It was an event attended by the great and good of Canberra – the annual Parliamentarians Against Family Violence Friendship Group on Tuesday evening.



The minister for women, Kelly O’Dwyer, and the opposition leader, Bill Shorten,spoke at the event, which was well attended by all sides of politics. But noticeably absent was Scott Morrison, who, as the prime minister of the day, had been invited. His predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, attended the last Our Watch event.

Our Watch (@OurWatchAus) Our Watch Chair @NStottDespoja & Senator @HumanHeadline at tonight’s Our Watch event at @Aust_Parliament #violenceagainstwomen #changethestory pic.twitter.com/8ddCYPwj09

Morrison it turns out was otherwise engaged, opening the new state-of-the-art studio for Sky News in the News Corp bureau of the press gallery.

The Sky “housewarming” was packed with News Corp executives, including the executive chairman, Michael Miller; the Herald and Weekly Times chair, Penny Fowler; the group director of broadcasting, Siobhan McKenna; and, of course, the new Sky News chief executive, Paul Whittaker.

Sky, which now boasts the largest studio in Parliament House, will use the flash new space for its 2019 federal election broadcasts.

Shorten managed to make it to both events.

Cut and haste

Daily Mail Australia has been under fire for its blatant lifting of the work of journalists from rival publications. So we were staggered to discover how many reporters the local arm of the UK-based media giant employs in the entertainment area alone. The website updated its contact list for an industry newsletter this week and the length of the “show business team” list was remarkable.

“The team members are willing to be contacted with interview opportunities, event invites (particularly those with celebrity guests) and press releases and pitches with a celebrity or showbiz angle,” the note said.

Dave Meddows (@davemeddows) This was literally The Sunday Telegraph’s splash by @costofliving yesterday but somehow is the Daily Mail’s “breaking” news just now - with TWO bylines. pic.twitter.com/CGpvWqDHj5

The Daily Mail locally has a show business editor, a deputy show business editor and not one but five assistant show business editors.

On the reporter list there are five senior show business reporters and five show business reporters. That’s a total of 17 journalists covering entertainment alone. Overall, the Daily Mail has 90 editorial staff in Australia. Which raises the question: why do they still need to cut and paste original work, and in the process infuriate the journalists who’ve attended the court cases and done the investigations?

The answer may lie in the sheer volume of copy the young reporters are expected to generate, as well as uploading their own stories and sourcing gazillions of photographs. Sources say they are expected to produce at least five stories a day.

Hanson-Young slur

Under the guise of a letter from a female reader, Spectator Australia published a vile slur against the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young this week. With an unfairly cropped photograph of her chest, the conservative magazine accused the senator of wearing sexually provocative clothing in parliament.

“Watching Question Time and ABC analysis and wanting to pull my eyes out,” the letter said. “If SHY wants to be taken seriously why is she wearing a dress in the Senate that looks like she’s on her way to a Christmas party?

“Any woman with anything upstairs knows you don’t win a debate with your boobs hanging out.”

𝕤𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕒 𝕞𝕒𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕟 (@samanthamaiden) This is the image and text published by Spectator Australia today. On what planet is this acceptable to publish ? @FraserNelson @spectator pic.twitter.com/WRxy5fHvL7

The item was deleted after a few hours, but that hasn’t stopped Spectator Australia’s editor, Rowan Dean, copping the blame. Dean repeatedly said on Twitter that blaming him for the item was “defamatory and untrue”.

Rowan Dean (@rowandean) THIS TWEET IS DEFAMATORY AND UNTRUE

The Weekly Beast asked him what he meant and he said he only edits the print magazine and is not responsible for the online column Flat White.

The column is written by an unnamed person referred to only as “Flat White” on the Spectator website.

Nice money if you can get it

The Australian couldn’t afford to keep its award-winning Indigenous affairs editor Stephen Fitzpatrick on staff, so he and other talented reporters, photographers and subeditors have been shown the door to save money.

But there is money for some. It was revealed this week in an errant email obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald that the Heart of the Nation pays the economist Judith Sloan $357,000 for two columns a week.

If the good professor were to take redundancy – which the Oz says she is definitely not taking – she would receive a payout of $210,000, the report said.

Sally McManus (@sallymcmanus) Judith Sloan has build her career on arguing workers should not get a pay rise - especially low paid women workers. She was rolled out to condemn equal pay for community & childcare workers & oppose minimum wage increases. She’s just the worst. https://t.co/04xYj1iwxt

Sloan is notorious for arguing for lower wages and saying childcare workers are “dim-witted graduate[s] from a second-rate university”.

Empty chairs at the ABC

To add to the number of high-ranking jobs vacant at the ABC, including chair, managing director and director of regional and local, the national broadcaster is now advertising for a new editorial director. This is a tough gig which handles matters like the Emma Alberici and Andrew Probyn stories that so upset the government.

The job is now held by the journalist Alan Sunderland, who has become well known for his appearances at Senate estimates. Under Michelle Guthrie’s short reign Sunderland was the one who had to answer all the questions she was ill equipped to handle.

Job description: “Provide leadership and oversight of editorial processes, analysis and advice on editorial decisions and delivery of strategies to help ensure the highest standards of journalism, compliance with Editorial Policies and development of editorial quality capability to enable the ABC to maintain its position as a leading global media organisation.”

Erasing history?

Some Australian Associated Press journos told the Weekly Beast they felt a management decision to remove the names of two AAP heroes from their meeting rooms was “erasing history”. The AAP correspondent Michael Birch, who was killed by the Viet Cong 50 years ago, and Mr Dinh, a fixer for AAP journos covering the Vietnam war, were honoured by having two of the meeting rooms named after them.

But their names have been removed and replaced by the names of Sydney beaches – Avalon, Manly and so on.

The editor-in-chief, Tony Gillies, told Beast history is so important at AAP that it has gone “well above and beyond to ensure our newsroom doesn’t look like a mid-level accountants’ office”.

AAP is honouring Birch and Dinh and other key figures from AAP’s 88-year history in a permanent tribute adjacent to the main staff breakout space, as well as creating a scrolling visual display of AAP’s key milestones, according to Gillies.

“Apart from the two that were named after historical and beloved AAP figures – slain war corro Michael Birch and Mr Dinh, our heroic support to journos covering the Vietnam war – these meeting rooms were merely numbered,” Gillies said.

“We think the Dee Why room is far easier to identify than room 5.1a, for example.

“All meeting rooms are now named after Sydney beaches and include beautiful local beach images shot by our photographers.”

Whose scoop?

When the Daily Telegraph picked up the Walkley award for all-media scoop of the year last week, Twitter was awash with accusations that Sharri Markson had not broken the story that Barnaby Joyce was expecting a baby with his former staffer Vikki Campion.

Walkley Foundation (@walkleys) The winners of the 2018 Walkley award for Scoop of the year are: Sharri Markson, Christopher Dore and Kylar Loussikian, The Daily Telegraph. #Walkleys @SharriMarkson @wrongdorey @kloussikian @dailytelegraph @9Comms pic.twitter.com/XQ9LjV6Cgs

That story, they claimed, had been broken months earlier by two alternative media websites: Independent Australia and True Crime News Weekly.

In her podcast, Meshel Laurie claimed that “entire story of the affair and cover-up had been covered by Independent Australia”.

We asked one of the site’s editors, Michelle Pini, to send us links to the relevant stories. Pini said IA had sent an investigator to follow up on the initial report in True Crime.

@FrancesWilmore (@FrancesWilmore) Sharri Markson did not break the Joyce story it was broken by True Crime Weekly & @independentaus - very disappointed with the Walkley Foundstion

“Embattled Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, has been conducting a clandestine sexual affair with a female staffer for up to 10 months this year while at the same time grandiosely lecturing the Australian public about how gay people wanting to get married threatens the institution of marriage,” the True Crime site reported in October 2017.

Independent Australia followed up this lead and published a piece by a former private detective, Ross Jones.

He published a long list of rumours including:

“In or around February 2018, Barnaby will allegedly become a father for the fifth time – and not to Mrs Joyce;

“Barnaby has, allegedly, had a long-standing affair with a staffer, who is now working for another Nationals parliamentarian.”

So to sum up, True Crime said Joyce was having an affair with a staffer. Not who the staffer was or that she was pregnant. IA did not report the facts but merely listed a vast number of rumours, including that Joyce was about to become a father for the fifth time.

In February Markson’s front-page story said: “Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is expecting a baby with a former staff member. Mr Joyce has refused to comment on his relationship with ex-journalist Vikki Campion, 33, since it emerged last year that his decades-long marriage to Natalie Joyce, the mother of his four kids, had broken down. But friends say the pair is madly in love.”

And then there was that photo of a heavily pregnant Campion crossing the street, which sealed the deal.