Speaker 1: This is the Media.
Speaker 2: Show with Jack outing, Hello and welcome to the Media Show.
Speaker 2: Tonight we look at reaction to a high profile sacking
Speaker 2: in the US media and we sit down with Sky
Speaker 2: News Australia's media watchdog columnist Jared Henderson, who takes aim
Speaker 2: and some pretty biased journalists. But first, the ABC is
Speaker 2: facing an identity crisis which stems from mismanagement, incompetence and
Speaker 2: editorial double standards. Now I feel really sorry for the
Speaker 2: journalists who are genuinely trying to break stories at the
Speaker 2: ABC while management repeatedly runs what was once a great
Speaker 2: institution into the ground. Just yesterday's staff would have gathered
Speaker 2: around their computers to watch the court live stream involving
Speaker 2: their sacked colleague Antoinette Latouffe, whose shifts were canned based
Speaker 2: on her social media activity and potentially her race. The
Speaker 2: court has been told by her legal team to accept
Speaker 2: that her dismissal was related to her race. They argued
Speaker 2: that white presenters such as Laura Tingle, who was directly
Speaker 2: named in court, repeatedly share biased content on social media
Speaker 2: and face no proportional punishment, and they have a pretty
Speaker 2: good point. The ABC has spent more than one point
Speaker 2: one million dollars arrogantly fighting Latoof in court. She would
Speaker 2: have settled for eighty five grand early on, plus a
Speaker 2: public apology and reinstatement as a fill in presenter. They
Speaker 2: have nothing but contempt for your money, and these executives
Speaker 2: running the joint are not the kind of progressive people
Speaker 2: that they pretend to be. It is no wonder that
Speaker 2: staffer disgusted at their own companies handling of the case,
Speaker 2: and we tend to agree Latoof never should have been hired,
Speaker 2: but once she was on the books, she should have
Speaker 2: been on a level playing field to the white presenters
Speaker 2: at the ABC, the ones who are aggressively protected sometimes
Speaker 2: beyond all reason. I am talking about people like Four
Speaker 2: Corners star Louise Milligan, who wasn't sacked after defaming a
Speaker 2: politician with a falsehood on social media. Now that costs
Speaker 2: you four hundred thousand dollars no punishment, though, and they
Speaker 2: continue to praise and promote her at every opportunity. This
Speaker 2: clear double standard aside. Earlier in the week, the ABC
Speaker 2: had the opportunity to address staff and Australians paying for
Speaker 2: this mess, assuring them that they didn't racially target a
Speaker 2: woman based on her opinions or race, but instead this happened.
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to firstly ask you about the
Speaker 3: two litigation. Could you provide the Committee with an update
Speaker 3: on that dispute which is obviously garnering a lot of
Speaker 3: headlines at the moment.
Speaker 4: Yes, Senator, So the case is still before the courts.
Speaker 4: We have closing submissions Thursday and Friday.
Speaker 3: Of this week, So can you please provide the Committy
Speaker 3: with an update on this litigation?
Speaker 4: Senator? That is the update I'm able to provide at
Speaker 4: this point in time. The case is still before the courts.
Speaker 2: But do you know what the ABC did have time for?
Speaker 2: Instead of being transparent about these issues and providing the
Speaker 2: Senate with a substantive update, they turned on their critics.
Speaker 5: I can confirm that News Limited do have a strange
Speaker 5: obsession with sort of taking scrutiny beyond scrutiny and sort
Speaker 5: of regularly agitating against the work of our journalists. We're
Speaker 5: flatted with their interest, but despite the very small readership,
Speaker 5: we do engage and respond to a lot of their
Speaker 5: queries quite regularly, and we do defend the work of
Speaker 5: our journalists. Almost every week. There's multiple careers a week
Speaker 5: having said that as a public broadcaster, we must be
Speaker 5: subjected to scrutiny and we must have a culture of
Speaker 5: accepting scrutiny and self reflect where we get things wrong.
Speaker 2: That was the ABC's powerful news boss, Justin Stevens, who
Speaker 2: is responding to a question from Green Senator Sarah Hanson
Speaker 2: Young about standing up to News Corp. Now Justin wants
Speaker 2: to define what acceptable scrutiny is while also having childish
Speaker 2: digs at audiences being small, which is very ironic considering
Speaker 2: the massive audience issues the ABC faces. But all of
Speaker 2: that aside, this is not how scrutiny works. We are
Speaker 2: journalists and we ask all sorts of questions to all
Speaker 2: sorts of statutory bodies every single day. The ABC isn't special.
Speaker 2: It gets probed exactly how we might probe any government department,
Speaker 2: all statutory body which has clear issues, and his journos
Speaker 2: do the exact same thing, and Justin Stevens does not
Speaker 2: get to dictate what level of scrutiny is appropriate. That's
Speaker 2: the whole point. You decide because you pay for it.
Speaker 2: The ABC costs you one point two billion dollars a year,
Speaker 2: which means for the thirteen point six million taxpayers in
Speaker 2: this country. On average, you pay eighty six dollars a year,
Speaker 2: and in many cases that's against your will. And that's
Speaker 2: for the ABC to spend your money artificially inflating audience
Speaker 2: figures with cheap and asenine tiktoks. People like Justin Stevens,
Speaker 2: who is paid five hundred and fifty six thousand dollars
Speaker 2: every year, are shockingly reckless with your money, and his
Speaker 2: contempt for transparency is a contempt towards every Aussie paying
Speaker 2: his salary. The ABC spent three point four million dollars
Speaker 2: in legal fees last financial year. Now are we not
Speaker 2: supposed to ask about those cases? And what about the
Speaker 2: humiliating apology the Justin Stevens had to deliver when his
Speaker 2: staff doctored gunshot sounds into a professional news report to
Speaker 2: make it seem like a soldier was shooting at unarmed civilians.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right. They cleared themselves of deliberate wrongdoing in
Speaker 2: this one by hiring a former ABC journal to review
Speaker 2: the actions of Justin Stevens. Employ Not sure it makes
Speaker 2: it much better, though not deliberate, just shocking incompetence, but
Speaker 2: in a way.
Speaker 1: I agree Justin.
Speaker 2: Stevens is the face of incompetence because this is the
Speaker 2: modern ABC. It has lost the faith of its own
Speaker 2: staff and mainstream Australia Bill. Joining me now on the
Speaker 2: panel is Managing editor of The Australian, Darren Davidson, and
Speaker 2: of course Sky News contributor Kel Richards. Now Kel the
Speaker 2: ABC it's having scandal after scandal, and you would think
Speaker 2: go into senate estimates, that's an opportunity for a newsboss
Speaker 2: such as Justin Stevens to lay it out, really explain
Speaker 2: to Australians where they've gone wrong. Instead, it's quite defensive.
Speaker 2: And this is not that long after this doctoring scandal
Speaker 2: that happened on his watch with his staff.
Speaker 6: Yes, they've got so much that has gone wrong. It's
Speaker 6: really hard for them to be comfortable and open. They
Speaker 6: can't just roll action say we're doing well and here's
Speaker 6: what happened one, two, three, four four, because too much
Speaker 6: has gone wrong in too many areas over too much time.
Speaker 6: I mean the business are putting in five extra gunshots,
Speaker 6: for example, into that report about what happened in Afghanistan.
Speaker 6: Now I have sat in ABC editing rooms beside the
Speaker 6: vision editor. I know how it's put together. I'm just
Speaker 6: puzzled by what they say. I cannot comprehend how that
Speaker 6: could happen by accident. For a start, you have to
Speaker 6: have the sounds, the sound effects available to insert on
Speaker 6: the audio track, so they're not hanging.
Speaker 2: It turned them into an audio file.
Speaker 6: That's so they're not floating around the room somewhere and
Speaker 6: just fall into the machine.
Speaker 1: That doesn't happen.
Speaker 6: Someone makes a conscious decision to isolate and pull out
Speaker 6: the gunshots, and then they don't go onto the audio
Speaker 6: track unless someone presses a button and puts them onto
Speaker 6: the audio track. It can't happen. It just can't happen automatically.
Speaker 6: And I cannot, for the life of me, having spent
Speaker 6: far too long in my life doing that kind of thing,
Speaker 6: I cannot understand the explanation. It's incomprehensible. It makes no sense.
Speaker 6: In an editing suite, someone somewhere makes a decision, a reporter,
Speaker 6: an editor makes a decision, let's beef up the battle
Speaker 6: scene by putting in some extra gunshots. Now, if they'd
Speaker 6: said we just thought we were beefing up the battle scene,
Speaker 6: it never occurred to us that we were in fact
Speaker 6: treading on.
Speaker 2: Legal ground that there was a broad that's right. Now.
Speaker 6: If they'd said that, we would have said, okay, stupid
Speaker 6: thing to do, but we understand people can make stupid
Speaker 6: decisions on occasions. They haven't said that. They've said somehow
Speaker 6: these sound effects of rifle shots fell onto the soundtrack,
Speaker 6: and during all the screening afterwards, every time they checked
Speaker 6: the story, every time they went.
Speaker 1: Through it, no one noticed.
Speaker 6: Now that's just beyond my comprehension.
Speaker 2: He has no credibility to get his own team to
Speaker 2: publish a headline saying ABC cleared of deliberately. What's he
Speaker 2: saying they're guilty of incompetence? It's so absurd. I won't
Speaker 2: be lectured to with a man who's that incompetent. But Darren,
Speaker 2: what did you make of his Senate estimates hearing there
Speaker 2: where he did take an aim at News Corp. I
Speaker 2: know a lot of your reporters at Australian have been
Speaker 2: asking some very tough questions the ABC.
Speaker 1: Is that fair?
Speaker 2: Is that fair for them to do that?
Speaker 7: Absolutely? I mean the ABC, as we all know, is
Speaker 7: funded by the taxpayer. They've just had a new five
Speaker 7: year cycle locked in with the federal government. Kim Williams
Speaker 7: has been given an extra forty million, and yet there
Speaker 7: are serious problems with Justin's news operations. Kel gave one
Speaker 7: example there with those you know, with the very questionable
Speaker 7: editing around that story. Another example would be nearly a
Speaker 7: year ago, now we had that national tragedy at the
Speaker 7: Westfield shopping center in Bondi Junction. Now that story was
Speaker 7: covered comprehensively and at speed by organizations like Sky and
Speaker 7: News Corp. Yet the ABC with a fraction sorry, they
Speaker 7: did that with a fraction of the budget that the
Speaker 7: ABC has. Yet the ABC was behind them. It moved
Speaker 7: at glacial pace during that story, as we and others
Speaker 7: and yourself reported at the time. And I think a
Speaker 7: lot of the ABC's problems are kind of born of
Speaker 7: its vast size and this billion dollar plus budget. I
Speaker 7: think it's very easy for the ABC's reporters and their
Speaker 7: friends and their circle to forget that that they're not
Speaker 7: the people that they are serving. There's millions of Australians
Speaker 7: out there that don't align with their align with their values,
Speaker 7: and you know, they often forget that it's about reporting
Speaker 7: the news, not a pining and Justin's you know, failed
Speaker 7: to rain those instincts in. There are a lot of
Speaker 7: the that the ABC News operations seems to have. We've
Speaker 7: got a new incoming managing director, Hugh Mark's former Channel
Speaker 7: nine CEO. He's pretty good, he's pretty solid. You know,
Speaker 7: he's got a big job here now in terms of
Speaker 7: bringing some much needed discipline to the public broadcasters, editorial
Speaker 7: decision making process and judgment. And you know that's important
Speaker 7: because he has to address a sharp decline in their audiences,
Speaker 7: ABC audiences, particularly on radio, which just reflects that what
Speaker 7: Justin's doing is not serving the needs of Australians, particularly
Speaker 7: those outside of the mainstream.
Speaker 2: Well, let's move on now to a story about a
Speaker 2: sacked radio star who took aim at the Matilda's You
Speaker 2: know what, they remind me of Year ten girls. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to undermine the whole sport, but that's what
Speaker 2: I think that so you can stick it up your ass.
Speaker 2: I'd rather hammer and nail through the head of my watch.
Speaker 5: That got any men's sport.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 2: He rightfully got a lot of flak for those comments,
Speaker 2: which I think were bizarre considering how much Australia rallied
Speaker 2: behind this team during the World Cup. But soon after
Speaker 2: another eclipse surfaced and this one was actually quite disgusting.
Speaker 5: The end of matriosis.
Speaker 9: And this is controversial. I'm going to say it's controversial here.
Speaker 1: It's made up.
Speaker 2: Most people watching tonight would personally know a woman who
Speaker 2: has been impacted by endometriosis and it is a very
Speaker 2: real issue and he was an absolute moron to suggest otherwise.
Speaker 2: Let's bring the panel back in, Darren, what do you
Speaker 2: make of this whole saga.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they're really shocking surprising comments to hear on the
Speaker 7: mainstream national radio broadcaster. I mean, it's more like something
Speaker 7: you might hear on a fringe podcast. I don't think
Speaker 7: his employers really had a lot of choice there. Many
Speaker 7: of his you know, listeners and audience would have been
Speaker 7: turned off by those comments and they would have made
Speaker 7: a lot of the sponsors and advertisers, not that they
Speaker 7: should dictate editorial, but quite uncomfortable being alongside that content.
Speaker 7: And as you said, you know, the Matilda's a huge
Speaker 7: success story. They've elevated football soccer in Australia and with
Speaker 7: the twenty twenty six feet World Cup around the corner
Speaker 7: and Matilda's going through a qualifying campaign At the moment,
Speaker 7: it's just a shame that this has become the focus
Speaker 7: of the attention around that team, and you know, so
Speaker 7: many young girls look up to them and the comments
Speaker 7: is very unfortunate and unfortunately. I think it's probably the
Speaker 7: right decision to to n his employment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a big free speech guy. I definitely draw
Speaker 2: the line. If you're mocking a chronic illness, particularly leads
Speaker 2: to fertility issues, I've got no time. Good luck to
Speaker 2: him join the centilent cumate exactly.
Speaker 6: Look, I'm with you because we all know someone like that.
Speaker 6: I personally know a young woman who in her teens
Speaker 6: would be up vomiting twelve thirteen times a night because
Speaker 6: of endometriosis, wake up in the morning in enormous pain
Speaker 6: and say can you drive me to school? I mean,
Speaker 6: that's what these people are going through.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know Marty, he's got daughters as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know if he's been this bad all
Speaker 6: along and we've only just discovered it, or whether somehow
Speaker 6: an epidemic of stupidity has suddenly hit him. But if
Speaker 6: that's what he's going to talk about, and that's what
Speaker 6: he's going to say, I'm really pleased he's off the
Speaker 6: year and no one should allow him anywhere NEU a
Speaker 6: microphone ever again.
Speaker 2: Yep, And I'll delete him from my mind as soon
Speaker 2: as we move on to this next segment. But we're
Speaker 2: going to take a quick break. When we return, we'll
Speaker 2: play you a clip of MSNBC hosts Joy Reid having
Speaker 2: a public meltdown on camera after getting sacked. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to Stars and Gripes now where we pick apart the absurdity,
Speaker 2: the hypocrisy, and the blatant bias in the US media. First,
Speaker 2: one of America's most divisive TV hosts, who we have
Speaker 2: spoken about a lot on this show, has been sacked.
Speaker 2: Joy Reid's floundering show was axed, and in her last
Speaker 2: show she spoke about resistance and fascism with the typical
Speaker 2: inflammatory language that she has become infamous for.
Speaker 10: And we begin tonight with what I think is the question,
Speaker 10: when you are in the midst of a crisis, and
Speaker 10: specifically a crisis of democracy, how do you resist when
Speaker 10: fascism isn't just coming, it's already here. So what if anything,
Speaker 10: can you do about it? Well, for one thing, you
Speaker 10: can try to learn from history from what people in
Speaker 10: this situation, in countries around the world and in America.
Speaker 1: Have done before.
Speaker 2: Reid considered herself to be a student of history, so
Speaker 2: much so that she spent a great deal of time
Speaker 2: using awful people from history to describe her modern day
Speaker 2: political opponents.
Speaker 10: Vladimir Putin's Russia, Victor Orbon's Hungary, or Nicolas Maruro in Venezuela.
Speaker 10: Today that suppresses the rights of women and minorities, uses
Speaker 10: the military to execute the whims of a strong man dictator,
Speaker 10: and controls and suppresses the press, education, the arts, rewrites
Speaker 10: history to suit a favored and dominant racial class, and
Speaker 10: foments extravagant corruption in order to enrich the dictator and
Speaker 10: his friends.
Speaker 2: It really is extraordinary that Read lasted this long. She
Speaker 2: did not appear to have any principles as a journalist.
Speaker 2: Her entire personality seemed to be personal attacks on people
Speaker 2: who voted differently to her. She even managed to turn
Speaker 2: this Thanksgiving into a message of division.
Speaker 10: You right wingers shouldn't have to suffer the consequences of
Speaker 10: your votes. You don't want to be around me because
Speaker 10: I voted for fascism. No fair, I am coughing on
Speaker 10: you with COVID, But you want me to wear a
Speaker 10: mask for your safety. No fair, my body, my choice.
Speaker 10: Well here's an alternative thought. Make your own dinner, Magan,
Speaker 10: make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears, troll amongst
Speaker 10: yourself with Elon, and leave us alone.
Speaker 2: This is a person who was getting paid three million
Speaker 2: US dollars a year, although that was slashed to one
Speaker 2: point five million last year following a ratings disaster. But
Speaker 2: now the gravy train has run out of track. And
Speaker 2: that woman who wanted families to fight on Thanksgiving about politics,
Speaker 2: and he calls anyone who disagrees with her hitler. She
Speaker 2: believes that she is the victim.
Speaker 10: My show had value and that.
Speaker 11: I'm sorry that what I was doing head value had
Speaker 11: value and in the end, I'm sorry, I'm not I
Speaker 11: try not to cry on TV, and I say, this
Speaker 11: is kind of like me on TVs. I apologize.
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm pretty sure that's misinformation. Her show did not
Speaker 2: have value, which is why the company acted it. It's
Speaker 2: pretty simple, but this fact was also lost on her colleagues.
Speaker 2: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was infuriated that her friend Joy Read
Speaker 2: was sacked.
Speaker 12: In all of the jobs I have had, in all
Speaker 12: of the years I have been alive, there is no
Speaker 12: colleague for whom I have had more affection and more
Speaker 12: respect than joy Read. I love everything about her. I
Speaker 12: have learned so much from her, so much more to
Speaker 12: learn from her. I do not want to lose her
Speaker 12: as a colleague here at MSNBC, And personally, I think
Speaker 12: it is a bad mistake to let her walk out
Speaker 12: the door.
Speaker 2: Okay, they didn't let her walk out the door. She
Speaker 2: was fired. I mean, surely Rachel knows this. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is the level of spin and duplicity that these
Speaker 2: people go to wear with. They cannot even be honest
Speaker 2: about the fact that her ratings were bad, so she
Speaker 2: was fired. Instead, they dress it up as they let
Speaker 2: her walk out the door, whatever that means. It is extraordinary,
Speaker 2: really that management let this go to wear, and it
Speaker 2: just gets worse after this. Madow implied that management fired
Speaker 2: her because they are racist.
Speaker 12: It is also unnerving to see that on a network
Speaker 12: where we've got two count of two non white hosts
Speaker 12: in primetime, both of our non white hosts in primetime
Speaker 12: are losing their shows, as is Katie fang on the weekend,
Speaker 12: and that feels worse than bad, no matter who. Now,
Speaker 12: that feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.
Speaker 2: Okay, if that is true, and this is an indefensible
Speaker 2: racist decision, then resign. Surely you do not want to
Speaker 2: work for a racist institution, and you, a white privileged woman,
Speaker 2: is taking up the spot of a woman of color,
Speaker 2: So surely she resigns.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 12: I think I'm safe in saying for all of us
Speaker 12: anchors who you know through the TV, please know that
Speaker 12: what pins us the most is not what happens to us.
Speaker 1: It is what happens to.
Speaker 12: Our coworkers on whom we depend and who you don't
Speaker 12: necessarily know, but we respect and love them and depend
Speaker 12: on them. And did I mention we respect them?
Speaker 2: Okay, So she is staying, but she respects all of
Speaker 2: her colleagues who just got sacked, and she will continue
Speaker 2: to earn twenty five million US dollars over five years.
Speaker 2: Let's bring in Sky News contributor Koshergata to DISCUSSYV.
Speaker 1: Kosher.
Speaker 2: I've got to say, good old MSNBC for letting that
Speaker 2: go to where I'm really glad that I got to
Speaker 2: kind of witness this meltdown in real time, and to
Speaker 2: their credit, they gave her a bit of independence and
Speaker 2: they let her call them racist on their own TV channel.
Speaker 13: They were definitely generous. Jack gray Budo has always both
Speaker 13: in letting Joy Read have her final episode. Oftentimes hosts
Speaker 13: her canceled and are not afforded that courtesy because you
Speaker 13: do serve at the pleasure of management and the company
Speaker 13: that employs you. And also Rachel Matta over here. But
Speaker 13: I have to say that the level of sanctimony and
Speaker 13: insubordination that she showed and that she was dripping within
Speaker 13: subordination was actually really really stunning, where she basically, as
Speaker 13: you said, accused her bosses of making a bad management
Speaker 13: decision and being racist. I think this is a real
Speaker 13: test for new management. They've got Rebecca Cutler, a newly
Speaker 13: minted president of the network after the previous one, Rashida Jones,
Speaker 13: resigned in January, and I don't know, I think it's
Speaker 13: a really interesting test for her to know who is
Speaker 13: ultimately in charge over here. Notwithstanding Rachel Maddow is their
Speaker 13: biggest star. It hasn't happened yet, so I don't expect
Speaker 13: that it will, but I think in most other workplaces
Speaker 13: this would be considered rather brazen for an employee to
Speaker 13: publicly say this about their boss.
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely brazen. I think there is also a little
Speaker 2: bit of an issue in the logic that she's using.
Speaker 2: If representation based on racial lines really matters, it's always
Speaker 2: these white liberals and these top positions that say it.
Speaker 2: You never see them stand aside and say, okay, well
Speaker 2: Joy Read can have my job, then she can have
Speaker 2: my show.
Speaker 13: There are twenty five million reasons I can think of
Speaker 13: for why she's not doing that, even after her pay cut.
Speaker 13: That's a very pretty package for one hour of content
Speaker 13: a week. After the first hundred days of the presidency,
Speaker 13: she literally does one hour per week. So most people
Speaker 13: will never have a deal like that. But ultimately, you know,
Speaker 13: as you said at the top, this does come down
Speaker 13: to a business decision because the product that Joy Read
Speaker 13: was putting out there has been what it's been, and
Speaker 13: MSNBC had no problems keeping it on when she was
Speaker 13: at least bringing readings. You could argue if that ethically
Speaker 13: or morally that was the right thing to do or not,
Speaker 13: But from a business perspective, she used to get about
Speaker 13: three million people a night back in twenty twenty, that
Speaker 13: dropped about one point one to one point two in
Speaker 13: twenty four last year, and now she's not even cracking
Speaker 13: eight hundred thousand. So when you just look at those numbers, Ultimately,
Speaker 13: with new management in place, the whole network is being
Speaker 13: spun off from the parent company, Comcast, so they're gonna
Speaker 13: have to stand on their own two feet. Economically, it
Speaker 13: just was no longer sustainable for them, and she had
Speaker 13: to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was clearly about the numbers, but these people
Speaker 2: have to make everything about race. Anyway. Let's move on
Speaker 2: now to the world of newspapers. There is a war
Speaker 2: going on between Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and his own
Speaker 2: staff at the Washington Post. The Washington Post staff is
Speaker 2: outrage a Jeff bezos stunning plan for opinion pages that
Speaker 2: prompted top editor to quit. So what on earth are
Speaker 2: these people upset about. Well, as this is right, Bezos
Speaker 2: has changed up the editorial direction of the paper. He
Speaker 2: took to x earlier this week to write, we are
Speaker 2: going to be writing every day in support and defense
Speaker 2: of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. Will cover
Speaker 2: other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars
Speaker 2: will be left to be published by others kosher. This
Speaker 2: is quite common in newspapers, and there may be some
Speaker 2: people watching us who disagree that a newspaper can take
Speaker 2: a stance, but it's quite normal for various papers to
Speaker 2: take on these pillars of advocacy for their constituents and
Speaker 2: their readers. That's why you have editorials, etc. I think
Speaker 2: what's happened is the Washington Post has right now been
Speaker 2: run by the loonies, so to speak, and this is
Speaker 2: the first time that he's really putting his thumb down
Speaker 2: and saying no, I've got a different vision for this
Speaker 2: paper and we're going to play it my way. It's
Speaker 2: extraordinary that it's led to resignations.
Speaker 13: Indeed, I think they're just not used to leadership from
Speaker 13: management and yes, including management taking a look at the
Speaker 13: editorial side and the product. So you know, of course,
Speaker 13: journalism is a different type of product than say a
Speaker 13: widget that you would sell on a shelf, and there
Speaker 13: is some truth to that. So they believe that they're
Speaker 13: sacred and management shouldn't step over that line too much.
Speaker 13: But at the end of the day, it is a product.
Speaker 13: It is a business. Jeff Bezos paid two hundred and
Speaker 13: fifty million dollars to acquire The Washington Post. It's losing
Speaker 13: one hundred million dollars a year, and that's trending only
Speaker 13: worse and worse so now in this era and just
Speaker 13: all the structural changes that are happening in media where
Speaker 13: they have so much more competition, and newspapers in particular
Speaker 13: are structurally very very challenged in terms of eyeballs and
Speaker 13: reach relative to digital and television and everything else. He's
Speaker 13: taking a look at this, and one thing is the
Speaker 13: product strategy, good old fashioned product strategy, just as he
Speaker 13: would have done at Amazon and has done at Amazon
Speaker 13: and other products and companies that he leads, he's doing
Speaker 13: the same over here. He's identifying that those two pillars
Speaker 13: might be a gap or an opportunity in the market.
Speaker 13: And it is going to lead to a lot of churn.
Speaker 13: I think of people who are there now who do
Speaker 13: not agree with those pillars. They want the pillars to
Speaker 13: be other things, maybe anti trump Ism or something else,
Speaker 13: and you will see some churn. But it's also an
Speaker 13: opportunity for new people to come in and start lifting
Speaker 13: and pivoting the strategy of what the Washington Post stands
Speaker 13: for yeah.
Speaker 2: Well said, well, let's move on now. Because cn n's
Speaker 2: Jake Tappa. He's one of those prominent journalists who continuously
Speaker 2: lied to people about Joe Biden's health. Now, Biden was
Speaker 2: clearly deteriorating before our eyes, and in my opinion, the
Speaker 2: establishment media's attempts to ignore this fact made a lot
Speaker 2: of moderates really lose faith in it. Now he's a
Speaker 2: reminder of the spin that Tapa would use to protect
Speaker 2: his mate Biden.
Speaker 14: I think it makes little kids with starters feel when
Speaker 14: they see you make a comment like that. First and foremost,
Speaker 14: I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from
Speaker 14: a stutter. I think what we see on stage with
Speaker 14: Joe Biden, Jake is very clearly a cognitive decline, and
Speaker 14: that's what I'm referring to. It makes me comfortable you are.
Speaker 1: That's so amazing.
Speaker 10: It's so amazing to me that in try and figure
Speaker 10: out an answer.
Speaker 1: Cognitive decline, trying to tell.
Speaker 14: Me that what I was suggesting was marking his stutter.
Speaker 2: CNN finally started telling the truth on this after the
Speaker 2: disastrous debate which ended Biden's political career, but they ignored
Speaker 2: the reality of his cognitive issues for years.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 2: We all know this, but Tappa thinks that we were
Speaker 2: all stupid. He's written a book and it is about
Speaker 2: Biden's self delusion in wanting to run again, and that
Speaker 2: the cover up of his health decline the goal of
Speaker 2: these people. Kosher for him, who was one of the
Speaker 2: most prominent people covering up the cognitive decline issue, to
Speaker 2: write a book about it about the cover up? Is
Speaker 2: there anything that's just crazier than that?
Speaker 13: Also very brazen. The book is going to be title
Speaker 13: The Original Sin, coming out on May twentieth, and I
Speaker 13: think he is papering over his original sin as one
Speaker 13: of the biggest cover uppers of that decline that now
Speaker 13: history is going to continue to judge very unkindly in
Speaker 13: terms of the media's role in that cover up. And
Speaker 13: I think what he's doing is playing to that still
Speaker 13: present cohort in the market of low news media consumers,
Speaker 13: low information consumers who actually don't follow this stuff day
Speaker 13: in and day out the way we do, and their
Speaker 13: first exposure to the level of cognitive decline that was
Speaker 13: taking place with Joe Biden was that infamous debate against
Speaker 13: Olive Trump and he literally had front row seats to
Speaker 13: it because he was the moderator of that debate. So
Speaker 13: I'm guessing that's who he's targeting, that cohort of people
Speaker 13: who honestly didn't know about it until that point in time.
Speaker 13: We shall see what the book sales look like. That
Speaker 13: might give us a clue about that. But over the
Speaker 13: span of history, as people go into this and look
Speaker 13: into this, I don't think this is going to work
Speaker 13: well for him, and it will damage his credibility that
Speaker 13: he's pretending to be against the very thing that he's
Speaker 13: writing about in this book, and we do all see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might a good point about sales, though, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm certainly going to have to buy it now, and
Speaker 2: maybe that's all part of the strategy. But Koshergarta, thank
Speaker 2: you so much for your time and your insights. A
Speaker 2: quick break, but when we return, we speak to Jared Henderson,
Speaker 2: who has his sights set on the ABC Welcome back.
Speaker 2: Joining me now as he does each and every week,
Speaker 2: is Sky News, Australia's media watchdog columnist Jared Henderson. Now,
Speaker 2: welcome back.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: It's been a really big week in the media week,
Speaker 2: but you've been looking at some stuff of the ABC,
Speaker 2: including some of the more self promotional efforts. Tell us
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 8: Well, I noticed David Spears came on the television and said,
Speaker 8: you know that the finest reporters, the top of the brand,
Speaker 8: you get on inside as if you get up and
Speaker 8: Sunday morning you have a listen. But what I found
Speaker 8: out that it wasn't really true, because if you look
Speaker 8: at some of the finest reporters, they're often remarkably wrong.
Speaker 8: And I looked at Laura Tingle saying twenty eighteen that
Speaker 8: the Liberal Party was dead. I looked at Nicky savasaying
Speaker 8: in twenty nineteen that.
Speaker 1: The Liberal Party couldn't win that election. I looked at.
Speaker 8: David Crowe, who's also went Insiders. He was saying the
Speaker 8: same thing. Then I looked at Mark Kenny, who's one
Speaker 8: of the great geniuses that David Spears talks about, and
Speaker 8: he got the voice totally wrong. He said he realized
Speaker 8: when the voice Verte came out that he didn't understand
Speaker 8: his own country.
Speaker 1: Well, if he didn't understand his own.
Speaker 8: Country, he shouldn't beyond he shouldn't beyond Insiders telling us
Speaker 8: about his own country. But then he said, oh, perhaps
Speaker 8: he did, meaning he now understands as and.
Speaker 1: It's very very bad.
Speaker 8: So I just had to look at all that and
Speaker 8: I thought, well, if these are the top minds, perhaps
Speaker 8: you might stay in bed, or better still, watch guy news.
Speaker 2: Now, Jared, you've been looking at another issue as well.
Speaker 2: It's the protest at Grenville Boys' High School. What can
Speaker 2: you tell us about it?
Speaker 8: Well, the report in the ABC, in the print edition
Speaker 8: of the ABC online said that certain chants were made
Speaker 8: from the river to the sea and bring back the
Speaker 8: teacher who had been stood down for a while. I
Speaker 8: understand he's back at school now. The sheikh who had
Speaker 8: expressed sympathy for the words that were said at at
Speaker 8: the Bank's Town hospital about how certain nurses were prepared
Speaker 8: to kill certain Israelis, now that's going to go before
Speaker 8: the courts, or some of it's going to go before
Speaker 8: the courts. But what they didn't say was there were
Speaker 8: very very aggressive chance of allah Ubah the Muslim cry,
Speaker 8: very aggressive chance of that, and the ABC didn't cover that,
Speaker 8: and the print edition it was like it was never said.
Speaker 8: But if you watched all the other television stations or
Speaker 8: pretty well all of them, they showed the footage, a
Speaker 8: very vivid footage. It was very angry footage, but the
Speaker 8: ABC didn't cover It's like.
Speaker 1: It never happened.
Speaker 8: I mean, you talk about fake news, but there was
Speaker 8: an example of no news because it just wasn't put in.
Speaker 2: Well, it's biased by a mission, isn't it. It's a
Speaker 2: suggestion that they're very scared of trying to depict this
Speaker 2: as being a broader issue with the population. They don't
Speaker 2: want to ever have that conversation. But it's an important
Speaker 2: conversation if you have groups of people chanting a life,
Speaker 2: but it's a conversation you need to have.
Speaker 8: It's very aggressive and as the ASA chief is said now,
Speaker 8: I mean in terms of threats to life, Islamophobia is
Speaker 8: not the major issue. Anti Semitism is the major issue.
Speaker 8: And what you had an example at Banks Down Hospital,
Speaker 8: whatever else it might have been, it was certainly an
Speaker 8: anti Semitic statement because it was statement made against an
Speaker 8: Israeli because that Israeli was a Jew. So that's a
Speaker 8: very clearly anti Semitic statement. And the ABC is just
Speaker 8: covering for another word, just old fashioned censorship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said finally, we've got another ABC personality venturing
Speaker 2: a little bit away from news reporting and editorializing. Let's
Speaker 2: have listened to the grab and then we'll discuss it.
Speaker 1: Mel Clark, what.
Speaker 9: Do you make of those comments from Andrew HASTI look
Speaker 9: what we have heard from the shadow Defense Minister. There
Speaker 9: is really highlighting the concern which the coalition views these
Speaker 9: latest actions from the Chinese Navy and their belief that
Speaker 9: a more aggressive approach is warranted. What we didn't hear
Speaker 9: is an articulation of how or why a more aggressive
Speaker 9: approach might be received differently or lead to a different outcome.
Speaker 9: So he's pointing to what he sees as a weakness
Speaker 9: in the current approach being taken by Anthony Albanisi and
Speaker 9: Labour's front bench, but not yet an explanation of why
Speaker 9: a different approach would be more effective.
Speaker 2: Now, Jared, you're getting very good at pointing some of
Speaker 2: these and finding these clips. Melissa Clark is she's putting
Speaker 2: for the coalition's argument, and then she's saying, but here's
Speaker 2: why the coalition's argument isn't quite accurate.
Speaker 8: Well, it should be assumed if you're an interviewing someone
Speaker 8: seeing your like mister Hasty, you hear him out and
Speaker 8: you should assume the viewers are bright enough to work
Speaker 8: out what he's.
Speaker 1: Saying and form their own conclusion.
Speaker 8: But now the ABC is putting in these commentators who
Speaker 8: then interpret what the the interviewee said and tell us
Speaker 8: not only what he they're an idea of what he said,
Speaker 8: but more importantly what he should have said but didn't say.
Speaker 1: But he has no right of reply.
Speaker 8: So this is kind of editorial, but it also is
Speaker 8: demeaning to the viewers because it means the viewers are
Speaker 8: so stupid.
Speaker 1: You've got to have mss Clark.
Speaker 8: Telling you not only what he did say, but what
Speaker 8: he should have said if he had have said it.
Speaker 2: It's also not that it's the point, but I would
Speaker 2: also argue it's not true. I think there's a huge
Speaker 2: point of criticism with the alban Easy government of them
Speaker 2: saying that we have restored, you know, this relationship and
Speaker 2: you've got these firing drills happening off the coast. Clearly
Speaker 2: it's not restored to that level, and that's the coalition's argument.
Speaker 2: You've gone soft and you've had no benefit.
Speaker 8: What it is the argument, because this relationship is not
Speaker 8: going to be restored, not because of anything Australia does
Speaker 8: whoever's in government, but because of the current attitude of
Speaker 8: the Chinese Communist Party, which may change, but it hasn't changed.
Speaker 8: In the last ten years have been fluctuations. So what
Speaker 8: Andrew Hasty was saying was perfectly reasonable. If it wasn't reasonable,
Speaker 8: viewers should have been able to work it out for
Speaker 8: themselves without Melissa Clark coming in and telling them.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a fact check that they're trying to
Speaker 2: insert these fact checks. But the problem is the fact check,
Speaker 2: you would say, is contested evidence as well.
Speaker 8: Well, most of these are matters of opinion. I mean
Speaker 8: they're not matters of fact. They're really matters of opinion.
Speaker 8: I mean as defect you what does that really mean,
Speaker 8: because it basically means that people's got a different opinion,
Speaker 8: and we know what Melissa Clark's opinion is.
Speaker 2: They love to have their opinion.
Speaker 8: Well on this program she comments about six times throughout
Speaker 8: the whole program, so we know where she stands.
Speaker 2: And you pay for that opinion. Jared Hennes, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining me. As always. Well, that's all
Speaker 2: the time that we have for tonight, but up next
Speaker 2: is Newsnight