Time to take a break, says Ita

NEWSROOMS are famous for their blow-ups. And this was a good one.

NEWSROOMS are famous for their blow-ups. And this was a good one.

Studio 10 executive producer Rob McKnight had been going through a tough time; his new show was about to launch, his one-year-old was in hospital for heart surgery, and his friend and colleague Adam Boland was battling mental illness.

Exhausted, he lost his temper at his high-profile on-air talent, Ita Buttrose, Sarah Harris, Joe Hildebrand and Jessica Rowe. “I lost it in the control room and was very short with the hosts,’’ McKnight said when we asked him about the incident.

Luckily for McKnight, his hosts are less sensitive than Today Show’s Ben Fordham, who wasn’t im­pres­sed with a little touch-up from former Today EP Neil Breen when he didn’t turn up to work one day, but still hosted his show on 2GB.

But we imagine Buttrose doesn’t bat an eyelash at a blow-up. McKnight’s temper-tantrums probably pale in comparison to Kerry Packer’s during her Cleo days.

“Ita, in her unique style, came up to me and said ‘You need some sleep, go take a holiday’,” McKnight says.

“So I promptly took two weeks off and flew the family to Fiji. It was much needed advice.”

Yesterday’s news

BUT there’s nothing quite like a spray via email. Trouble is, it can get forwarded.

The AFR’s chief political correspondent, Phil Coorey, was cranky when a conservative community action group, CANdo, criticised the media for downplaying coverage of the government’s success with asylum-seeker numbers and boat arrivals.

They said: “Was this because so many politicians and experts in the gallery had insisted that turning back the boats was impossible?”

Coorey emailed them: “It was in the Sunday papers you dumb f***.”

Hymn book of hypocrisy

IN battles more civilised but no less vicious, the competition between magazine editors bubbled to the surface in the debate about skinny models at fashion week.

Marie Claire editor Jackie Frank said she was horrified to see emac­iated model Cassi van den Dungen walking the runway and hoped it would open a “dialogue” for the industry and mag editors to “sing from the same hymnbook” on the topic.

Frank was all but accused of trying to get some publicity by Shop Til You Drop editor Alexandra Carlton, who told The Australian’s Women’s Weekly website, “What is that hymnbook exactly? The hymnbook of hypocrisy? You can’t rail against the thinness of a single model but then play fast and loose with the way you portray models in your own publication. It all smells like a bit of a publicity stunt to me.”

Harper’s Bazaar editor Kellie Hush backed Carlton, telling The Daily Telegraph “Jackie Frank ... was still front row the next day as Cassi walked down the runway. She didn’t demand she was off the runway. If we’re going to stand up and make a point then let’s do it — don’t turn it into a media promotion.”

The dispute continued with Hush posting on Facebook a comment that said the “focus on the skinny model debate” was “disheartening”. Mamamia publisher Mia Freedman took the bait, writing on Hush’s Facebook page, “It gives us no joy to call out the skinny model story.”

But the most telling comment came from an industry friend of Hush, who wrote “the skinny model debate is outdated, boring” and “the only people who seem to care about these pithy articles are heavily overweight (due to ignorance/laziness) provincial types who have decidedly limited exposure to and understanding of the fashion industry”.

Ouch.

A question of ego

TO someone with chiselled obliques who hates fat just as much as a fashion editor: Bob Carr writes in his diary about a breakfast he had with The Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker prior to the ousting of Gillard as leader. “Whittaker says Murdoch asks if Bob Carr can ever be Prime Minister,” Carr writes. Somebody else who was with Murdoch and Whittaker in late 2012 when the News Corp chairman posed the question recalls it was not exactly an endorsement of Carr to be PM, but merely a technical question about whether a senator could actually become prime minister.

But Carr may have interpreted it differently, noting in another entry: “Peter van Onselen says that the Security Council win means that if the party’s sick of Julia, they won’t turn to Rudd; they’ll turn to me … Ego-balm, soak it up while it’s good.”

Buck stops here, Kim

IN the robust profile of Kim Will­iams — who is not exactly lacking in the ego department himself ­— in Fairfax’s Good Weekend magazine on Saturday, the former News Corp Australia CEO bemoaned the financial performance of this publication. He found it “bizarre”, Tim Elliott writes, that The Australian “was allowed to lose around $30 million a year”. “There was just no accountability,” Williams said. Well, accountability stops at the top. It’s worth pointing out the newspaper has made losses approaching $30m in only one year in its 50-year history — and that year happened to coincide with Williams’s brief reign at News Corp. As Elliott notes, some of Will­iams’ changes at News “proved disastrous, precipitating a freefall collapse of advertising revenues” across the business”. Since his departure, the paper’s losses have halved and its financial performance continues to improve.

Paying your way

ONE paper whose fortunes do not appear to be improving is the Australian Financial Review, which may be why editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury allowed Fortescue to pay for both his and senior journalist, Jennifer Hewett’s flight to the Boao Forum in southern China’s Hainan Island this week. What a surprise, then, that they have scored an exclusive interview with, er, Fortescue chairman, Andrew Forrest. No fear or favour in the AFR’s brand of compromised journalism.

Story behind the story

BIZARRE goings-on at the AFR’s Street Talk column. On the morning of Ten Network’s half-year result, the column published the headline “Lachlan selling Ten stake??”, with the double question mark seemingly indicating they had absolutely no idea but decided ‘Hey, what the hell, let’s publish anyway’. But the strangest aspect of the item was a note beneath the headline, which was inadvertently published and remained online for hours before anyone noticed. “Talk to Chessell about it,” the story said. That would be business editor James Chessell. We suspected Chessell’s fingers are often behind gossip items under the byline of other journalists, but now it is in writing.

Unhealthy competition

TV news bosses in Sydney were hit with an email from the NSW Ministry of Health last week accusing their reporters of sneaking into emergency departments to approach “pat­ients for the purpose of obtaining material for stories without appropriately identifying themselves”.

Diary couldn’t possibly express a view on such behaviour, but it’s understood the letter relates to a recent incident at Blacktown hospital, where eager reporters from Seven, Nine and Ten were all trying to get an interview with a patient.

Public affairs director Meg­han Senior claimed: “The local hospital has advised us that a journalist phoned the hospital representing themselves as a family member to switchboard operators in order to gain access to the patient.”

Exactly which of the three made the call depends on which TV network you speak to. Each fiercely defends their reporter and expressed outrage at the other networks.

One boss angrily told the health department he would take legal action against it if it inaccurately defamed his reporter by saying she was the one who made the call.

Unsurprisingly, the health department has gone quiet.

When you need a mate

IT’S well known the Australian Rugby Union is looking to land an improved broadcasting rights deal with a free-to-air television network. With Australian Super Rugby players facing the prospect of pay cuts as ARU chief executive Bill Pulver seeks to keep the code out of receivership, the pressure to wring more cash from the next deal has only increased. Could Seven Network become Pulver’s saviour? Diary can reveal Seven is considering putting the domestic Super 15 competition on multi-channel 7Mate.