Rita Panahi and Andrew Bolt enter the war of words, Gerard Henderson finally finds a use for the ABC, and Restaurant Revolution replaced by cat videos

The Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi is certainly earning her nickname as “the female Andrew Bolt”. With Bolt and the Daily Telegraph’s Miranda Devine, the rightwing columnist was one of the News Corp commentators who argued that booing the AFL star Adam Goodes was not racist.

“It takes a special brand of weapons-grade stupidity to condemn footy crowds as racist for jeering a player who happens to be Aboriginal,” she wrote.

Panahi is well known for hurling insults at anyone who disagrees with her on Twitter. She uses choice terms such as “fringe-dwelling malcontents”, “hateful, miserable souls” and “moral posturing morons”.

But last week she turned her sharp tongue on her colleagues at News Corp, and it has not gone unnoticed. Panahi, who is given a good run in the paper by the Herald Sun editors because her work gets good traffic, targeted the paper’s chief football writer, Mark “Robbo” Robinson, and a star columnist, Susie O’Brien.

“Footy hacks trying to analyse social issues is bad enough but now the mummy bloggers have joined the circus,” she said on Twitter.

A powerful voice on the footy-mad paper, Robbo’s sin was to argue that some of those who boo are, indeed, racists. Robbo’s position was shared by the paper’s editors.

“Altogether it is a pathetically shameful moment in the history of the AFL,” Robbo said. When he said it was his greatest fear that Goodes would be booed on grand final day, Panahi again responded, mocking him with the hashtag #prayforRobbo.

The football writer responded angrily.



Mark Robinson (@Robbo_heraldsun) Dont pray for me @RitaPanahi .... Don't even talk to me

But Panahi never takes a step back and she tweeted how delighted she was that she had the readers on her side anyway, according to a poll on the Herald Sun website. Not content with bagging her fellow writers, she also took aim at another outlet in the News Corp stable, saying that news.com.au’s reporting was “tragic” and “the sort of crap you’d expect from Grauniad”.

Andrew Bolt and the Australian enter war of words

The brawling over Goodes inside News Corp Australia went up a notch this week when the heavy hitters slugged it out in their respective publications.

The Australian took on Andrew Bolt and Miranda Devine, accusing them in the Cut ’n Paste section of shifting their positions: “Adam Goodes: Miranda Devine, Andrew Bolt struggle with clarity.”

Bolt was furious, calling the paper “shameful”.

“Having already tried to intimidate me and suggest editors silence me, it now joins in a media pack attack over the Goodes issue with some deceptively selective quotation – a weak and contemptible smearing,” he thundered.

He said they had deceptively attacked Devine, too. “That would be poor form against anyone, but against a News Corp colleague? Against a conservative who better represents the newspaper’s base? Against someone who has brought sense to the debate?”

But the Australian didn’t stop, so Bolt called it “weak and contemptible” and suggested the leadership of the editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, had “run its course”.

By Wednesday Bolt was still protesting he was being bullied by the Oz. But there was a conciliatory note at the end under the headline “This must stop”: “I understand the Australian will now cease this stupid war on a colleague. Good. It is better than this.”

We wonder if the apparent ceasefire has anything to do with the arrival of Rupert Murdoch in the country this week?

Promoting a book is as easy as A, B, C …

Gerard Henderson has made a career out of criticising the ABC. His tedious Media Watch Dog blog, now republished by the Australian every Friday, is packed with gripes about Aunty, which he says is bloated, left wing and hopelessly out of touch with real Australians.

Hendo listens to and watches everything he can, searching for ways in which to lambast the ABC’s presenters as biased. So where does the grumpy ABC critic go when he has a book to sell? Why the ABC, of course.

The Weekly Beast heard Hendo talking about Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man on Sydney’s 702 Drive with Richard Glover, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams and Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue all in one week.

So we investigated a little further and discovered Hendo had been everywhere. He had also been flogging his book on Adelaide’s 891 Mornings, Brisbane’s 612 Mornings and Melbourne’s 774 Drive. Oh, and Lateline did a story last week, too. Let us know if you have spotted him anywhere else on that dreadful public broadcaster.

Pressing the paws button on Restaurant Revolution

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crowds gather at a pop-up restaurant in Parramatta, western Sydney, which opened as part of Channel Seven’s reality cooking show Restaurant Revolution. Photograph: Helen Velissaris/AAP

While Seven has been busy trying to persuade the court to order Nine’s new cooking program The Hotplate off air for allegedly copying its successful My Kitchen Rules, the network’s programmers have been busy dealing with another crisis.

The Hotplate's next two episodes can go to air, judge rules Read more

Seven’s expensive new reality format, Restaurant Revolution, scheduled for four nights a week, has flopped. It hurts Seven even more because the program has been up against The Hotplate and the Nine show has been smashing it: on Monday The Hotplate had almost one million viewers and Revolution had half that.

So Seven has “bumped” Restaurant Revolution from four nights a week to a double episode on Thursdays.

And what has it been replaced with? Cats Make You Laugh Out Loud – a TV show with “uproarious clips” of cats.

“We’ll be looking at some of the best and most hilarious videos of our purry, furry friends – from fearless felines to scaredy cats; talking toms to kittens with attitude; and the richest cat in the world to piano-playing-pussies.”

Can’t wait.

Tele-ing us too much



The family law court bombing matter will be heard again on Thursday, and legal authorities are hoping all media outlets comply with the suppression orders this time.

When 68-year-old Leonard John Warwick appeared in Campbelltown court charged with 32 offences last week, the magistrate said there was a suppression order on the names of the surviving victims of the bombings.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police search the property and family home of Leonard John Warwick on 29 July. Photograph: David Moir/AAP

Sources told Weekly Beast it was made very clear to journalists that they could not name any surviving victims. A note was also sent out to all the newsdesks.

But one outlet, the Daily Telegraph, ignored the ban and published all the names of the surviving victims in its print edition and online. While a swift complaint from the Justice Department led to the online version being edited, the print version had been distributed around the state, putting the paper in contempt of court.

Don Randall revived in Speaker’s debate

ABC News has come out in support of a guest commentator, academic Scott Burchill, whose slip of the tongue was widely reported as an embarrassing TV moment.

Burchill suggested the late MP Don Randall as a replacement for Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker but was reminded by ABC News Breakfast presenter Michael Rowland that Randall was dead.

“Dr Scott Burchill is a valued and respected contributor who on Tuesday had a lapse in memory of the kind all of us sometimes do,” an ABC spokeswoman said. “If we are very unlucky, it happens on live television. He is welcome back at ABC News Breakfast at any time.”