Fairfax’s new deal with the Chinese government has already attracted controversy, but the events of the last few days have added further bite. Published monthly in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and Australian Financial Review, the mini-newspaper, China Watch, is described by Fairfax as a “commercial printing agreement” that is no different to other advertising content. “Fairfax has a clear demarcation between paid content and content created by our journalists.”
Last week a two-page China Watch spread, sandwiched in between the world news and comment pages of the SMH, featured stories about how the islands in the South China sea were “illegally occupied by other countries” and China had “exercised enormous restraint”. A “softly spoken” former diplomat had warned “anyone intent on fuelling the flames and unleashing disastrous outcomes will be held accountable by history”.
Within an exquisitely one-sided news spread – well, advertorial, although the difference may well have felt unclear to casual readers – the story thundered: “The Philippines ‘must be dissuaded from making any further provocation in the South China Sea, or otherwise China will not sit by idly’, a former senior Chinese leader warned,” the story began. “The urgent priority is to stop the arbitration case initiated by the Philippines,” he was quoted as saying.
Days later The Hague sided with the Philippines and ruled that China had no historic title over those waters. That made a page lead in the SMH, with a picture on page one.
Behind the Price war
Many people were surprised when shock jock Steve Price accused Q&A of ambushing him with an audience question about family violence. Isn’t the ABC panel show format designed to allow audience members to ask panellists a question? Yes, and the ABC says it does give panellists the topics that will be covered ahead of time, although not the exact questions. But not everyone was surprised by Price’s accusations. People who have worked with him on Channel Ten’s The Project for the past five years told Weekly Beast he insists on getting all his questions beforehand and won’t do anything on the fly. He has to be fully briefed and prepared with his talking points before he answers questions on The Project, where he is billed as a regular news analyst. Price appeared to back this up when he said later on 3AW that he was “set up” by the ABC because he knew he would be asked about Eddie McGuire’s joke at the charity event but not that the man asking the question had experienced horrific violence in his own family. “If I’d been told that I would have been prepared,” Price said on 3AW. Going on Q&A is like “going into a cage”, he said. His co-host, Andrew Bolt, agreed, saying the ABC also set him up when he went on as a climate sceptic by allowing a climate scientist in the audience to ask him two questions.
Humbled Pies
The question Price was asked on Q&A related to the infamous McGuire incident when he joked about drowning Caroline Wilson. Well that little joke has cost McGuire and his Collingwood football club a great deal of money. Sponsor Holden said it was disappointed by McGuire’s behaviour and reviewed its deal with Collingwood. This week it decided to halve the $3m it gave the men’s AFL club and give the other half to Collingwood’s new women’s AFL team and other diversity programs.
Paying for the ‘grub’
Seven’s commercial director, Bruce McWilliam, may be regretting the wording of an invitation he sent before the election to a fundraising dinner for his mate Malcolm Turnbull. The $10,000-a-head fundraiser was hosted by restaurateur Justin Hemmes at his Sydney pile. According the Australian Financial Review, McWilliam wrote: “That is money well-spent to return our PM. Think how much [Bill] Shorten would cost you apart from the distaste (and impact on our health and demeanour) if we see that grub representing our great nation and polluting our airwaves.” Weekly Beast can only imagine calling the opposition leader a grub will make Seven’s attempts to lobby Labor in the corridors of power just that little bit more difficult now. Mind you, a few seats either way and Shorten could have been PM.
Bridge over troubled Waters
We finally found out why the cover story in the Good Weekend magazine Waters of Doubt disappeared from the website shortly after it was published in May.
The magazine story in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age headlined as “Sue Neill-Fraser and the murder that divided Tasmania” was the story of the trial of Neill-Fraser, who was found guilty of murdering her partner, Bob Chappell, on board the couple’s yacht on Hobart’s River Derwent. When the story was taken down from the website, the GW editor, Amelia Lester, told us it was being “reviewed”.
The story is now the subject of a correction and apology to prosecutor Tim Ellis SC, the former director of public prosecutions in Tasmania. “Mr Ellis did not put to the court that a laptop in Neill-Fraser’s home was used to search when a person was legally dead and did not withhold evidence about a guest user password. Mr Ellis did not insinuate to the jury that Neill-Fraser may have been connected to the disappearance of a young man 20 years earlier. Mr Ellis did not allege in court that CCTV footage of a car like Neill-Fraser’s was evidence of her driving away from the murder scene. Good Weekend withdraws these assertions and any suggestion that, because of them, Mr Ellis was responsible for a miscarriage of justice. Good Weekend apologises to Mr Ellis for any embarrassment caused.”
Ellis was sacked as DPP last year, almost two years after causing a fatal accident on the Midland Highway.
Former 60 Minutes producer changes channels
The Nine producer responsible for starting negotiations with Sally Faulkner has been appointed executive producer of Sunday Night on Channel Seven. Sunday Night is the rival to Nine’s 60 Minutes and the two shows not only compete for ratings but often for the same big stories. Hamish Thomson, a former executive producer of 60 Minutes, was running the news program Inside Story, hosted by Leila McKinnon on Nine, when he became involved with the Faulkner story, which involved paying a third party to kidnap her children in Lebanon. But Thomson eventually dropped the idea because it was too expensive and the story was picked up by 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice.
In May Thomson was made redundant by Nine after 22 years when Inside Story was axed but this week he landed a handsomely paid job – worth about $350,000 – at Seven when EP Steve Taylor was suddenly removed after only 18 months. Taylor, the executive producer of the ABC’s acclaimed Foreign Correspondent, worked at Seven as a producer on the now-defunct Witness program and also at Nine before joining Aunty. The chief executive of Seven West Media, Tim Worner, praised Taylor. “Steve has been a driving force on Sunday Night and, under his impassioned leadership, it is the most-watched public affairs program in 2016.” Thomson was appointed by Seven’s head of news, Craig McPherson, who called him “one of the most successful public affairs producers in the country”. “He’ll provide astute leadership and relentless drive to the very talented Sunday Night team,” McPherson said.
Faulkner revealed earlier this week that she had signed an international book deal for a tell-all memoir.
- This item was amended on 15 July 2016 to correct details of Steve Taylor’s career.
