By james art TThe Australian’s Washington correspondent Adam Creighton was at least candid about his publication’s situation when he filed his report for the paper on Monday from Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden
By 10:30am local time, at least 3,000 supporters, including The Australian, had lined up to enter what will be remembered as the Trump rally, which included a MAGA celebrity name-check, including for the first time in his wife Melania’s campaign, the world’s richest man Elon Musk, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former Democratic scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It might be an unfortunate phrase to include among Trump’s 3,000 supporters, but if it was a fluke, the paper’s editors made no attempt to correct it until Friday.
Unlike much of the press, which described comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico as racist, Creighton simply said it was “off-color.”
“Democrats seized on an indecent joke by the program’s first speaker, Tony Hinchcliffe, an up-and-coming Republican comedian who joked about Hispanics’ alleged penchant for having children and described Puerto Rico as a ‘floating island of garbage,'” he wrote.
By comparison, the New York Times report was titled: “Trump in the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Complaints, Misogyny and Racism”
NBC News: “Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally overshadowed by crude, racist remarks from his allies.”
Huge mistake?
Murdoch’s Courier-Mail is thrilled David Crisafulli has taken over in Queensland. Before the election, the Courier called for a vote for Crisafulli in its editorial, saying Labour’s “heartless attitude to the way the justice system should treat young offenders” was fueling a crime crisis. The leader of the Liberal National Party, on the other hand, was a “career politician of the central cast. His work ethic? Outstanding.”
Just days after the start of the new mandate, a documentary about the leader is to be released. “The Courier-Mail tracked David Crisafulli’s rise to power and spoke to those closest to him for an in-depth documentary that goes beneath the surface of Queensland’s most powerful man,” the teaser reads.
The doco is called Goliath: The David Crisafulli Story, in an obvious reference to the story of David and Goliath in the Bible.
Goliath was, of course, beaten by David, so we asked the Courier’s editor, Chris Jones, if he had picked the right headline – but we didn’t hear back.
Former Crikey columnist Guy Rundle may have apologized in a statement to Arena this week for saying “any groping is now sexual assault”, but other commentary on the matter has appeared elsewhere.
Rundle told editors at Arena that his piece to Radio National Breakfast had been taken as expressing the idea that “unwanted sexual touch” was not sexual assault and was “falsely inflating” the statistics. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “Any unwanted sexual touching is sexual abuse.”
In October, Rundle posted a comment on the subject of the “new legal definition of assault” on an article by another Crikey writer.
He said that “intimate relationship violence is defined as physical and non-physical, which then add up to huge numbers.
“This probably involves yelling, throwing things at the wall, etc. The “every two minute” police call statistics are useless; the police are now called to loud arguments and attend.
The two-minute comment was in response to the article’s estimate that, on average, “police respond to a domestic and family violence incident every two minutes.”
Rundle did not respond to a request for comment.
A victim of isolation
It’s a brave journalist to reveal that his book hasn’t sold, but that’s exactly what the Age’s chief reporter, Chip Le Grand, said in an opinion piece on the Covid-19 response inquiry.
“Two years ago I wrote a book about the pandemic experience in Melbourne,” Le Grand wrote. “Few people bought it and fewer still read it.
“I suspect that among the copies that were sold, many are sitting on bookshelves, purely unopened, consigned to a history that no one has much desire to revisit.”
Le Grand appears to have put his pride aside because it mattered even more: Australia has not learned from the pandemic and is “still experiencing an acute case of COVID brain fog”.
A critic of Victoria’s pandemic response, Le Grand believes the social damage caused by Covid and our public health response is “real, serious and ongoing”.
Farewell to an ABC legend
Matt Peacock, the former ABC journalist known for exposing the dangers of asbestos for four decades, has died after a short battle with pancreatic cancer aged 72.
after the promotion of the newsletter
His role in exposing the asbestos scandal was made into an ABC telefilm in 2012, Devil’s Dust, starring Ewan Leslie. Peacock’s dogged pursuit of asbestos manufacturer James Hardy culminated in a lawsuit brought by asbestos disease victim Bernie Banton.
During his 40-year broadcasting career, Peacock was familiar to ABC audiences for his work as a foreign correspondent in London, Washington and New York and as chief political correspondent for current affairs radio in Canberra, among other roles.
In 2017, he was one of many employees who took voluntary redundancy due to ABC budget cuts. By then he was a senior reporter at 7.30, as well as a staff-elected director on the ABC board during the turbulent time when Michelle Guthrie was managing director.
This was not his first encounter with excess. Despite his storied career and status as a board member, Peacock was placed in a redundancy ‘pool’ alongside his 7.30 colleagues to be assessed by management against a ‘skills matrix’ in a process dubbed The Hunger Games.
As the author of Killer Company: James Hardie Exposed, which details his role in exposing the corruption and spin of the asbestos industry over three decades, Peacock has been in worse trouble before and survived.
In 2015, he stood up for his colleagues when the ABC was attacked by News Corp after Zaky Malah asked a question in a Q&A.
Peacock said it was “a campaign of incitement against national public television, led by people who have a duty to show better leadership”.
“I urge staff to be strong in the face of such intimidation and uphold their statutory commitment to fearless, impartial and independent coverage.”
Video confusion
On Saturday, as Israel launched its attacks on Iran, The Australian had a dramatic video of explosions playing automatically at the top of its website all day. It was still on the front page on Sunday morning.
But the video was of the strikes in Lebanon earlier in the month, not the strikes in Iran.
A screenshot of the Lebanon video also appeared in another article on Israel’s Revenge Against Iran. And a video for a third article had the same shot.
After contacting the editor-in-chief, Michelle Gunn, the video has been removed and two-part corrections have been made: “An earlier version of this story included an image of an explosion incorrectly labeled as believed to be from Iran, when it was actually a file image from Lebanon.”
Changing places
There are so many roles at Aunty that are changing over the next year, you can expect tons of announcements in the coming weeks.
On Friday morning, Patricia Karvelas announced that former foreign correspondent Sally Sara will replace her as host of National Breakfast Radio in 2025 and the program will have an earlier start time of 5:30am.
Karvelas will assume the role of anchor of the afternoon briefing every weekday on ABC iview and the ABC News channel.
No-one has confirmed the next appointment, but we’re tipping that ACT newsreader James Glenday will replace ABC News Breakfast presenter Michael Rowland, who we understand is likely to step down from his early morning gig in the coming months.
Last month, Rowland revealed she was looking for a “less intense” role.
“I’m getting old – the ripe old age of 55 this year,” he said. “The grief it takes becomes more pronounced every year – the hours, the terrible stories we have to cover as journalists presenting a news program.”
After two years on the news, Glenday, who filled in for Rowland while he was in the US covering the election, will move into a more permanent role.
He will be replaced by Greg Gennett, who is stepping down as chairman of the afternoon briefing.