Writer Benjamin Law would like to thank what he calls the “unholy alliance of the Australian, Sky News and the Australian Spectator” for giving him a week’s worth of national publicity for his Quarterly Essay Moral Panic 101: Equality, Acceptance and the Safe Schools Scandal.
“It’s wonderful to see them so unified in action to publicise an essay that shows their own organisations in such an unflattering light,” Law told Weekly Beast on day four of the attacks on him by News Corp and conservative journal the Spectator.
“Coalition MPs have lashed the author of the latest Quarterly Essay – which calls for a national rollout of the controversial Safe Schools program – over a lewd tweet joking about ‘hate fucking’ the homophobia out of ‘anti-gay MPs in parliament’,” the Australian’s report said.
“I blocked Benjamin Law years ago, when he was a bottom-feeding blogger harassing me on Twitter,” wrote Miranda Devine in the Daily Telegraph.
Law’s sin was to take aim at News Corp’s reporting of the Safe Schools program in the 25,000 word essay. It returned fire, not by debating the substance of the essay, but by highlighting an explicit tweet he posted on 31 August about the marriage equality debate.
Sometimes find myself wondering if I'd hate-fuck all the anti-gay MPs in parliament if it meant they got the homophobia out of their system.
— Benjamin Law (@mrbenjaminlaw) August 31, 2017
“They’ve done it with Safe Schools, they’ve done it with Yassmin Abdel-Magied, they’ve done it with Gillian Triggs, so I was expecting it with the Quarterly Essay that attacks them,” Law said. “They have a lazy MO where they identify an enemy, they scan their social media and they manufacture an outrage about it. That’s what we see time and time again. That proves my thesis.
“One of the reasons I’ve gotten so many followers is my sense of humour. I am happy to keep tweeting how I always have. If you Google ‘hate fucking’ it tells you that it’s not sexual assault. The Australian Christian Lobby has called me a rape advocate now which is pretty appalling; anyone would know that rape is not something I would joke about.”
Sky’s CBS jitters
Sky News Australia has launched a publicity campaign this week with the slogan “News you can trust, opinions you can’t ignore”, featuring slick portraits of presenters David Speers, Chris Kenny and Andrew Bolt.
“To find out what is really going on you can rely on Sky News,” the full page ads in News Corp papers say. “The best award winning journalists with unique and exclusive insights. Fearless opinions from the big names who are passionate about the country we live in … That’s why Sky News is Australia’s News Channel.” Except it isn’t, as viewing numbers are very low and falling.
The PR blitz comes as the Murdoch media empire launches a last-ditch attempt to block the US network CBS from taking over the Ten network.
If Lachlan Murdoch and Bruce Gordon’s bid to buy Ten had been successful it would have been good news for Sky, giving it access to the free-to-air network and a bigger audience. Ten’s newsroom would most probably have been merged with Sky’s. There are some nervous journalists at Sky wondering what the future holds for them now that CBS is the likely winner.
Where there’s a quill there’s a way
Following the Walkley advisory board’s decision to drop the category of international reporting there are moves afoot to restore the award but under a different banner. A petition signed by almost 500 journalists including ABC foreign correspondents Philip Williams, Sally Sara and Matt Brown, ABC presenters Leigh Sales, Virginia Trioli, Michael Rowland and Chris Uhlmann, former Gold Walkley winners Adele Ferguson, Liz Jackson and photojournalist Andrew Quilty failed to move the Walkleys chair, Angelos Frangopoulos, who upheld the decision.
Weekly Beast understands the Melbourne Press Club is now discussing the merits of instituting an award for international reporting which would be open to all Australian journalists. The MPC, the home of the Victorian Quill Awards, already runs the Graham Perkin award for Australian journalist of the year which is a national award. In November the MPC is holding a gala dinner in Sydney to formally inaugurate the Australian Media Hall of Fame and induct more than 50 late and living legends of journalism in New South Wales. You can expect a lot of lobbying for a new international award at that event.
Is it really game over for Bauer’s Rebel hell?
Lawyers for Bauer Media are trawling the Rebel Wilson v Bauer Media judgment to see what avenues of appeal there are to contest the extraordinary amount of damages awarded to the Australian actor by Justice John Dixon this week.
Barrister and blogger Natalie Hickey says she is not confident that Dixon’s judgment, which awarded the Hollywood star $4,567,472 in damages for defamation, would survive an appeal. Hickey says he awarded the record sum “despite any direct evidence showing that this famous actor’s career had dried up because of the impugned articles”.
“A court of appeal of three judges might be less inclined to accept the holistic approach applied by Dixon J,” Hickey said on her Social Litigator blog.
Media law expert Mark Pearson says he won’t be surprised if other celebrities decide to take action given the success of Wilson’s claim in an Australian court.
“Just because someone enters public life does not mean you can make up damaging allegations against them and get away with it,” Pearson said. “It can only be a good thing if magazine editors work within basic journalism principles and then we might start to use the term journalism to describe them. At the moment I just describe them as infotainment.”
Overington singled out
Dixon reserved his harshest criticism for the Australian’s associate editor Caroline Overington, a reporter for the Australian Women’s Weekly at the time, saying her article was malicious.
Overington wrote one of the three articles he deemed “most serious”. The other two were written by Shari Nementzik. “The third article, written by journalist Caroline Overington … merits special mention,” Dixon said.
“Ms Overington is herself a well-known and respected Australian journalist who holds herself out as specialising in investigative journalism. The jury found that it conveyed that Ms Wilson is so untrustworthy that nothing she says about herself can be taken to be true unless it has been independently corroborated. Such a meaning is, self-evidently, very serious.
“Publicly branding a person who has, over the course of their life, enjoyed a reputation for honesty and authenticity, as a serial liar and so untrustworthy that nothing she says about herself can be taken to be true unless it has been independently corroborated, was an extremely serious thing to put against the plaintiff not just without a legitimate basis, as the jury verdict made clear, but with malice. Bauer Media published material by an award-winning investigative journalist as part of its campaign against the plaintiff. Ms Nementzik explained that Ms Overington’s standing was very significant for her when material Ms Overington had written was used in her research.”
Contacted by Weekly Beast, Overington asked that questions be referred to Bauer. Bauer has been asked for comment.
‘I’ve cried myself to sleep’
For RUOK Day Triple J Breakfast duo Liam Stapleton and Ben Harvey spoke openly about mental health awareness and dealing with online trolls and harassment. Stapleton’s heartfelt words have resonated with the ABC’s young audience – some of the trolls even apologised for the impact their negativity had had.
“When people send things in, when people put things online, there’s no repercussions of people’s words – or at least they feel that way,” Stapleton said. “I think there’s almost like a magic filter, but you know, we see it. We see when people text into our workplace, we see all the posts, we see all the comments. I can honestly say I’ve had nights where I’ve cried myself to sleep because of stuff like that.
“I’ve had times throughout the last eight months where I’ve opened messages to my personal account, and people are quite explicitly telling me to take my own life. And it knocks you around, especially as a young bloke. I’ve felt things in the last eight months that I’ve never felt before. I’ve felt properly worthless, honestly, for mornings, for days, for weeks sometimes. It’s not just online, it’s happened in person before, we do have to wear this sort of stuff.”
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
