By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
It’s been a while since domestic violence prevention charity White Ribbon was known for anything other than public relations disasters. Four years ago White Ribbon was on the brink of financial collapse and tainted by a string of controversies – accepting money from Sydney pokies venue the Fairfield Hotel, before being forced to decline it; briefly claiming it was “agnostic” on abortion access; and the whole business with a few of its ambassadors getting in trouble for violent offences.
But a 2019 rebirth, thanks to the backing of WA charity Communicare, hasn’t stopped the missteps. Last year a campaign seeking $49 donations to help men understand violence prevention was taken down after critics dubbed it “sponsor an abuser”. Somebody also thought a flotilla of jet skis revving their engines in Sydney Harbour might be a good strategy to raise awareness about violence against women.
No wonder, then, that faced with another public relations issue, White Ribbon has gone silent. We’re talking about the abrupt departure of national director Allan Ball, who quit in late October after three years in the job.
No reasons were given and no statement has been put up by White Ribbon. Ball declined to discuss it when contacted by CBD, directing us to Communicare’s chief executive Melissa Perry. She didn’t answer her phone and hasn’t replied to several earlier emails from this masthead. Communicare’s comms people didn’t respond by deadline, either.
Ball and White Ribbon had recently embarked on a partnership with GiveTree, a cryptocurrency charity start-up founded by Sam Joel, who, as CBD reported this month, quit as chief executive after posting a barrage of offensive comments towards women on LinkedIn.
We asked whether perceived backlash to the GiveTree relationship contributed to Ball’s departure. They didn’t answer that one, either.
AUNTY’S INFLUENCERS
After years of commissioning yet more shows from young up-and-comers like Shaun Micallef and Annabel Crabb, and somehow failing to appeal to the under-60 market, the ABC is finally getting serious about its youth problem. The solution: TikTok.
Credit: Shakespeare
On Monday the public broadcaster put up an advertisement for four six-month positions as part of its “creator program”, hoping to bring social-media stars into Aunty’s stable. Competitive candidates will have more than 10,000 followers on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube, or have created a vertical video with more than 100,000 views. A TikTok ad for the job even features a bloke with a mullet. As the kids would say, slay.
And even more slay is the salary range – between $93,000 and $114,000 pro rata for the six-month period. Meanwhile, the budding young journalists who land one of the ABC’s highly coveted cadetships for 2024 will earn $61,327, just about enough to make do in a capital city – if you’re willing to survive on mie goreng.
But an ABC spokesman told us the jobs were “for experienced, skilled professionals with particular digital expertise”, rather than entry-level positions.
Still, it’s a pretty clear statement of where the ABC’s priorities lie when it comes to the youth and the future of journalism. Remember, one of the lamer justifications for the broadcaster’s absurd axing of political editor Andrew Probyn this year was that his salary would be better spent on TikTok content. Probyn, of course, has since been hired by Nine Entertainment, owner of this masthead.
We’re sure Aunty’s inaugural class of in-house influencers will do a cracking job filling that void.
PARTY LINE
We brought news on Monday that Sky News had cancelled Christmas parties because they didn’t want anybody loading up on festive spirit and ruining Christmas, like someone did last year.
One outfit that didn’t have that problem at the end of 2022 was Optus, perhaps because their once-legendary soirees – the 2018 event featured a male stripper gyrating in front of employees at Sydney’s The Star – were toned down to “small-scale get-togethers” as the company struggled with the fallout from a disastrous data hack.
Well, this year Optus faces another nightmare before Christmas, the big outage this month that on Monday claimed the scalp of the telco’s “citizen of the world”, chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, or KBR to her friends.
In fairness, the departure of Bayer Rosmarin – with her slightly kooky online presence, CEO’s podcasts, interviews with Norwegian football star Erling Haaland, and moves like hiring tennis legend Ash Barty as “chief of inspiration” – leaves corporate Australia a duller place.
But there still remains the question of Christmas drinks and, OK, maybe Monday wasn’t the best day to ask Optus about party plans, but we did.
They didn’t answer.
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