Speaker 1: This is the Media Show with Jack outing Hello and
Speaker 1: welcome to the Media Show. Tonight we discussed why the
Speaker 1: ABC didn't send a single reporter to the Outswitch commemoration event,
Speaker 1: will take a look at chaos in the US media,
Speaker 1: and as always, we sit down with The Australian's media
Speaker 1: watchdog columnist Jared Henderson, who reveals a questionable choice of
Speaker 1: guests at the ABC. But first to a war between
Speaker 1: police who failed to tell you about a mass casualty
Speaker 1: terrorist plot and the journalists who broke the news.
Speaker 2: The Daily Telegraph is reporting a caravan laden with explosives
Speaker 2: and a note with addresses of Jewish targets, including a synagogue,
Speaker 2: was found on a property north of Sydney on January
Speaker 2: the nineteenth. SoC sources have told the paper a note
Speaker 2: reading f the Jews was also found inside New South Wales.
Speaker 2: Police are treating it as a credible terror threat.
Speaker 1: The Daily Telegraph splashed the story with the headline primed
Speaker 1: for Massacre, alongside exclusive and chilling details about how police
Speaker 1: had been quietly investigating an alleged plot to blow up
Speaker 1: Jewish targets for several days, but then came the fallout.
Speaker 1: Jewish groups were so furious that their places of worship
Speaker 1: were on terror hit lists, but no one from New
Speaker 1: South Wales Police had given them a heads up. Now
Speaker 1: in response to that, the anger is where the story
Speaker 1: really begins. From a media perspective.
Speaker 3: The fact that this information is now in the public
Speaker 3: domain has compromised our investigation and it's been detrimental to
Speaker 3: some of the strategies we may have used.
Speaker 1: Well, that was controversial Police Commissioner Karen Webb, who has
Speaker 1: presided over a litany of failures in her short time
Speaker 1: at the helm of the police force. Now you have
Speaker 1: a right to know if there is a terror plot
Speaker 1: and only the most bumbling of incompetent leaders would attack
Speaker 1: the journalists for informing the public. Her comments also turned
Speaker 1: out to be false. The investigation was never going to
Speaker 1: be compromised by media reports. After The Daily Telegraph was
Speaker 1: criticized publicly for its scoop, the journalists took the unconventional
Speaker 1: step of explaining the behind the scenes steps they took.
Speaker 4: Can I just get your thoughts?
Speaker 5: Firstly?
Speaker 4: Was on what Karen Webb, the Police Commissioner, had to
Speaker 4: say today. The fact that this information is now in
Speaker 4: the public domain has compromised our investigation and it's been
Speaker 4: detrimental to some of the strategies we may have used. Now,
Speaker 4: you guys broke this story last night. What did you
Speaker 4: make of that comment from the police commissioner that.
Speaker 6: Got us a little bit angry. I'll be really honest,
Speaker 6: because the steps that were taken by this paper Masthead.
Speaker 6: Yesterday the editor contacted seen in New South Wales police
Speaker 6: said that he had some information that the Telegraph was
Speaker 6: looking to publish but didn't want to compromise it. Literally said,
Speaker 6: did not want to compromise any investigation. Nothing was said,
Speaker 6: and then later in the afternoon the editor was contacted
Speaker 6: and said, look what you have can be released. So
Speaker 6: I mean and if at any time Karen Webb thought
Speaker 6: this was being a compromise, she could have picked up
Speaker 6: the phone and asked the editor Benny English, saying can
Speaker 6: I ask you not to publish because there is a
Speaker 6: danger or there's an ongoing threat? And I'm telling you
Speaker 6: that I don't know how many times we have not
Speaker 6: published when asked by the police, and this would be
Speaker 6: exactly the same case. So what she was doing yesterday
Speaker 6: when she wasn't at a press conference when all this
Speaker 6: was being announced she could have picked up the phone
Speaker 6: and stopped it at any time. We would have cooperated.
Speaker 1: Police tried to spin Web's comments, saying that they were misunderstood,
Speaker 1: but to us they were very clear. We don't know
Speaker 1: if it was in competence or malice, but Sherry Markson
Speaker 1: broke this story yesterday on skynews dot com do Au.
Speaker 1: New South Wales police failed to inform any Jewish community
Speaker 1: or security organizations of the fact that a caravan laden
Speaker 1: with explosives had been found in Sydney. Sky News can
Speaker 1: reveal the police also didn't inform the potential intended targets
Speaker 1: of the threat. So the New South Wales Police told
Speaker 1: the Daily Telegraph to run the story. Now, in my view,
Speaker 1: that indicates that it wouldn't compromise the investigation, and then
Speaker 1: they turned on the paper the moment that the Jewish
Speaker 1: community became rightfully infuriated with having to find out in
Speaker 1: the media that someone wanted to blow them up. And
Speaker 1: this mess is not an isolated example of Police Commissioner
Speaker 1: Web's history with the media. When a police officer unlawfully
Speaker 1: killed this poor grandmother, Claire Noland, by tasering her to death,
Speaker 1: Web oversaw a decision to take the word taser out
Speaker 1: of the early press release. Now she should have been
Speaker 1: sacked by the new South Wales government on the spot
Speaker 1: the moment she did that, But she's been allowed to
Speaker 1: bumble on for some time, making terrible decisions one after another,
Speaker 1: like this moment she stood up at a press conference
Speaker 1: and thanked an alleged murderous cop for telling her where
Speaker 1: he hid the bodies of his alleged victims.
Speaker 3: This information did come with the assistance of the accused,
Speaker 3: for which we're very grateful and I'm sure the families
Speaker 3: are very grateful.
Speaker 1: Well. Joining me now is this week's panel, Managing Director
Speaker 1: of pr Council Christy McSweeney and former media editor at
Speaker 1: The Australian Darren Davidson. Darren, let's bring you in. What
Speaker 1: do you make of this entire saga, this shoot the
Speaker 1: messenger approach from the police who are attacking the journalists
Speaker 1: for a story for informing the public about this very
Speaker 1: real danger.
Speaker 7: It's an absolute shocker. I mean, firstly, full credits about English,
Speaker 7: Mark Murray, the Daily Telegraph team, and also Sharry Markson
Speaker 7: for that brilliant follow up to the story disclosing that
Speaker 7: the police had not bothered to tell not only the
Speaker 7: Jewish community but the intended target. Look, it might be
Speaker 7: convenient for the police to operate in secrets, but that's
Speaker 7: really not good enough in this instance. I think that
Speaker 7: the broader point here this is another example of why
Speaker 7: much of the concern about the rise of anti Semitism
Speaker 7: around Australia at the moment, and we've seen these kind
Speaker 7: of coordinated attacks overnight in Sydney recently in recent weeks,
Speaker 7: is due to too much secrecy and a lack of
Speaker 7: demonstrated action in public by the New South Wales Police
Speaker 7: and the authorities. Yes, absolutely the public deserves for disclosure,
Speaker 7: but it deserves to see that the police and the
Speaker 7: public deserves to see evidence of the police that they
Speaker 7: are doing all they can to stop this problem, and
Speaker 7: that if they did, that would send a clear message
Speaker 7: that investigations are underway and bad actors will not only
Speaker 7: be caught and punished. But we don't have that because
Speaker 7: we're operating in this kind of atmosphere of secrecy. And
Speaker 7: I think finally as well, my last part and on
Speaker 7: this would be we need to know from the Prime
Speaker 7: Minister how much information did he have about the planning
Speaker 7: of a mass terrorist attack and what action did he
Speaker 7: actually take when he got that information. We still don't
Speaker 7: know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And Chris Sie there's lots of questions over that.
Speaker 1: There are some reports, perhaps a bit of speculation that
Speaker 1: the New South Wales Police didn't even bother to brief
Speaker 1: that National Security Cabinet and if that becomes short up,
Speaker 1: that is an absolute disgrace. But what I want to
Speaker 1: get your thoughts on as a communications expert, Webb's performance,
Speaker 1: the way that she is communicating to the public very
Speaker 1: important part of that top job there. How would you
Speaker 1: rate it and do you have any tips for her?
Speaker 8: Well, if she could go on on holiday and put
Speaker 8: someone up. Some chowd too have performed better, giving the
Speaker 8: public confidence that the New South Wales Government and the
Speaker 8: New South Wales Police a lock step together in reducing
Speaker 8: the escalation of the ongoing anti Semitic activity in Sydney,
Speaker 8: and of course we see it here in Melbourne.
Speaker 9: Two.
Speaker 8: The high levels of anxiety and stress of parents in
Speaker 8: the Jewish community whose children are now this week back
Speaker 8: to school, traveling in their school uniforms, taking public transport.
Speaker 8: That anxiety and that fear and that lack of confidence
Speaker 8: in the police after we've seen these issues come to
Speaker 8: light this week is very very real. Chris Mins, of course,
Speaker 8: has been a significant leader in making strong decisions and
Speaker 8: using strong language that Australians have been desperate to hear
Speaker 8: and that have been missing at a federal level. The
Speaker 8: other point I'd like to make here too is that
Speaker 8: this is a joint state federal counter terrorism operation. When
Speaker 8: issues of this significant nature are undertaking by state and
Speaker 8: federal police, the minister is informed generally every step of
Speaker 8: the way, both the federal minister and the state police
Speaker 8: minister and the Premier and highly likely the Prime Minister.
Speaker 8: There is nothing in my experience at an operation of
Speaker 8: this level inside federal and state government that tells me
Speaker 8: they would not know, and if they didn't, there are
Speaker 8: more problems going on in those governments than we know about.
Speaker 1: Well, if Albo did know, as you're saying that it's
Speaker 1: customary for these ministers be briefed, and then he should
Speaker 1: have been briefed by by the relevant minister in this situation,
Speaker 1: that is an absolute disgrace and I think to Darren's point,
Speaker 1: it is weird that he won't just say what he
Speaker 1: knew that he's been dodging it at the press conferences
Speaker 1: this week, and I think that's very problematic. He owes
Speaker 1: everybody an answer about that. But let's move on, because
Speaker 1: this week Australian media crews flew to Poland to cover
Speaker 1: an Oulswitch commemoration event.
Speaker 5: Well, it's nearly eighty years to the day camps behind
Speaker 5: me were emptied, freed by the Allies of the barely
Speaker 5: seven thousand survivors of the more than one million Jews
Speaker 5: who are murdered here at Auschwitz. World leaders gathering here
Speaker 5: for the anniversary, witnessing the evidence like shoes, luggage, prosthetics
Speaker 5: and Zyklon B canisters.
Speaker 1: Now, it was an incredibly important event considering the anti
Speaker 1: Semitic attacks that we are seeing here in Australia. Our
Speaker 1: Foreign Minister was there, and countless world leaders, including King
Speaker 1: Charles French, President Emmanuel Macron, just to name a few.
Speaker 1: But for our national broadcaster, they could not be bothered
Speaker 1: to even send one reporter. The Australian broke this story,
Speaker 1: James Madden Wrights. Neither of Australia's public broadcasters, the ABC
Speaker 1: and SBS, will be on the ground in Poland for
Speaker 1: the commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the Liberation of
Speaker 1: Our Switch on Monday. It's likely to be the last
Speaker 1: such service attended by survivors of the unspeakable events that
Speaker 1: occurred at the concentration event. Camp and journalist James Madden
Speaker 1: goes on to make this point to put the Outswitch
Speaker 1: decision in context. In twenty twenty three, the ABC sent
Speaker 1: thirty seven staff at a cost to the taxpayer of
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the four day
Speaker 1: Indigenous Garma Festival in Arnham Land. Let's bring the panel
Speaker 1: in now, Darren. That's a fantastic scoop by James Madden
Speaker 1: who got that before the event, so we knew what
Speaker 1: that plan was. And then the ABC refused to explain
Speaker 1: to him, refuse to give any comment back to the
Speaker 1: public because they're unaccountable. Of course, what do you make
Speaker 1: of that decision and particularly the contrast in the way
Speaker 1: that they cover these progressive lefty love in events for
Speaker 1: indigenous issues and rights. But we've got this very important
Speaker 1: issue with all of these world leaders. I cannot think
Speaker 1: of something more newsworthy on that day to cover no representation.
Speaker 7: Absolutely beggars believe particularly you know, as we've just discussed,
Speaker 7: I mean, the rise of this grotesque wave of anti
Speaker 7: Semitism in Australia at the moment, it just you know,
Speaker 7: the underscores why it's never been more important than ever
Speaker 7: before to remember in this post war world and what
Speaker 7: happened eighty years ago, and you know, what happened on
Speaker 7: October the seventh was reflected in those events eighty years ago,
Speaker 7: and people need to know about what happened, what the
Speaker 7: Nazis did to the Jews. It's really really important. It's
Speaker 7: an absurd misjudgment by the ABC and their news director.
Speaker 7: They should be there, and Channel seven, Channel nine and
Speaker 7: the other three to air broadcasters were there. They have
Speaker 7: a very well resourced, as James Madam reported in his piece,
Speaker 7: European Bureau, which is funded by as we all know,
Speaker 7: the Australian taxpayer. They've got the handout at the moment
Speaker 7: asking for more money to top up the billion dollar
Speaker 7: plus check that they get every single year from the
Speaker 7: Australian taxpayer. So there really is no excuse for this
Speaker 7: on a number of levels, whether it's resourcing or the
Speaker 7: news value of the event. I think the other point
Speaker 7: to make is there were many survivors from that concentration
Speaker 7: camp who came to Australia, and Australia, to its absolute credit,
Speaker 7: opened its arms to those survivors. So, you know, I
Speaker 7: do not understand why the ABAC would not cover the
Speaker 7: event for both those members of the Jewish community here
Speaker 7: in Australia that have been making lives for themselves in
Speaker 7: many decades and the younger generations in Australia that are
Speaker 7: growing up now that need to know about what happened.
Speaker 7: We saw the misinformation and the lack of historical knowledge
Speaker 7: and context around what happened in World War Two around
Speaker 7: the time of October the seventh. You know, a lot
Speaker 7: of people don't understand what happened, and that's why it's
Speaker 7: really important to cover the anniversary from eighty years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Christy, it seems like one of these one of
Speaker 1: these things that everyone should just agree that this is
Speaker 1: something that's newsworthy. And Darren makes a grow point. They
Speaker 1: get a billion dollars every year to cover the news.
Speaker 1: They're constantly crying about not having enough. They want in
Speaker 1: date inflation indexed payments from the government. But if they
Speaker 1: are not capable of balancing their books and managing this
Speaker 1: enormous budget in the way that these quintessential events are covered.
Speaker 1: I mean, how can the Australian taxpay have confidence that
Speaker 1: it's been run properly.
Speaker 8: It's really interesting that the ABC senior management at a
Speaker 8: board and chair level have been on a pr offensive
Speaker 8: almost for the last six months, trying to overcome this
Speaker 8: very real issue of city newsrooms in the ABC only
Speaker 8: choosing to cover certain stories and perhaps to cover those
Speaker 8: stories not objectively. They have made a lot of noise
Speaker 8: about improving that, but this here just demonstrates that even
Speaker 8: if that is being said with the true intention of
Speaker 8: doing so, it's not filtering down to people who make
Speaker 8: those editorial decisions. This is a country that should recognize
Speaker 8: that as a significant international event for the Australian national
Speaker 8: broadcaster to have a presence at if the commercial networks,
Speaker 8: who are struggling against the current media revenue environment can
Speaker 8: outline that as a significant expense to undertake in order
Speaker 8: to demonstrate to Australians that we as a nation view
Speaker 8: this history as important, as relevant, and perhaps never more
Speaker 8: relevant than it is now, particularly as Darren mentioned, to
Speaker 8: educate young people who are not getting any information whatsoever
Speaker 8: that has legitimate opinion and history contained in it. All
Speaker 8: media organizations in this country should take a decision to
Speaker 8: educate younger people to show as much accurate content as
Speaker 8: they can about these major events. And Australia has significant
Speaker 8: minister or representation at these events too, that alone should
Speaker 8: be recognized in this event being covered definitely.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately there instead just making dumb tiktoks with all that
Speaker 1: count Christy McSweeney, Darren Davidson, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us. We're going to take a quick break. But
Speaker 1: when we return, what is the fuss about Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: new press secretary? Welcome back to Stars and Gripes, where
Speaker 1: we tear apart the actions of the bidder activists masquerading
Speaker 1: as journalists in the United States. First up is the
Speaker 1: media's reaction to Donald Trump's new Press secretary, Caroline Levett.
Speaker 1: The left pretends to be a champion of women until
Speaker 1: they find one who is a conservative. Once that happens,
Speaker 1: they love nothing more than tearing down women with the
Speaker 1: most petty and vacuous of insults. Levit appears to be
Speaker 1: a fierce operator, but she is also twenty seven and
Speaker 1: arguably quite glamorous. So of course the kind and progressive
Speaker 1: voices at the View reacted to her appointment like this.
Speaker 10: I think, Sam, she's probably been put in there because according.
Speaker 1: To Trump, she's at ten.
Speaker 11: You know, that's what it is.
Speaker 9: I want to be clear though it's not her first job.
Speaker 10: It was her first press briefing.
Speaker 12: She worked on the previous.
Speaker 13: This is the first time I think it has been
Speaker 13: the She may be, but my point is that job
Speaker 13: would not maybe have been open to her.
Speaker 14: I want to clarify that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and the abuse continued.
Speaker 13: I would like this young lady who's this is her
Speaker 13: first job, I would like her to do a little
Speaker 13: homework because she said something yesterday that really pissed me off.
Speaker 13: And that was she said, there will be no wokeness here.
Speaker 13: Let me explain something to you, because without that wokeness,
Speaker 13: you might not have that job. Because because women were
Speaker 13: not invited to that table, women were not invited to
Speaker 13: many tables.
Speaker 9: In this nation.
Speaker 1: The reason we fought.
Speaker 13: And busted all behind to make sure that you didn't
Speaker 13: have to worry about this. And now to hear you
Speaker 13: talk about it, and to hear anybody talk about the wolkness,
Speaker 13: the wolkness was put in place for a reason.
Speaker 1: Attacking a woman for her looks or age isn't very progressive.
Speaker 1: Let's bring in sky New's contributor, Kosher Gata Kosher. Particularly
Speaker 1: that last clip that we played. It was so condescending
Speaker 1: the way that she was scolding her as if she
Speaker 1: was a schoolgirl, suggesting she needed to do her homework.
Speaker 1: I just I find it so hypocritical when the so called,
Speaker 1: you know, caring progressive voices just turned so nasty like that.
Speaker 9: Yes, and as you mentioned, with conservative women, there's a
Speaker 9: long list of that booth of Trump's previous press secretaries, females,
Speaker 9: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Keeley Mcaneni, other figures like her. His
Speaker 9: campaign manager the first time, Kelly M. Conway. Sarah Palin
Speaker 9: very famously had to bear the brunt of a lot
Speaker 9: of this. So people are used to that, I think
Speaker 9: in their bubble of the audience that the view speaks to,
Speaker 9: that's probably kind of what the group think is. So
Speaker 9: she won defense, I guess is that she was speaking
Speaker 9: to her audience. When you take it outside of that
Speaker 9: bubble the way you are right now and we all
Speaker 9: can see what it is. It was also interesting too,
Speaker 9: because she was conflating two ideas. This word wokeness. Didn't
Speaker 9: look like she really understood what it meant, or certainly
Speaker 9: the way Caroline Levitt meant it when she made that statement,
Speaker 9: and she was conflating it with civil rights and how
Speaker 9: women didn't have the right to vote or own property
Speaker 9: and all of that. That has nothing to do with wokeners,
Speaker 9: which is of course about putting people in there because
Speaker 9: of their immutable characteristics rather than the merit that they
Speaker 9: bring to the table.
Speaker 1: It's such a good point. I don't think anyone's suggesting
Speaker 1: it's woke to give a woman a job. Very very
Speaker 1: duplicitous the way that she tried to word that and
Speaker 1: spin that. But let's move on. Because Vice President JD.
Speaker 1: Vance sat down for an extended interview with Face the
Speaker 1: Nation's Margaret Brennan, and the journalist got increasingly more agitated,
Speaker 1: and she failed to pen down on a bunch of
Speaker 1: gotcha questions, and it all started getting really tense when
Speaker 1: the topic of immigration came up.
Speaker 14: If you had a violent murderer in a school, of course,
Speaker 14: I want law enforcement to go and get that person
Speaker 14: out of.
Speaker 10: The point of the question, you change the regulation this week.
Speaker 10: That's the point of the question exactly. Giving the authority
Speaker 10: to go into church and go into school, the empowered
Speaker 10: law enforcement to enforce the law everywhere to protect Americans,
Speaker 10: in fact, a chilling effect arguably to people to not
Speaker 10: send their bids to school.
Speaker 14: I desperately hope it has a chilling effect on legal.
Speaker 10: The US Conference of Catholics Bishops are actively hiding criminals.
Speaker 14: I think the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has frankly
Speaker 14: not been a good partner in common sense immigration enforcement
Speaker 14: that the American people voted for, and I hope, again
Speaker 14: as a devout Catholic, that they'll do better.
Speaker 1: The reporter kept editor or editorializing, now it wasn't an
Speaker 1: interview at this stage, but a debate, and JD. Vance
Speaker 1: didn't seem to care.
Speaker 14: We absolutely cannot unleash thousands of unvetted people into our countries.
Speaker 10: People are good, These people are vetted.
Speaker 14: Just like the guy who planned a terrorist attack in
Speaker 14: Oklahoma a few months ago. He was allegedly properly vetted,
Speaker 14: and many people in the media and the Democratic Party
Speaker 14: said that he was properly vetted. Clearly he wasn't. I
Speaker 14: don't want my children to share a neighborhood with people
Speaker 14: who are not properly vetted. And because I don't want
Speaker 14: it for my kids, I'm not going to force any
Speaker 14: other American citizens' kids to do that either.
Speaker 10: No, and that was a very particular case. It wasn't
Speaker 10: clear if he was radicalized when he got here or
Speaker 10: while he was living.
Speaker 14: I don't really care, Margaret. I don't want that person
Speaker 14: in my country, and I think most Americans agree with me.
Speaker 1: Kosher, let's bring you back in. What a brilliant retort
Speaker 1: to a journalist who is honestly making the point, making
Speaker 1: the argument, well, if they were radicalized in America, then
Speaker 1: that's somehow it doesn't make a difference. That's obviously going
Speaker 1: quite viral in the way that he just punched through
Speaker 1: the question.
Speaker 9: It has. It's become an Internet genre all onto itself
Speaker 9: after that, and there's all sorts of means out there
Speaker 9: that are really funny. I don't really care. Margaret is
Speaker 9: kind of a new rallying cry to his side of
Speaker 9: the debate. But you know, what she was doing is
Speaker 9: what the left side of certainly in America and really
Speaker 9: other liberal democracies have been doing on the immigration debate,
Speaker 9: which is they purposely sort of hide in the weeds
Speaker 9: that this program is legal, that program is legal. We
Speaker 9: do have a vetting apparatus. Hence it was all done
Speaker 9: versus what the other side is trying to do is
Speaker 9: zoom out, look at the big picture, which is that
Speaker 9: mass migration is at unprecedented levels in America, illegal and yes,
Speaker 9: even legal even if it is ostensibly illegal. Program of
Speaker 9: asylum seekers and refugees. Is that helping the national interest?
Speaker 9: That is kind of what Trump advanced is their signature issue.
Speaker 9: That's what he was trying to bring it back up to,
Speaker 9: and she was trying to getmired into Well, they were vetted,
Speaker 9: and this person got radicalized later but not before he
Speaker 9: was entered, and nobody cares, and so that summed it up.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Kase, if they were vented, obviously whatever they
Speaker 1: did to vet didn't work. And that's the whole point.
Speaker 1: And I think the people are seeing through this. But look,
Speaker 1: you've seen the treatment that jd Vance gets. But how
Speaker 1: does the media interview politicians on the other side of
Speaker 1: the spectrum. Here's MSNBC at its finest. Well, actually, let
Speaker 1: me ask you about that. On this point.
Speaker 11: A lot of people have been today and the last
Speaker 11: few days crediting your campaign and crediting all the reporting
Speaker 11: during the campaign that identified Project twenty Project twenty twenty
Speaker 11: five is essentially what looked like a blueprint for the
Speaker 11: incoming Trump administration to dismantle the American government.
Speaker 1: They denied it.
Speaker 11: They said they had nothing to do with it, said
Speaker 11: they'd never heard of it. Does it seem to you
Speaker 11: like that's actually what they're doing?
Speaker 5: How it is?
Speaker 15: It doesn't seem it is.
Speaker 1: What an absurd television show just stating as a fact
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump is dismantling the American government? And what
Speaker 1: a soft hole. Leading question from Rachel Maddow. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: that was just her intro though, soften him up before
Speaker 1: getting to the really tough questions.
Speaker 11: What do you think America's listening to you right now
Speaker 11: thinking about what might have been had you been vice
Speaker 11: president instead of j Defence, What might have been had
Speaker 11: Kamala Harris been the president? Right now? Donald Trump, people
Speaker 11: hearing you talking about the pushback and the fight and
Speaker 11: that mattering, what does that mean in practical terms? The
Speaker 11: average person watching you right now who agrees that this
Speaker 11: needs a big pushback what should they do.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and you know that overused term the frog and
Speaker 14: the boiling water.
Speaker 12: We've been in the damn pot way too long.
Speaker 1: He is given literally the easiest possible questions and he
Speaker 1: still manages to say the most stupid things possible. Kosher,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to say about that. First, I
Speaker 1: mean the fact that this show just goes to air
Speaker 1: with allegations. It's actually not even an allegation. It was
Speaker 1: just a statement of truth that the American government is
Speaker 1: being dismantled, you know. Put that to one side. The
Speaker 1: second aspect of this is the questions, the raised eyebrows,
Speaker 1: the way that they're just so glad to have this
Speaker 1: bloke here. It's such a juxtaposition between the way that
Speaker 1: they interview anybody on a conservative side of.
Speaker 9: Politics indeed, and the thing that's interesting about MSN we see,
Speaker 9: similar to the view they've got their audience niche that
Speaker 9: they speak to, and they're producing a product for that audience.
Speaker 9: They are declining. They declined precipitously after the election. I
Speaker 9: think they were averaging one point three million viewers last year,
Speaker 9: and after the election that was down to eight hundred thousand.
Speaker 9: They've had a little bit of a recovery coming up
Speaker 9: after the inauguration, and Rachel Maddow is their biggest star,
Speaker 9: she's their highest rated host. She was down to one
Speaker 9: day a week and had the sweet deal actually interns
Speaker 9: of what she was getting paid to do that, which
Speaker 9: was why they reported they brought her back to five
Speaker 9: days a week to help try and resuscitate that in
Speaker 9: the era of Trump News that we live in, and
Speaker 9: in that mold, she's going to try and get some
Speaker 9: people from the other side and try to skewer them
Speaker 9: as we saw, but I don't think they'll be successful
Speaker 9: because the current people in the administration are actually very
Speaker 9: savvy with adversarial media, more so than Republicans were in
Speaker 9: the past. Then on this side, she's going to have
Speaker 9: very friendly, softball interviews with the other side of the aisle,
Speaker 9: and that seems to be their recipe. We'll see if
Speaker 9: they're able to hold on to the little bit of
Speaker 9: a rebound that they had in ratings, because if not,
Speaker 9: I don't know how long this is sustainable. Just as a
Speaker 9: business model.
Speaker 1: Well, it's really good for us. It's free content, so
Speaker 1: I hope they keep going. The world's tech giants have
Speaker 1: had a pretty major change of heart backing the Trump
Speaker 1: presidency in and it has angered a lot of journalists.
Speaker 1: But this week Meta even settled its lawsuit with Trump
Speaker 1: at a cost to them of forty million dollars, which
Speaker 1: linked the decision to ban the president from the social
Speaker 1: network kosher how far we've come. At one point you
Speaker 1: had the president banned from Facebook. Now the bloke's Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 1: He's standing up next to the president as if they're
Speaker 1: best mates. He's saying all the right things to get
Speaker 1: on on his right side. What do you make of it?
Speaker 9: It's quite funny. He was they're standing at the inauguration.
Speaker 9: He donated money to the inauguration fund, and then simultaneously
Speaker 9: at the same time this lawsuit was going on and
Speaker 9: he settled, So that kind of two sides of the
Speaker 9: coin thing is quite funny. It is a remarkable turnabout,
Speaker 9: for sure. I don't think anybody could have predicted the
Speaker 9: level with which obviously Trump's comeback, which is much widely reported,
Speaker 9: has been because not only politically, just all these offshoots
Speaker 9: and tentacles are also part of his comeback story. I
Speaker 9: suspect part of why they settled is also because if
Speaker 9: it were to go to trial, there would be a
Speaker 9: lot of discovery there and probably not the best communications
Speaker 9: internally within Facebook that led up to that decision to
Speaker 9: take to cancel the account of a sitting United States President,
Speaker 9: which is what he was at that time in the
Speaker 9: wake of January sixth, all sorts of infringements first First Amendment, discrimination, etc.
Speaker 9: And they probably it's just in their interest to not
Speaker 9: be going to trial with again who is currently the
Speaker 9: sitting president, and it's just much easier to settle.
Speaker 1: Kosha gotta thank you, sorry much a quick break, But
Speaker 1: when we return, we sit down with Media watchdog columnist
Speaker 1: Aaron Henderson. Welcome back. Now joining me as he is
Speaker 1: each and every week, is The Australian's Media watchdog columnist
Speaker 1: Jared Henderson, Now Jared. The ABC, as they tend to do,
Speaker 1: they always seem to pick the most controversial, controversial people
Speaker 1: to be in probably sometimes the most inappropriate panels. What
Speaker 1: have you got for us?
Speaker 12: But I've got Sarah Schwartz who's become sort of famous
Speaker 12: on the ABC. She represents the Jewish Council of Australia, which,
Speaker 12: as far as I can work out looking at their
Speaker 12: own website, they represent about one percent of Australian Jews.
Speaker 12: That's what they sort of claim. Academics and people like that.
Speaker 12: But of course the ABC loves them because they really
Speaker 12: like a Jew who's opposed to Israel. So a Jew
Speaker 12: who's a now designerst Jew, they love them. Like if
Speaker 12: you've got a Liberal Party guy who now criticized the
Speaker 12: Liberal Party, they always get on the ABC. And so
Speaker 12: what's happened here is that Sarah Swart's got the other day,
Speaker 12: got eight minutes very soft interview on ABC TV News
Speaker 12: Breakfast just sort of bagging, just bagging Israel and bagging
Speaker 12: other Jews in Australia for supporting Israel and essentially blaming
Speaker 12: Peter Dutton for anti Semitism. Now that's a real stretch.
Speaker 12: So you've got you've got people fire bombing places, and
Speaker 12: you've got people scrawling anti Semeri, anti Semitics messages on walls.
Speaker 12: But according to Sarah Schwartz, it's all Peter Dutton's fast.
Speaker 1: Well, let's look at this for the audience. We've got
Speaker 1: to grab and let's take a listen.
Speaker 16: I will not stop speaking about how Peter Dutton and
Speaker 16: the Coalition are misusing and exploiting the rise in anti Semitism,
Speaker 16: because I think that that is something that is fueling
Speaker 16: division and racism and anti semitism towards Jewish people. And
Speaker 16: you know, he has a very big incentive to misinterpret
Speaker 16: what I say, and the murder press does as well,
Speaker 16: because I don't think that they are actually committed to
Speaker 16: addressing racism.
Speaker 1: Now, Jared, the interesting thing about this is the ABC
Speaker 1: has a little spreadsheet where they put down the names
Speaker 1: of people from different voices, and they would say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we've had a Jewish person on tick. Now we can
Speaker 1: get somebody from the from the other side of the debate.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's right. I mean it's a sort of a
Speaker 12: disguise because Sarah Sworts is a very controversial figure in
Speaker 12: the Jewish community outside the Jewish community. I mean, if
Speaker 12: you're going around calling Peter responsible for any Semitism, you've
Speaker 12: got to be pretty controversial. But she goes down the
Speaker 12: list of Jewish speakers, you see, and nothing the other
Speaker 12: list she balanced that was someone from the Greens or
Speaker 12: a teal that balances, or someone from the left of
Speaker 12: the Labor Party that balances, which is just fake. But
Speaker 12: it comes up in their in their figures when they
Speaker 12: will calculate them all up a sort of even balance.
Speaker 12: But of course it's not.
Speaker 1: Well. Now, let's talk about ABC Radio National. What have
Speaker 1: you found well?
Speaker 12: Early on Saturday morning last I was listening to Nick
Speaker 12: Bryant X, a BBC guy, he's very clever guy, and
Speaker 12: he was talking on the new program he's running Saturday Extra,
Speaker 12: and lo behold, I heard him talking to an American commentator.
Speaker 12: It was quite reasonable, and Brian came up with the
Speaker 12: idea that Trump's losing his energy. He's sort of going
Speaker 12: to hand over the I think there's a clip of
Speaker 12: it here. He's going to hand over. He's going to
Speaker 12: hand over the presidency.
Speaker 1: Who elon Musk, he's notorious for being low energy. Let's
Speaker 1: have a listen.
Speaker 15: One of the quickest ways to get fired in the
Speaker 15: first Trump administration is to get more attention than Trump.
Speaker 15: But I'm intrigued by this caddy because it does seem
Speaker 15: like he is willing to be eclipsed occasionally by Musk,
Speaker 15: and I wonder what that tells us about his appetite
Speaker 15: for the job. He's seventy eight, He's not seventy as
Speaker 15: he was the first time round. There's a different energy level.
Speaker 15: We saw that during the campaign. I wonder if he's
Speaker 15: more willing to sort of outsource his presidency to people
Speaker 15: like a Musk because he wants to spend a bit
Speaker 15: more time on the golf course. Perhaps he hasn't got
Speaker 15: the energy levels that he had the first time round.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and charity. He's also politically inepty because everybody knows
Speaker 1: that jd Vance has been groomed for the top job,
Speaker 1: that it is a very t chick thing that's happening there,
Speaker 1: And to make it seem like Elon Musk is, I
Speaker 1: think it's a bit deceptive, to be honest.
Speaker 12: And I think there's a map of it. I mean,
Speaker 12: after this, I turned on American television, was watching it
Speaker 12: and there was Donald Trump. That very morning, he'd got
Speaker 12: up in Washington, DC. He'd flow into North Carolina to
Speaker 12: talk to people about the devastating floods that had there
Speaker 12: some time ago. Then he flew to La Airport. Then
Speaker 12: he took a flight around the areas of some of
Speaker 12: the bushfires. Then he had a lengthy meeting. I was
Speaker 12: watching it around for over an hour, but perhaps an
Speaker 12: hour and a quarter. With there are about thirty people
Speaker 12: in the room, including the mirror of Los Angeles. He
Speaker 12: went through all the detail people, asking all these technical questions.
Speaker 12: He sounded a bit like a property developer, but he
Speaker 12: certainly knew what he was talking about. And then he
Speaker 12: flew onto Los Angeles for the night to prepare for
Speaker 12: something else the next morning. So that was the Friday
Speaker 12: American time. I was watching it on Saturday. Australian time
Speaker 12: is in Eastern time, and there's Nick Bryan saying the
Speaker 12: man energy. I mean, I couldn't imagine anyone.
Speaker 1: You can make a lot of allegations against Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: him being low energy seems like the one thing you
Speaker 1: cannot accuse that man of it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, now you've.
Speaker 1: Got another issue with mcbrian's show. So let's have a
Speaker 1: listen to this grab and one of the promises that
Speaker 1: he's made.
Speaker 15: Weike committing to bringing you a diversity of voices, some
Speaker 15: of you you'll agree with, some of whom you won't,
Speaker 15: but hopefully all of them will be insightful and make
Speaker 15: more sense of our world. And we will try to
Speaker 15: abide by one of the first rules in journalism, never
Speaker 15: be boring. I hope you'll enjoy the New Saturday.
Speaker 1: Extra Jared a diversity of voices. That would be the
Speaker 1: very first time that's ever happened on the ABC.
Speaker 12: But the inter thing is that Nick Brian is saying
Speaker 12: that this is a brand new idea, and it is.
Speaker 12: I didn't know how long it's going to last for
Speaker 12: until there's opposition from management and colleagues and from the
Speaker 12: audio left wing audience.
Speaker 16: But he.
Speaker 12: Now he's taken over from Frand Kelly, who always says
Speaker 12: she was an activist and he's now come up with
Speaker 12: this brand new idea, have a diversity of viewpoints. And
Speaker 12: what I know about the notice about the new chairman,
Speaker 12: Kim Williams is that he's addressed a lot of problems
Speaker 12: at the ABC publicly, but he's never addressed the issue
Speaker 12: of the lack of viewpoint diversity because they all agree
Speaker 12: with each other. Now in comes Nick Bryant, who's on
Speaker 12: the left. XBC guys, BBC guys on the left, but
Speaker 12: he's saying, I'm going to put a bit of balance
Speaker 12: on my program. This is a brand new idea. So
Speaker 12: there were over a billion dollars a year and they
Speaker 12: get a guy x A BBC who comes on and says,
Speaker 12: brand new idea, let's keep some different views on.
Speaker 1: The point's talk to people we might disagree with who
Speaker 1: have thought that could be interesting.
Speaker 12: He very did last that, David, as as you imply it,
Speaker 12: can he continue. There'll be a lot of opposition because
Speaker 12: no one else does it, because you're in a conservative
Speaker 12: free zone where essentially everyone agrees with everyone else. So
Speaker 12: good luck to Nick.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a bit of a nasty place sometimes
Speaker 1: to be a conservative. Jared Hennison, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: as always for joining us. That's all the time that
Speaker 1: we have for tonight, But up next is Newsnight.
Speaker 16: Then then