SBS has come under fire for running a satirical article online which mocked redundancies at News Corp and suggested the laid-off reporters would now be able to get jobs elsewhere as “actual journalists”.



The spoof article was posted on Monday on The Backburner, a satirical site hosted by SBS Comedy. It had no byline and said: “The job cuts are reportedly due to ‘advertising softness’ and negative currency impacts and nothing at all to do with the ever declining quality of the sensationalist garbage News Corp attempt to pass off as print media.”

One fictional employee says in the satire: “No one wants to lose their job, even if it is essentially being a pawn to a megalomaniacal near-corpse looming over the Australian media landscape like a decrepit octogenarian Galactus.”

The piece has infuriated journalists not only from Rupert Murdoch’s Australian mastheads but from other media outlets.

The satire landed like a lead balloon as it came on the same day as a handful of forced redundancies at the Australian and reports that both News Corp and Fairfax Media were planning to lay off more people as newspaper profits continue to fall.

Guardian Australia understands at least four senior journalists with decades of service each were stood down immediately and escorted from the Holt Street Sydney headquarters of News Corp on Monday. Sources said the incident was “highly distressing” and people were “in shock”.

The staffers would be paid their redundancy entitlements, sources said.

The forced redundancies came ahead of a meeting between the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and News Corp Australia management about more voluntary redundancies across the Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun.

The Australian reported on Monday that there would be 55 journalist jobs lost across the company but a News Corp spokesman declined to comment on the veracity of the number reported.

The director of media at MEAA, Katelin McInerney, said she deplored the manner in which the forced redundancies had been handled by the Australian.

“Communication and consultation with staff and their representatives has been inadequate, and the way that some long-serving employees have been treated is disrespectful, particularly given the loyalty they have shown the company over many years,” McInerney said.

“The MEAA will be raising those concerns directly with News Corp management in today’s meeting.”

As reported by Guardian Australia this month, Fairfax was also offering voluntary redundancies, although the numbers were unclear.

Not fair and not funny. SBS's wannabe onion site reads like a terrible student newspaper https://t.co/OUvehXlDQe pic.twitter.com/VPTk1GZIq0 — Tom Cowie (@tom_cowie) November 23, 2015

Sydney Morning Herald and Age editors have been asking each journalist to assess how they are coping with the transformation of the company from a newspaper into a digital-first operation, and whether they would like to take a package. Several senior journalists have accepted redundancy already.

Several Fairfax journalists have criticised the SBS piece, including Age journalist Tom Cowie who said it was “not fair and not funny”.

“SBS’s wannabe onion site reads like a terrible student newspaper,” he tweeted.

There was also concern inside SBS, with one Backburner writer, JR Hennessy, saying the joke was not funny and that he would have “vetoed it” had he been around.

“I’m not particularly onboard with joking about people losing their jobs in any format [to be honest],” Hennessy said.

But others had less sympathy for the News Corp journalists, pointing to criticism of ABC, SBS and Fairfax staff in News Corp publications.

@rachelbaxendale Far better taste than literally every Telegraph front page I've seen over the last couple years. pic.twitter.com/CxyE933uHB — TeejayTwoface (@TeejayTwoface) November 23, 2015

At the height of the Zaky Mallah Q&A saga in June, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail ran a front page that turned the ABC logo into an ISIS flag.



The front page of tomorrow's Courier-Mail. pic.twitter.com/2kRB0YcRlT — The Courier-Mail (@couriermail) June 23, 2015

The ABC sport journalist Debbie Spillane pointed to the reaction of News Corp publications to job losses at the ABC and SBS after the Coalition’s budget cuts.

@antsharwood c'mon, hard to expect sympathy when you've been trading in the opposite. NewsLtd wasn't too shattered about ABC/SBS job losses. — DebbieSpillane (@DebSpillane) November 23, 2015

Brisbane-based writer Ben McLeay, who tweets as Thomas Violence and describes himself as “the least loose unit at the Backburner”, spent much of Monday defending the piece on Twitter, and suggesting he may be “assassinated”.



people on the sbs facebook page asking why there's no byline on the article. if im assassinated please know i never enjoyed being alive — thomas violence (@thomas_violence) November 23, 2015

SBS was not backing down on Tuesday. “The Backburner is a satirical site which publishes articles across a breadth of topics, including local current affairs, which are clearly labelled as comedy/satire,” a spokeswoman said.

“Like all of our industry, SBS is not immune to budget reductions, has had to manage job losses over the years, and we are acutely aware of the sensitivities.”

“Also, here’s the disclaimer that’s on the site about its content: ‘The Backburner is Australia’s most trusted news source, it is quite obviously satire and shouldn’t be taken seriously or before operating heavy machinery’.”

An earlier satire headed Chris Kenny Becomes First Person Deservedly Sent To Nauru did not receive the same level of criticism.