in 1995, aged 47, heralded the start of the lecture series, which has helped to raise millions for brain cancer.
Diary hears safety concerns meant the ABC couldn’t commit resources to securing a venue.
It was decided not to host a socially distanced Zoom Olle address, because that would defeat one of the event’s key purposes — as one of the few nights for a peaceful ceasefire between our warring media tribes.
No orator had been announced for this year. Mischievous media types point out that the cancellation leaves the bandana man himself, Peter FitzSimons, as the carry-over Olle lecturer until the address returns, COVID permitting, in 2021.
Ray’s border dash
Virtually as soon as Annastacia Palaszczuk opened up the Queensland border, Australia’s highest paid broadcaster, Ray Hadley, packed his car and made a beeline for the Tweed Heads/Coolangatta checkpoint.
It’s all part of Hadley’s new plan to broadcast his show — which simulcasts on both 2GB and 4BC — more often from Queensland, particularly given the tight upcoming October state election.
Nine has built Hadley a bespoke studio inside Nine’s Gold Coast studios on Cavill Ave in Surfers Paradise, a stone’s throw from his apartment on Main Beach. Hadley is wasting no time in broadcasting from there for two weeks, with plans to broadcast one week a month from the Gold Coast from now on.
Hadley tells Diary he made the trip from his Dural home on Saturday afternoon, not arriving at his Main Beach apartment till midnight. “They tell me the trick is to get to the border checkpoint late, because there’s fewer queues,” he says. “But I got there so late I even ran into a few young clubbers crossing the border!”
‘Birthdaygate’ surprise
After a bruising few days in which coronavirus cases in his state soared, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews seems to have decided to make some friends in the Melbourne press gallery, following weeks of fraught relations.
It would be fair to say it’s not often that “Chairman Dan” rushes to the defence of News Corp or its employees, especially Melbourne’s Herald Sun, which has been among the toughest examiners of his tenure as Premier.
But that’s exactly what happened last week after the paper’s state political reporter Alex White was on the receiving end of a Twitter pile-on after a tense press conference on Thursday.
White had grilled Andrews on whether he had gone out on the night of his birthday last week, just before Victoria’s latest lockdown. After a back-and-forth with White, a flustered Andrews said he had been at home with his wife and kids “having a very nice family dinner”.
White was trolled on Twitter, leading her to put out a tweet the next morning reminding people that “Birthdaygate” was not the “actual news” of the day.
It took Andrews’ surprise intervention to finally calm the angry mob.
“Abusing journalists — or anyone — on Twitter does no one any good,” he tweeted. “We have far more important things to deal with, let’s all move on.”
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