Just when you thought News Corp’s political coverage couldn’t be any more partisan, the Courier Mail published a federal budget front page that was little more than blatant propaganda for Scott Morrison’s government.

The Brisbane tabloid’s front page, headlined “Australia at Crossroads”, featured big green road signs that pointed right to financial rewards and tax cuts under the Coalition and left to risk and debt under Labor. “Beware left turn: $200b tax hazard ahead,” said the bullet-ridden sign.

The Courier-Mail (@couriermail) Inside Wednesday's @couriermail ... all you need to know about the Morrison Government's Budget in our 16-page special #auspol #QLD pic.twitter.com/8S03J8BLlS

As anyone who has worked in a Murdoch newsroom can attest, the journalists have little to no influence over the direction the paper will take and they don’t all go along with it. But sources at the Queensland masthead say this week’s effort upset more than a few. Many staff were “mortified and embarrassed” by the editor’s none-too-subtle treatment of the budget.

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Since September 2017 the Courier Mail has been led by Sam Weir, a former editor of Adelaide’s Advertiser and the Perth Sunday Times. Weir was approached by The Weekly Beast for comment.

Chris Kenny’s war

The Australian’s associate editor and Sky News presenter, Chris Kenny, was called out on Twitter this week by the ABC’s corporate communications team for confusing the words “conservatives” and “conservators”.

ABC Communications (@ABCMediaComms) And here again @chriskkenny and @australian: The word used was “conservators”, in a light-hearted chat about a murder mystery book set in an art museum. pic.twitter.com/XlHyxvyE7j

Kenny said on Sky News and in the Oz that he was “shocked” to hear a casual joke and laughter about “murdering conservatives” on ABC radio’s book show. Alas it was a light-hearted chat about art forgeries Kenny heard and not a disturbing insight into how ABC presenters were sharpening their knives for a killing spree.

“[The ABC’s] stumbles always fall in a way that confirm its ideological leanings,” Kenny wrote without a hint of self-awareness.

The Australian has corrected the mistake online: “An earlier version of this incorrectly claimed that ABC Radio National’s The Bookshelf presenters Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh joked on air about ‘murdering conservatives’. The comments were in fact directed towards art ‘conservators’. The Australian apologises for the error.”

A man’s world in media

New research on the representation of women in media has thrown up some fascinating data as well as some enlightening comments from the editors interviewed for the report.

The Women’s Leadership Institute of Australia funded a grant for University of Technology Sydney academic Jenna Price to conduct a snapshot of Australia’s most influential news sites – on four consecutive Thursdays in October 2018.

The report, You Can’t Be What You Can’t See, only took a very small sample of Australia’s media, but it does show that while women make up 50.7% of the population, the stories that appear in the media do not reflect that reality. While the bylines are roughly equal between men and women, there are more male sources than female, and men dominate business, sport and political opinion.

Women's Leadership Institute Australia (@WLIAus) We took a snapshot of Australia’s most influential news sites – here’s what we found about the voices of women in the media. https://t.co/gAybZrsug8 @WomensAgenda @CEWAus @malechampions @VicHealth @GenderAvenger @GIWLkings @BroadAgenda5050 @JennaPrice #youcantbewhatyoucantsee pic.twitter.com/voa56mWKri

“Instead, the media reality is that women are not experts, not sources,” Price, a Fairfax columnist, wrote. “As those sources, we are missing from news stories and from feature stories; we are missing from photos both as photographers and as subjects; and we are missing in that very influential place in the Australian media landscape, our voices are missing from opinion pieces and columns.”

The representation of female sources who were directly quoted is on average 34% and ranged from a high of 59% (BuzzFeed) to a low of 14% (the Australian Financial Review).

Men made up 95% of direct sources in sports-related stories, 82% in business and finance stories, 79% in law and just 41% in celebrity and royal stories.

The interviews conducted with editors to complement the data revealed that not all journalistic leaders prioritise gender diversity.

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Kate de Brito, editor of news.com.au, said she wants gender diversity but she doesn’t think about it in her commissioning or her hiring practices.

“Growing up in a print world, as a print journalist, often they wanted a photo of a woman. A woman can be a better picture than an ugly bloke,” she said.

“I don’t think you would avoid an expert who was a woman because you thought a man would know more. That would be weird. But I wouldn’t go back and ask a reporter to get a female voice unless that was part of the story.

“If it was a story about climate change, and there happened to be three men in the story, I wouldn’t think, ‘Oh, we need a female expert on climate change’. That to me appears sexist in its own way. It’s like, ‘Why do I need a female? Why don’t I trust these male voices? Why am I including a woman just for the sake of it?’ But again, if there were men and women available, we definitely would try to speak to both.”

Hadley under bullying cloud

The morning after Ray Hadley was accused of bullying by three former colleagues on ABC’s 7.30, the shock jock chose to ignore the allegations on his top-rating talk show, not referring once to the allegations he verbally abused colleagues.

By Friday there was another report of bullying allegations against the 2GB headliner, this time from 2016 when Hadley claims he was a reformed man.

Macquarie Media CEO Adam Lang would not confirm the Sydney Morning Herald report because all complaints were confidential.

“Regarding your query about a report that there is a new complaint about Mr Hadley, all claims and complaints received are handled by way of a confidential process between the person complaining, the person being investigated and the company,” Lang said. Out of fairness and sensitivity to those involved, it is not something that is disclosed outside those personnel.”

Sunrise (@sunriseon7) "Nobody should be working in a radio station and be mentally scarred as a result of that"@MrPFord on allegations of workplace bullying by Ray Hadley. pic.twitter.com/PWQKLHLdZv

Discussing the ABC program on Channel 7’s Sunrise, co-host Samantha Armytage appeared to have some sympathy for Hadley. “It’s a different era now, isn’t it,” Armytage said to showbiz commentator Peter Ford. “And the ABC doesn’t like conservative commentators either, do they?”

For the record, allegations of bullying against Hadley first appeared as a Facebook post which was then reported by the Daily Telegraph, the same paper in which Hadley also has a regular column.

Sunrise faces defamation case

Samantha Armytage was the host of a segment on Sunrise which the media watchdog found breached broadcasting standards for accuracy and provoked serious contempt on the basis of race. That segment is now the subject of a defamation suit against Seven brought by a group of Aboriginal women who allege Sunrise defamed them when it played background footage of them.

The Sunrise co-host interviewed an all-white panel discussing the adoption of Indigenous children and child abuse last year which contained strong negative generalisations about Indigenous people as a group, the Australian Communications and Media Authority found. Seven told BuzzFeed the company would defend the case.

No budget joy for the ABC

ABC staff have been warned by the acting managing director, David Anderson, that cuts to programs and staff are likely following the handing down of the budget this week.

Despite a major lobbying campaign, the government has carried through with its threat to impose an $83.7m “indexation pause” on top of the $254m cut made by the Coalition in 2014.

“The cut comes into effect at the start of the next financial year, with a first-year impact of $14.6m,” Anderson said in a note to staff. “Given our tight fiscal envelope, meeting the costs will have to involve tough decisions on staffing and services. Our commitment is to consult with staff in considering options. I will keep you informed on this front.” The unions are gearing up for another round of redundancies.

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The government did, however, extend the $43.7m in funding for the enhanced news gathering project for another three years.

Labor has promised to restore the $83.7m in funding to the ABC if elected.

Empty shelves

Sinddy Ealy (@sinddyealy) ABC Library Ultimo - all that is left of what was once an acclaimed national collection of Australian stories, music and history with an expert team to run it. This is what ABC funding cuts look like courtesy of the Govt! #ABC #Auspol pic.twitter.com/kPZBC4Dd0v

The ABC was very cross when a photograph taken by a staffer of an empty ABC sound and reference library was tweeted this week, causing a wave of anger about cuts to ABC services while sacked managing director Michelle Guthrie walked away with $1.64m.

Guardian Australia revealed last year that the ABC was dismantling its historic sound and reference libraries across the country and making 10 specialist librarians redundant. All the CDs, vinyl, books and journals from 85 years of collecting followed the expert staff out the door.

The ABC said in a statement the library had been converted to a digital one that offers access to e-books and digital publications and supplies digitised music on demand.

“Of the books and CDs from the ABC Reference Library, more than 10,000 books were donated to Indigenous Australian students in the Northern Territory; some rare books were donated to a range of libraries and cultural institutions, including the National Library of Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive; the CDs were centralised in Melbourne, with duplicate CDs donated to cultural institutions; and some classical CDs, vinyl records, print publications and reference books were retained,” it said.

“The only books and CDs disposed of were duplicates for which we could not find a home.”