There’s nothing like a good state-of-origin war between The Courier Mail and The Daily Telegraph. But when a TV star calls for a fellow employee to withholding bedroom favours from his boss, you know a Wankley is just around the corner.
Columns / Wankley Awards
Crikey honours the week’s worst displays of journalism.
A right royal fawning over Big Willie and Babykins
Crikey sends a very special 21-gun-salute to Australia’s newspapers in celebration of their fawning coverage of today’s royal wedding.
And the Wankley goes to… Hun heartbreak over grieving swan
Rupert Murdoch, it’s said, believes putting animals on the front page sell more papers. Grieving animals? You can take that to the bank.
Manly men and their testosterone burgers
Health experts have lined up to pillory the KFC Double Down for encouraging irresponsible eating. But it also marks the latest in a string of ads that try to appeal to masculinity.
And the Wankley goes to… the Herald Sun’s GP love fest
This week’s Wankley goes to the crack scribes at Melbourne tabloid the Herald Sun for their campaign of Grand Prix boosterism in the face of mounting evidence that Ron Walker’s baby is a total turkey.
And the Wankley goes to… viral ads, and the 7.30 whispering campaign
The 7.30 chant is becoming a roar. But not enough to drown out the viral marketing campaign stuff-up as the winner of this week’s Wankley Award.
And the Wankley goes to… current affairs Houso’s war
An uncensored, taxpayer-funded TV show about housing commissions. By gee, if that’s not a recipe for tabloid TV gold, then nothing is.
A media flag-waving exercise
The Australian flag is often being shouted down for not representing modern Australia and its contemporary values. So do we need a new flag? Well, the media would have you believe so, if their slavish devotion to the topic every Australia Day is anything to go by.
And the Gold Wankley for worst media stunt of the year goes to …
The 2010 Crikey Wankley Awards offer a roll-call of the worst of the worst in Australian media — the beat-ups and bust-ups; a who’s who of shameless spinners, choleric columnists and starry-eyed, scandal-seeking gutter rats. But who’s the ultimate winner?
And the Wankley goes to… the fastest fingers in town
Vivid images of the wrecked boat sinking off the cliffs of Christmas Island provided a stark picture of the desperate, and often futile, measures people will go to to flee persecution. But quick as a flash, even as survivors were being pulled out of the water, media commentators from both sides of politics were searching for someone to blame over the tragedy.
And the Wankley goes to … ‘tosspot’ Aussie journos
It’s an interesting relationship, the bond between Australia and New Zealand. Some say it’s never really recovered from the infamous 1981 underarm cricket incident. So what happens when Australian journalists flock to NZ for an international breaking news event? Well, relations can get a little strained, if you take the behavior of some Aussie hacks as an example.
And the Wankley goes to… the Cairns Post, not playing hard to get
Oprah’s coming to Oz, haven’t you heard? Excitement is building across the nation, nowhere more than the Cairns Post newsroom which has run a five-day media campaign trying to entice the chat show queen to the north of the Sunshine State.
And the Wankley goes to… a press packed with Rafters
Mel Rafter, a character from TV soap Packed To The Rafters, has been written out of the script so an actress can try her hand at Hollywood. So, who cares? Well, we do apparently. Why else would the media relentlessly cover the ‘death’ of a television character as news?
And the Wankley goes to… Lleyton Hewitt’s SMS baby name service
Lleyton Hewitt has never been afraid of cashing in on his fame but charging fans to receive a text message of the name of your third child? This could be a new low in the sordid commercialisation of celebrity.
The Gold Coast Bulletin’s V8 rev-up
As the Gold Coast spiv community struggles to rev-up the hyperbole ahead of the Gold Coast 600 V8 race this weekend, the biggest story of all appears to have been ignored by the glitter strip’s sole daily newspaper.
And the Wankley goes to… Miranda Devine, sticking up for the blokes
They promised she’d be “feisty”. Daily Telegraph editor Garry Linnell said she “attracts debate, and makes you feel something”. The “hardest-hitting columnist” in NSW, Miranda Devine is back on the national stage with a bang.
And the Wankley goes to… power out for Melbourne’s media
The people of New South Wales have a lot to be angry about — a toxic Labor government, a string of knifed premiers, a culture of ministerial incompetence. But why would the Daily Tele would try now to plunge an additional stake into the heart of an already terminal government over electricity prices?
And the Wankley goes to… The Oz’s war on everything (bloggers, this week)
We know that uttering the names James Massola and Grog’s Gamut is probably enough to send even the most hardened media watcher into the foetal position, so consider this as Crikey putting a line underneath the storm in a Twitcup that is Grog’sgate.
The Latham/Henderson double act
This week’s Wankley goes to a dual bout of disingenuousness between the upstanding director of the Sydney Institute, Gerard Henderson and fellow Fairfax columnist and former Liverpool Mayor Mark Latham.
Cock a doodle don’t (kill him)
Crikey loves slow news days. They yield some of the most memorable stories. Like this pearler from the Newcastle Herald yesterday lamenting that a “rampaging rooster” had run foul of residents in the suburbs of New Lambton.
And the Wankley goes to … the Herald Sun’s Fev ‘charge’ beat-up
It was panic stations at the Southbank offices of the Herald Sun yesterday when its front page Brendan Fevola exclusive was torpedoed by the cops just hours after the little paper appeared on the streets.
The Wankley Award goes to… The Daily Tele’s Paul ‘flogger’ Kent
Leave Matthew Newton alone. That’s exactly what the media should be doing right now.
The lamest campaign questions
More than a month of election campaigning under a bright media spotlight produces a lot of questions to leaders. A bunch of them are awful. Many are Wankley-worthy. Here’s the worst.
Sky’s excruciating Latham cross
It was everything that is wrong with 24-hour television news. Sky, in their perpetual bid for fresh content, were reduced to covering a journalist covering a politician and easy nabbed this week’s Wankley.
