When Nine’s chief political correspondent, Chris Uhlmann, said News Corp and 2GB’s Alan Jones and Ray Hadley were “bullies” and “players” who were “waging a war” on Malcolm Turnbull, prominent media players agreed with him, including ABC 7.30’s Laura Tingle and the Conversation’s Michelle Grattan.

Must watch, brave and correct https://t.co/aNkKFam3fX — Michelle Grattan (@michellegrattan) August 23, 2018

Uhlmann: “If they are making phone calls to people trying to push people over the line, then they’re part of the story.

“They’re among the biggest bullies in the land and it’s about time that people called them out for what they are.”

On the ABC, Tingle said parts of the News Corp stable had been running a campaign against Turnbull and that MPs had been directly lobbied by Jones and Peta Credlin, one of the stars of the after dark lineup on Sky News, and former chief of staff to Tony Abbott.

The response from Rupert Murdoch’s troops was immediate. Andrew Bolt, Chris Kenny and Sharri Markson all weighed in, with Markson going head to head with Uhlmann on Channel Nine.

“I’m not defending anyone, but I am strongly defending my newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, in response to Chris Uhlmann’s quite disgusting and outrageous attack that we were in any way players in this,” Markson told Channel Nine from the parliament house courtyard. Markson said the commentators on Sky’s evening lineup had the right to express their opinions.



Uhlmann: “They are turning Liberal-National Party voters into One Nation voters after dark.”

Kenny said the accusations were paranoid, desperate and a media conspiracy, and Bolt said they were a “bizarre channelling of Turnbull’s paranoia”.

“Sky really is spooking those ABC types, forcing them to say all kinds of untruths,” Bolt said.

ABC stalks murder cases

New South Wales attorney general Mark Speakman has twice announced a review after ABC programs exposed possible miscarriages of justice this year.

In May Speakman announced he had referred consent laws to the Law Reform Commission for review after Four Corners’ investigation into a high-profile sexual assault case.

This week Speakman announced an inquiry into the case of Kathleen Folbigg, who was found guilty of killing four of her children, just days after Australian Story aired doubts surrounding her conviction. Folbigg was convicted in 2003 of killing her infant children, who were aged between 19 days and 19 months, over the decade from 1989.

Could a third judicial review as a result of ABC journalism be on the horizon? The ABC is set to air a controversial series about another woman who was convicted of murdering her own baby, Keli Lane. Lane supporters hope the three-part ABC program, which will be aired in September, will lead to a judicial review of her case. Lane, who has cooperated with the ABC through her parents, has always maintained her innocence. She was found guilty of murdering baby Tegan within hours of giving birth in Auburn hospital in 1996. In 2013 the high court rejected her application for special leave to appeal, but an innocence project at RMIT has kept her hopes of an appeal alive.

The Lane investigation is being led by Walkley award-winner Caro Meldrum-Hanna and former Four Corners executive producer Sue Spencer, with veteran producer Deb Masters as script consultant and Jaya Balendra as producer.

After leaving Four Corners, Meldrum-Hanna began working on Exposed: The Case of Keli Lane. The Exposed brand is expected to be extended into other programs which expose injustices and scandals. The question being asked around the ABC is, “Isn’t that what Four Corners does?”

The ABC says Meldrum-Hanna is “a character in her own search for the truth” and “Keli has asked Caro to investigate her story”, which appears to imply the investigative reporter will be part of the story in the style famously adopted by 60 Minutes.

“Assisted by investigative journalist Elise Worthington, Caro sets out to shed new light on the mystery of Tegan’s disappearance. What dark secrets is Keli keeping? Is Tegan dead – or could she be alive? Was Keli’s trial a miscarriage of justice?”

Common values

When Muslim players Adam Saad of Essendon and Bachar Houli of Richmond embraced as a symbol of unity before the coin toss at the MCG last Friday night, there was at least one media personality who saw red.

Footy Show regular Sam Newman accused Australian Muslims of failing to “nationalise” in the latest of a long series of outrageous comments by the Nine personality. “They don’t generally nationalise, they colonise,” Newman said on the radio.

“There are 600,000 Muslims in Australia, they share no common interest with what we’re on about. They have no common values, they preach to a different, deity, god.

“This has been a huge problem in Europe and it’s beginning to be a huge problem in America.”

Fossil record

Another media personality who belongs in the dinosaur era is 2GB’s Alan Jones, who unashamedly used a racially offensive term while talking about the Liberal leadership battle on Thursday.

No Alan, pretty sure you can’t use that expression. pic.twitter.com/B6X42t8GPH — David Woiwod (@DavidWoiwod) August 23, 2018

“They are mobilising to block Dutton,” the shock jock said.

“The nigger in the woodpile here, if I can use that expression, and I’m not going to yield to certain people who tell us that words in the language are forbidden, the person who’s playing hard to get, is Mathias Cormann.”

But hours later, after an outcry about his appalling remarks, he took to Twitter to admit he’d made a mistake. “We all make mistakes. This morning on 2GB and 4BC I spoke about the covert actions of some political operatives in the current leadership challenges within the Liberal party.

“I used an old and offensive figure of speech that I regret saying. People should be honest and forthright in their actions and that is not happening in the Liberal party right now. I will have more to say on this tomorrow.”

But it’s not the first time he’s deployed the phrase to describe the Liberal leadership – in 2012 he used it on Malcolm Turnbull. He also used it in 2007 to describe the Commonwealth, in 2011 in relation to the plight of dairy farmers, again in 2011 to describe cricket selectors and in 2013 when talking about Queensland state politics.

Murdoch celebrates the IPA

According to a report in the Australian, Rupert Murdoch and John Howard were “received like rock stars” at the 75th birthday of the Institute of Public Affairs at Crown Towers while Murdoch Snr was in town for the News Awards.

Margin Call: Rupert Murdoch and John Howard were received like rock stars at the 75th anniversary of the @TheIPA last nighthttps://t.co/5QE0cBQTRx pic.twitter.com/ZX1GFNIWIL — Business Review (@aus_business) August 21, 2018

Murdoch and Howard were interviewed on stage by Oz columnist Janet Albrechtsen, while News Corp boss Michael Miller and his faithful columnists Chris Kenny, Terry McCrann and Andrew Bolt watched on in admiration. Like a true fan, the Australian Financial Review editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury asked for a selfie with Uncle Rupe, his boss when he worked at the Oz. No sign of major IPA donor Gina Rinehart, who gave a total of $4.5m to the rightwing thinktank in 2016 and 2017.

Crikey’s NYT tie-up

Subscribers to the Australian edition of the New York Times will get a daily taste of Private Media’s news and gossip site Crikey, while Crikey readers will get access to some NYT stories, in a tie-up between the venerable US publication and the independent local publisher.

“Readers of our morning email, The Worm, will get a selection of New York Times links on a weekly basis starting tomorrow,” Crikey associate publisher Jane Mahoney told Beast.

“Readers of the New York Times have had access to an unlocked Crikey article daily in their Morning Briefing email as of this week.

“For now, it’s a trial run. We’ll be asking our readers for feedback and monitoring the numbers on both sides before we review with the team at the New York Times and decide where to next.

“It’s been a great opportunity to see how we can work with another publication to expand what we offer our respective readers and introduce both publications to new audiences.”

Damien Cave, the NYT’s bureau chief in Sydney, confirmed the “link-sharing experiment” but said the timing and nature of the partnership could change.

“At this point, it’s just a trial run, but we think this is an exciting way to try and broaden what we each offer our audiences and make our work visible to people who might not otherwise see it,” Cave said.

Budget woes cause a flap at the ABC

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese has thrown his weight behind a campaign to get the ABC to reverse its decision not to buy music documentary Descent into the Maelstrom about 1970s punk band Radio Birdman. The critically acclaimed film, argues director Jonathan Sequeira, is an important part of cultural history and has been offered to Aunty at a bargain basement price.

The ABC has had the film to consider since 2017, but now says it can’t find a slot for it, even though it is original Australian content which would appear to fulfil the ABC’s charter.

“Despite writing to the national broadcaster and raising the issue in the Parliament, I have not received a response from the ABC in regards to their decision not to acquire the broadcast rights to Descent into the Maelstrom – the Radio Birdman Story,” Albo told Weekly Beast.

“I am firmly of the view that Radio Birdman’s contribution to Australian musical and cultural history is significant.

“That the ABC has chosen not to air the film, nor respond to me, is a disappointment to say the least.” Sources told the Weekly Beast the ABC TV division has overspent its budget by several millions and is looking to make cuts anywhere it can, so perhaps the little doco is a victim of that. But the ABC denies it has overspent its budget and says the doco was passed over for other reasons.

The ABC said in a statement: “As a responsible public broadcaster, we don’t acquire content that we do not have a need for. In this case, it didn’t make sense to spend money on a 110-minute documentary that did not meet our criteria for either audience appeal or our quality standards.”

Although Albo’s letter to the head of ABC TV and entertainment David Anderson has gone unanswered, the exec did appear on ABC Drive on Radio National on Wednesday for a chat with Patricia Karvelas.

Anderson admitted he did not have a replacement for the two recently axed programs, Tom Ballard’s Tonightly and The Checkout, but said they were both too expensive to keep on the slate. The comedy show cost “multiple millions” and its audience was going down not up, Anderson said. There is hope for The Checkout though. In a bit of a Trumpesque double negative, Anderson said it was “not a never again proposition”.



We believe the price tag was for Tonightly, with its daily production schedule and cast of performers and writers, was around $5m for a show which was bringing in 30,000 viewers.

Remember when Guy Pearce hosted Countdown with @kylieminogue & @JDonOfficial? Share your favourite ABC memories with us using #ABCyours https://t.co/VwCnt5LZea pic.twitter.com/RpjAB6Wgac — ABC TV Australia (@ABCTV) August 17, 2018

Anderson said the new ABC Yours campaign using celebrities to promote the national broadcaster was a way of making sure “everyone knows how important the ABC is” and denied the broadcaster is at war with the government.

“I think that any government of the day will have an opinion,” Anderson said. “I’ve been at the ABC for a while, 29 years, and there is always pressure from government.”