Top StoriesMay’s sharp fall in jobless numbers added to the greenness of the ‘recovery’ (or less bad) thesis; overnight June’s unemployment figures were so awful that they could have stunted at least, the wavering shoots.
The Oz is ducking G20 phone call story
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Standards are slipping at The Oz. Today “Cut & Paste” has an airswing at Crikey over the G20 phone call — or as 4BC’s Michael Smith tartly terms it, “Speakerphonegate”. C&P’s anonymous author clearly hasn’t read the in-house rules, which require that all references to Crikey are preceded by the term “gossip website”. However, you’d have to reckon that the unlikely combination of Richard Farmer and David Flint have never been jointly upbraided before. First witness for the prosecution is Richard Farmer’s reference to the protocol relating to “private dinnertable chatter”. “Crikey’s attack falls flat,” C&P triumphantly declared, “because it wasn’t a dinner.” Ouch. Where’s Osric to declare “a hit, a palpable hit”? Farmer clearly should’ve referred to “private-coffeetable-with-after-dinner-mints-and-tokay chatter”. Although you’d bet the Prime Minister himself wasn’t drinking alcohol that night. He’s the sort of guy who likes to stay in control. C&P then takes Crikey’s high popular contributor David Flint to task as well, for getting a crucial date wrong — the original report was on the 25th, not the 24th. Flinty must be slapping his forehead — albeit effetely — in dismay at that howler. In fact, as Flint has pointed out in a letter to them, the 24th was the date of online publication. Flint and The Oz have plenty of history, dating back to the republic debate at the turn of the century, when the national broadsheet openly campaigned for a Yes vote. And when it comes to reason like that, Flint never forgives or forgets. The column points out that The Oz reported the issue three times, in addition to an opinion piece by Greg Sheridan — still evidently bidding to write the authorised Dubya biography — and, finally, Dennis Shanahan this week. Our criticism of The Oz is that it has ducked this story, ducked it because its editor is conflicted, given he was present and almost certainly played a role in its dissemination. Flat reportage of Opposition statements doesn’t amount to investigation or analysis. Particularly not when it comes to the way The Australian normally handles anything faintly critical of the non-conservative side of politics. Let’s compare and contrast its beat-up of an alleged difference between the RBA and Treasury over the bank deposit guarantee. This was first reported on 21 October, with the entirely incorrect statement that the Government ignored RBA warnings when it decided on its bank deposit guarantee on 12 October. This claim has been demolished by Ken Henry and Glenn Stevens but The Oz has never admitted it was wrong. With capital letters and exclamation mark. In fact, far from admitting a howling error, it continued to claim there was a major dispute between the RBA and Treasury over the issue. John Stone was brought out of cryogenic storage — or was it via a séance — to declare, absurdly, that the independent RBA Governor should’ve been in Cabinet for the decision on the guarantee. Then there were claims of government “backflips” on the issue. The attack was derailed slightly when Malcolm Turnbull started talking about sacking Ken Henry, Don Randall attacked Glenn Stevens and Opposition senators disgraced themselves at Estimates, but Dennis Shanahan kept up the coverage of the issue as it was pursued in Parliament. There were articles on “crisis talks” despite there being not the slightest evidence of any crisis, beyond The Australian’s front-page stories of poor little rich investors who’d had their funds frozen. Terry McCrann weighed in a week later with an attack on Henry almost incoherent — well, okay, even more incoherent than McCrann usually is — in its fury. Mike Steketee was going on about how the Government had “bungled” the guarantee. Michael Stutchbury joined in. In short, even on an issue where it was blatantly and demonstrably wrong, The Australian piled in journalists after journalist, commentator after commentator, to hammer the government. Bang bang bang. We could’ve used just a fraction of that vigour on who leaked Rudd’s phone call and what Chris Mitchell had to do with it.
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7 Comments
I personally have suffered the lying of journalists of unbelievable ugly carelessness in the pursuit of a ‘glam’ story/scandal.
The good, bad and the ugly applies to this profession as it does to any other with the bad and the ugly always hiding behind the skirts and shirts of the good and are always the cowardly. The audience is inevitably complicit in their existence.
“C&P then takes Crikey’s high popular contributor David Flint to task as well, “
Tongue is so far in cheek there that I’m tempted to make a really crude remark. But I won’t, I’ll let you imagine it instead.
They, being the right wing, liberal supporting writers at the Australian, they just don’t get it. I would have thought after there attempts to prop up the disgraced Howard and Co last year, which we know failed miserably. After that blatant biased campaign failed, they can’t seem to get it through their thick skulls the public do not want a bar of their attempted smear attacks. Surely with the PM’s continuing high polling and the Govt consistently leading the Coalition by at least 10 points, there would be someone in the ranks higher than the cleaner who would get the message. But no the attack troops Shanahan, Albrechtsen,Sheridan, Steketee and Co keep slinging the mud, trying to discredit Labor and it is just not working, the electorate doesnt want a bar of it. What must really get up their toffee noses Rudd thrives on their stupidity, he has their measure and they just dont grasp it. A bit like bunter Akerman in the Tele, 18 months ago he was shouting from the roof tops he was about to bring down Kevin Rudd and trample his political career in the dust over the fantasy tale called’The Heiner Affair’. The country still waits for this momentous occurence, alas Akers remains silent except to titilate his loyalists with the less than enthusiastic assurance, wont be long now. So the believers, all 10 of them, nod and wait and wait and wait for something that will never happen. Akerman like his right wing mates at the Oz, is good at dishing out the crap, never let the facts get in the way of a story.
I suspect that what happened was that somebody was mimicking George W over dinner or whatever. Later somebody who had overheard it decided that they could make some mischief out of it and so it appeared in the Australian. After a week in which it had been all but ignored it was taken up by “The Insiders” who must have been really short of material. They had to point out to the opposition that they could use it and the rest as they say is history. The sheep of the press gallery are becoming desperate to bring down the prime minister but sadly for them what will probably happen is that his poll numbers will go up even further. Please Crikey find something worth while to write about as this is getting very boring. There is no shortage of topics at present.
Jeez I have to agree the C&P defense was truly pathetic and silence would have better served their interest.
The other point is that Franklin’s original story amazingly seemed almost disingenuous: “Rudd was then stunned to hear Bush say: “What’s the G20?” ” about 2/3 of the way down the article.
The Rudd acolyte press are downplaying it and the The Oz which reasonably might have fully exposed it are clearly as Bernard says “ducking”.
I think Rudd is going to get away with this which is frankly astounding.
JamesK the alternative explanation for the lack of interest in the story in other meeja might have more to do with not wanting to draw attention to the fact that a rival editor was a guest of the PM’s.
The Weekend Oz has a lovely editorial on this today, and Shanahanigans has a go as well. Between them they bag just about every senior journalist in the gallery.
Nothing like being caught out to get people cranky.
What’s Barry Cassidy of the Insiders doing? He has Paul Kelly on every week. Why doesn’t he just ask him why the Oz won’t tell us who blabbed over Rudd’s indiscretion? If he knows, shouldn’t he just tell us.