Media Watch Dog: The ABC of cultural diversity

Not much diversity in Sally Neighbour’s (centre) frocked up Four Corners team. Picture: Twitter, Sally Neighbour

STOP PRESS

● A LATE NIGHT STORY - PHILLIP ADAMS’ ACCOUNT OF HIS PUNCH-UP WitH BOB HAWKE

While walking Jackie last night, her (male) co-owner tuned into ABC Radio National Late Night Live - aka Phillip Adams’ little wireless program. As you know, Gerard Henderson is quite a fan of Phillip Adams AO, AM, Hon DUniv (Griffith), Hon DLitt (ECU), Hon DUniv (SA), DLitt [sic] (Syd), Hon. DUniv (Macquarie), FRSA, Hon FAHA – so much so that when invited to appear on LNL every 25 years, he always accepts.

So Hendo was shocked, absolutely shocked, when Phillip (“I was a teenage, or perhaps 20-something, communist”) Adams introduced his guest Troy Bramston – who was to be interviewed about his book Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny and had this to say:

Phillip Adams: Now, right up front, I’ve got to declare something – that while Bob and I were both children of Congregational ministers, we were not close. And we became increasingly – our relationship became increasingly acrimonious. It finished up with a fist fight in an airport lounge.

How about that? The ABC’s Man-in-Black had a punch-up with the former Labor prime minister in an airport lounge somewhere or other at some time or other. What a Scoop! Perhaps the incident warrants a movie.

Then MWD fave Troy Bramston told his story about Bob Hawke. On a personal side, this was presented as a battle between Good Bob (who loved us all) and Bad Bob (who was driven by the twin demons of alcohol and what was once called skirt-chasing).

According to your man Bramston, Hawkie fought an on-going battle against his demons – including attempting to restrain “his rampant sexual appetite”. But did he really? It was widely known that, when he was prime minister, Hawke conquered the “Demon of Alcohol”. It was also known to many that at the time he had not attempted to conquer the “Demon of Lust”.

No matter, apparently. Phillip Adams told “the listener” that Troy Bramston has established that Mr Hawke’s Demon Number Two has been diagnosed by the World Health Organisation as “Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder”.

It was worth a late night walk with Jackie to learn more about modern medicine. Next it will be said that Bob Hawke was never a drunk – just a patient possessed of, say, “Compulsive Thirst Behaviour Disorder” [Interesting, I think I might suffer from this condition. – MWD Editor]

● AND ON IT GOES - PETER HARTCHER BLAMES PM MORRISON FOR NOT DOING ENOUGH TO HANDLE FLOODS

Did anyone catch ABC Radio National Breakfast this morning with Patricia Karvelas in the presenter’s chair discussing politics with Peter Hartcher (The Age/Sydney Morning Herald) and Samantha Maiden (news.com.au)? Avid readers will recall that is the very same Mr Hartcher who was cited in the previous edition of MWD (which, due to technical issues, was delayed and came out last Monday) as describing the former KGB communist operative Vladimir Putin, as wait for it, “a fascist”. Really.

Here’s how the Breakfast segment commenced with journalists praising one another like this:

Patricia Karvelas: To discuss the week in politics, I’m joined by Samantha Maiden, national political editor at News.com.au. Congratulations on your Gold Walkley, Sam.

Samantha Maiden: Thank you.

Patricia Karvelas: And Peter Hartcher, political and international editor at the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. And Peter, you know, you’ve already got a Walkley, so, you’re okay. [laughing] Welcome to both of you.

Peter Hartcher: [laughing] Yes, thank you. It’s getting a bit dusty, maybe I should update and get a new one like Sam. Well done Sam.

Samantha Maiden: Thank you. We should add that, um, Peter Hartcher got a Gold Walkley about 25 years ago. So, he’s way ahead of me.

For its part, MWD reckons that PK (as she likes to be called) should receive her very own Walkley – for presenting the most Green/Left program on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster. But MWD digresses.

When attention turned to the devastating floods in south-east Queensland, north-east NSW and parts of Sydney, PK asked your man Hartcher whether Prime Minister Morrison “had been active enough”. To which the answer was “No”. Quelle Surprise!

According to this view, the Morrison government has been pre-occupied with COVID-19 and, therefore, has not recognised that there is a “new weather reality descending on our country and we need a systemic response”. He continued:

Peter Hartcher: Öh do need, uh, a systemic plan, uh, coordinated federally, but with the state, and local governments to deal with the increasing severity and frequency of flooding and other storms to build, uh, all sorts of – whether it’s, uh, flood levies, or other, uh, prevention and preparation works, uh, and have other mechanisms ready. I mean, the Insurance Council would say that we need more prevention, wouldn’t they? But, you know, ask anybody who’s just been hit by a flood, and they will agree.

Patricia Karvelas: How can you not agree, right? It’s a no brainer.

Well, it is. But Australia has experienced severe floods for eons. Sure, Australia needs to do more, much more, with flood mitigation. But this is not the sole responsibility of the federal government – and is perhaps more the responsibility of state and territory governments.

It is a bit much for the journalist Hartcher to imply that due to the Prime Minister’s (alleged) “general philosophical disposition”, he is somehow responsible for not resolving the problems brought about by the fact that many Australian homes have been built on flood plains for two centuries. Your man Hartcher works for Nine.

CAN YOU BEAR IT?

● NOT MUCH CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN SALLY NEIGHBOUR’S FROCKED-UP ‘AMAZING’ FOUR CORNERS TEAM

Media Watch Dog just loves it when journalists glam-up and go to media awards where journalists compete with journalists to win journalistic awards which are chosen by journalists and presented by journalists before a crowded room of journalists and their besties. Last Friday, this was called the Walkley Awards – the function was held in Sydney.

This is the tweet that ABC TV Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour put out at Pre-Dinner Drinks Time last Friday:

Comrade Neighbour is the frocked-up Four Corners journalist in the middle. And that’s the Melbourne-based frocked-up Four Corners reporter Louise Milligan on the far left. Needless to say, the Neighbour tweet made no reference to why the ABC recently spent around $80,000 in legal expenses related to the settling of a defamation claim brought against Ms Milligan – the most prominent member of this “amazing” team.

Louise Milligan won the 2016 Gold Quill Award – chosen by the Melbourne Press Club – for her “extensive coverage of Cardinal George Pell”. This included her 30-minute long report on ABC TV’s 7.30 (27 July 2016) which ran serious allegations of historical child sexual abuse against Pell. This “amazing” 7.30 report was so “amazing” that all reference to it has been deleted from the ABC website – without explanation. Comrade Milligan’s problem is that all her allegations against Pell were either ruled out in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, withdrawn before trial by the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions or quashed by the High Court in a 7 to Zip decision. “Amazing”, to be sure.

But MWD digresses. Lotsa thanks to the Potts Point avid reader, a person of colour, who drew attention to the fact that 85 per cent of Ms Ferguson’s “amazing” team she tweeted about is white – with only one person of colour. And yet the ABC – from the top down – is always banging on about the importance of cultural diversity and all that. Can You Bear It?

Frocked up for the #Walkleys with the amazing team from #4Cornerspic.twitter.com/pidMR7tKl9

— Sally Neighbour (@neighbour_s) February 25, 2022

● NOT MUCH CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN SALLY NEIGHBOUR’S FROCKED-UP ‘AMAZING’ FOUR CORNERS TEAM

While on the topic of the Walkley Awards, MWD notes that last Friday’s 66th Walkley Award Winner for “Commentary, Analysis, Opinion and Critique” was none other than Katharine (“Malcolm likes to call me Murpharoo”) Murphy. She got the gong for three articles in the avowedly leftist Guardian Australia. All three were critical of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Coalition government to a greater or lesser extent.

By the way, the chair of the 2021 Walkley Judging Board is former ABC journalist Michael Brissenden. The Australian’s editorial director Claire Harvey, who is deputy chair, abstained from voting in 2021.

Comrade Murphy is one of those left-of-centre journalists who reckons its okay for the Coalition to be in government – provided the prime minister is Malcolm Turnbull or Julie Bishop or someone like that.

To get an idea of Murpharoo’s idea of commentary, analysis, opinion and critique it is not necessary to look beyond her tweet of 19 February 2022 – a week or so before her Walkley gong:

Scott Morrison is entirely focussed on winning. He doesn’t care who knows this & isn’t troubled by the cost. But what is the purpose of this victory beyond denying Labor government? Does he know? Does he care? What’s it all for? Here’s the column #auspolhttps://t.co/djwqsLGSkM

— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) February 18, 2022

If Murpharoo decides to quit the Guardian Australia – with commentary, analysis, opinion and critique like this – she would almost certainly get a gig at the ABC or the Green Left Weekly.

Following a tip from an avid reader, MWD had a look at the winners over the last decades of the Walkley Awards for Commentary, Analysis, Opinion and Critique. There’s barely a conservative on the list. You be the judge. Past winners include Tony Wright (Age, Sydney Morning Herald), Jan Fran (SBS), Greg Jericho (Guardian Australia), Waleed Aly (Age, SMH, ABC) Peter Hartcher (Age/SMH), Caroline Wilson (Age), Laura Tingle (ABC), Greg Baum (Age), Tony Walker (Age/SMH) and Matthew Moore (SMH). You get the picture.

The Australian’s Paul Kelly won the award in 2001 – he is the only one on this list who might pass for a conservative. Murpharoo is just the latest left-of-centre journalist to be gonged in the Commentary section. It’s (yet another) Conservative Free Zone – which appears not to award conservative commentary. Can You Bear It?

● NOT MUCH CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN SALLY NEIGHBOUR’S FROCKED-UP ‘AMAZING’ FOUR CORNERS TEAM

.Anyone who does not have time for five minutes with the oh-so-garrulous Peter (“Please look at ME”) FitzSimons is not likely to read the Red Bandannaed One’s somewhat boring “5 Minutes with Fitz” column which appears in Nine’s Sun-Herald in Sydney around Gin & Tonic Time on the (Christian) Sabbath.

As avid Media Watch Dog readers will be aware, about a year ago the Sun-Herald finally junked the “Fitz on Sunday” column which appeared on its back page and replaced it with a Sports page. Not before time. The place for Sport is on the back page of a newspaper and the pages which immediately go before it. Whereas Fitz’s rants have been relegated back to Page 21 or thereabouts.

The new “5 Minutes with Fitz” is a pretty dull affair which takes the form of an interview with a public figure. On 20 February 2022 the subject was Ray Martin – who, like Comrade Fitz, is a well-heeled luvvie who lives on Sydney’s Lower North Shore. The title was “In two words, Martin reveals his political view: it’s time.” When asked by FitzSimons about his current political views, your man Martin replied:

Ray Martin: Gough’s “It’s Time” campaign was 50 years ago to the year. I think it’s time [again]. I have interviewed every prime minister since Bob Menzies and I think this is the most incompetent government we’ve had.

So Comrade Martin will not vote for the Coalition in May 2022. Quelle Surprise! Whoever would have dreamed that the former ABC and Nine journalist would hold such views? In any event, Fitz did not challenge this “revelation”. And the Sun-Herald reckons that Comrade Martin’s political views on Scott Morrison’s government is news. Can You Bear It?

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In his 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell defended “the ordinary decent person” against “the intellectual, book-trained socialist”. He wrote that the latter “type is drawn, to begin with, entirely from the middle class, and from a rootless town-bred section of that middle class at that. ...It includes...the foaming denouncers of the bourgeoisie, and the more-water-in-your-beer reformers of whom [George Bernard] Shaw is the prototype, and the astute young social-literary climbers...and all that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruitjuice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of ‘progress’ like bluebottles to a dead cat.”

YET ANOTHER LEFTIST LUVVIE LOVE-IN AT THE EXPENSIVE SYDNEY PILE OF LISA AND FITZ

Alas, Hendo (Jackie’s male co-owner) did not get an invitation to the exclusive annual luvvies knees-up which Peter FitzSimons and Lisa Wilkinson held recently. As reported in The Australian “Media” section last Monday, the guest list included such leftist Luvvies as Hamish Macdonald (The Project and ABC), Jan Fran (former SBS), Chris Taylor (one of the ABC’s Chaser “Boys” – average age 481/2), Lisa Davies (ex SMH), Kate McClymont (SMH), Jacqueline Maley (SMH), Jane (“I hope that even Truculent Turds will vote for me in the NSW Senate election”) Caro, Mike (“I’ll pour the Gin”) Carlton, Julia Baird (ABC and SMH) plus Louise Milligan (ABC). Oh yes, former ABC managing director (and so-called editor-in-chief) Mark Scott also rocked up. These days Nice Mr Scott is the vice chancellor of Sydney University and is chair of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, which is an annual leftist-stack subsidised by taxpayers.

In short, it was a collection of Lower North Shore and inner-city types who flocked to the Fitz/Lisa pile near Sydney Harbour.

Not a conservative among this lot – nor many men or women of colour. Nor a butcher, baker or candle-stick maker. Just a lot of what Orwell called social-literary climbers who are attracted to “progressive” causes like bluebottles to a dead cat.

The conversation would surely have resembled one of those discussions on ABC TV Insiders and The Drum where everyone agrees with everyone else in a “progressive” (read “left-of-centre”) kind of way on almost everything.

Needless to say, Stan Grant appears not to have been invited to the Fitz/Lisa exclusive Harbourside gig this time around – having described last year’s event as a “woke lefty love-in” where guests were expected to bring-a-plate, presumably with food on it. Re which see MWD Issue 529.

And the Red-Bandannaed One (who finally junked the much beloved rag on his head when, after a decade or more, he realised it was time for it to go to the laundry where, apparently, it was lost) reckons that – with Luvvie friends like these – he can lead non-Tesla owners to an Australian republic any time soon. How out of touch can you get?

NEW SEGMENT – A NIKI SAVVA MOMENT

Due to enormous popular demand Media Watch Dog has introduced this new segment to monitor The Thought of Niki Savva in the lead-up to the 2022 election. As avid readers will be aware, the one-time journalist Ms Savva is something of a MWD fave – in view of her honesty. In her 2010 book So Greek: Confessions of a Conservative Leftie, Savva ’fessed up that “journalists can, and do, get away with lying”. This was okay for journos, she claimed – but not for politicians. See MWD Issue 575.

Since commencing her weekly column on the Opinion Page of Nine’s The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 August 2021, Ms Savva has constantly expressed the view that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is absolutely hopeless and more besides. Indeed, all but a couple of columns have run this line. From MWD’s point of view – this is most helpful and provides lotsa copy most Fridays, like today.

IN WHICH, FROM INSIDE THE CANBERRA BUBBLE, MS SAVVA TELLS US WHAT LABOR FRONTBENCHERS HAVE FOR DINNER

It would seem that the Canberra resident Niki Savva has only one topic – Australian national politics, with a Canberra focus. From which the Coalition in general and the PM in particular emerge badly each week. Correction – nearly every week.

Prior to yesterday, Nine’s fave columnist had only written two pieces which did not completely bag the Coalition. And – surprise, surprise – yesterday there was another one critical of the Coalition – which looked at the leadership group of, respectively, the Labor Party and the Coalition. Here’s how it commenced:

On Sunday nights before Parliament sits, Anthony Albanese’s leadership group, plus senior portfolio holders and tacticians, gather in his office for dinner. They are an eclectic bunch – different factions, life experiences and dietary requirements. Katy Gallagher is vegetarian, Mark Butler is vegan, Kristina Keneally is ketogenic, Tony Burke is coeliac, so food is a mixture of takeaway and bring your own.

The point of the gatherings, as Albanese keeps reminding them, is not to lock in decisions on issues – because that is done by shadow cabinet and caucus – but to talk about the week ahead and to toss around ideas. It can get willing. Albanese, said to be an active participant in “robust” discussions, seldom objects so long as it is respectful and constructive.

How frightfully interesting. Once upon a time journalists wrote about Labor’s factions. You know, the socialist left, the right and so on. But Niki Savva divides the ALP leadership team into vegetarians, vegans, ketogenics and coeliacs. How’s that for reportage from inside the Canberra Bubble? It’s certainly more than you need – or want – to know.

But there is more. According to Nine’s columnist, Katy Gallagher (the vegetarian) and Jim Chalmers (dietary requirements unknown) are “tight as”. And Ms Gallagher “is also besties” with Kristina Keneally (the ketogenic) and Penny Wong (dietary requirements not stated). What’s more, Chalmers and Keneally bought Senator Wong “trendy designer sneakers for her birthday”. [Thank God they did not buy her sandals. – MWD Editor.] According to Nine’s intrepid columnist, Wong calls Gallagher and Keneally her “Senate sisters”. How nice, don’t you think?

There’s more. “Labor frontbench women such as Tanya Plibersek and Catherine KingÖ are relentless warriors for the cause” and Keneally is “a razzle-dazzle performer”. Moreover, an unnamed frontbench colleague describes himself as “a fanboy” of Wong. Wow.

As to the Coalition frontbench, Niki Savva reported that Josh Frydenberg and Peter Dutton are performing well, but “after that, it slides”. Alas, Ms Savva has provided no insight into the dietary requirements of those Liberal Party and Nationals frontbenchers who operate within what she describes as “the confines of Morrison’s command-and-control operational style”. The column ended with a dig at a person called “Barnaby”- presumably Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. Stand by for more coverage of The Thought of Ms Savva.

Jackie’s Comments on Canine Issues for MWD

I found Ms Savva’s piece of enormous interest – particularly the stuff about grub. I’m sure that MWD readers would like to know about the dietary requirements of the canine leadership group at Hendoville. I’m a steak meat eater, with a bit of All-Bran on the top, kind of sheila. Luke is a fine mince along with lotsa carrots bloke and Young Missy, who visits from Canberra, is into anything consumable – including furniture.

Alas none of this canine group is into veganism or vegetarianism. As to ketogenic stuff, I don’t know what this is about. As to coeliac, I’ve heard it is a town in Western Victoria where Queensland heelers are welcome. I really and truly hope that this news from the Canine Bubble is of interest to MWD’s avid readers.