The ABC managing director, Michelle Guthrie, is about to announce a major change to the structure of the public broadcaster, probably as early as next month.
Guthrie’s recently promoted chief of staff, Samantha Liston, the former director of ABC People who joined the ABC in 2013. She is said to be the big winner in the new structure with many members of the existing executive demoted or made redundant. The chief operating officer, David Pendleton, was the latest executive to quit on Friday.
The biggest losers in the power stakes may be ABC content heads – radio, TV and news – who are set to have less autonomy in the new-look ABC. What that means for the public is yet to be determined.
When Mark Scott handed the reins of the ABC to Guthrie last year he was, according to sources, surprised at how little interest she had in picking his brains. Nine months on from Scott’s departure it is becoming clearer that may have been because the former Google and Murdoch executive wanted to transform the way the ABC is run – from the top down.
Unlike her predecessor, Guthrie did not fully engage with her heads of department early on, cancelling one-on-one meetings with directors and deciding not to chair her own executive meetings. Instead she sought outside help in the form of consultants to reshape the organisation and took advice from Liston, shunning almost everyone else. Guthrie, sources say, is not impressed with the ABC’s “mad bureaucracy”, saying it is too big and unwieldy. Views like this may win her some fans, particularly in the government and among ABC critics at News Corp.
Pendleton did not have Guthrie’s ear and nor does news director Gaven Morris or radio director Michael Mason. The people she is listening to include trusty lieutenant Liston, consultants Jim Rudder and Deb Frances and a handful of other suits from Price Waterhouse Coopers.
A very Australian Australian of the year
As we all celebrate the 2017 Australian of the year’s Alan Mackay-Sim’s achievements in biomolecular science, it is worth reminding ourselves who the Australian newspaper chose last weekend as its own Australian of the year. Queenslander Calum Thwaites and his barrister, Tony Morris, were singled out by the Murdoch broadsheet’s editors for Australian of the year for “standing up for their rights after the Australian Human Rights Commission, which administers the RDA [Racial Discrimination Act], failed them”.
“A clear injustice was perpetrated against these students who merely expressed a view against what they saw as racial segregation at [Queensland University of Technology],” editor-in-chief Paul Whittaker said. “They took a stand in the best Australian tradition. They fought back to protect their own reputations, their freedom and the liberty we should all enjoy.”
The competition for this exclusive gong was fierce, and included the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, who “resonated with an electorate tired of political double speak” and Australia’s richest woman. “Gina Rinehart is best known for her corporate success in two of Australia’s top exports, iron ore and beef, but swim stars, breast cancer patients, youth at risk and young girls in Cambodia know her for her generosity,” the paper said.
The Australian’s associate editor, Chris Kenny, also thinks the Australian of the Year has become too politically correct, tweeting “In the future someone will win Australian of the Year for excelling at something”, hours before the announcement of Mackay-Sim.
For those of you disappointed that Kenny lost his Sky show, Viewpoint, came news this week that he will be back from 30 January with a new program called Heads Up – at 11pm Monday to Thursday. This graveyard shift is designed to give viewers “the inside scoop on the stories making tomorrow’s headlines”. Kenny gives us a taste of what it will be like: “I’m thrilled some of my great mates and favourite contributors will join me regularly with Rita Panahi, Miranda Devine, Tim Blair, Bill Leak and Jane Marwick, just some of the sharp minds helping me keep viewers informed. You won’t want to miss it – inside running, strong views and a few laughs along the way.”
Melbourne’s homeless and heartless
The Herald Sun has declared war on the homeless with a series of brutal stories over the last few months, culminating in a picture essay of the rough sleepers this week which chronicled their day with dozens of photographs. “Two men stand at a telephone booth,” the copy read. “One grips a crutch in one hand and a bottle in the other.
“He drinks from the brown paper bag before walking along the path to sit with a man and woman. 9.15am. The same man with the bottle in the brown paper bag sits beside two others as they sleep on the footpath. He lights up a bong and smokes.” It’s the sort of coverage that could encourage readers to demonise the homeless.
One reader took the bait. “Maybe they’re lucky the Bourke St accused didn’t decide to drive down to the Flinders St footpath and mow them all down,” one Herald Sun reader wrote to the paper in a letter published on Thursday. “They would’ve been too drugged up, drunk or lazy to get out of the way.”
Ad banned for vilification
The Advertising Standards Board has the job of reviewing ads if the public complains about them, but it is fairly uncommon for ads to be banned as a result.
In 2016 three of the 10 most complained about advertisements had to be removed or modified. This week the board decided that an ad starring an Asian man saying “Mama has bog in driveway” has been taken off air on the grounds of discrimination and racial vilification. The offending ad was a commercial for TP Concreting in Kingaroy which ran on Kingaroy Hot FM in Queensland in November. The advertiser denied the ad was racist or sexist but the board disagreed.
“The advertisement presents Asian people in a manner which incites ridicule and that by mocking their command of English grammar and using a fake name, which is considered racist, rather than a real name, the advertisement is making fun of a difference between western and Asian cultures which is humiliating for people of Asian descent.”
Some of the most complained-about ads of all time included one about cheating on your partner from Ashley Madison and one in which a man’s nipples get longer as he walks around eating Mentos.
Exodus from Crikey
Crikey, published by Private Media, has lost a lot of good people in the past few months. Sydney correspondent Margot Saville, publisher Jason Whittaker, engagement editor Sophie Benjamin and media writer Myriam Robin have all upped sticks for other adventures. Whittaker has got a job at ABC TV’s Media Watch as story editor after seven years at Private Media including as editor of Crikey, Robin is now working for Fairfax Media as a reporter, Benjamin is media officer for Breast Cancer Network and Saville is freelancing and studying. Crikey has advertised for another media writer.
Wintour is coming
Having conquered Australia with her Mamamia Media empire, former magazine editor Mia Freedman is launching her particular style of women’s publishing on the US. Next week she is in New York to promote Spring.St, a website for “authentic, organic and positive content” for the 30+ American woman. But how to pitch yourself to the saturated New York media market, which has no idea who Mia Freedman is? Her PR team have come up with answer: “Meet Mia Freedman, the Anna Wintour of Australia Launching Media Empire in US.”
Wintour, with her trademark immaculate bob, is the editor of Vogue and an icon of the fashion world. Accompanying the pitch is a video in which Freedman – dressed in a distinctive layered harlequin print dress – talks up her connection with other famous editors, including Helen Gurley Brown while editor of Cosmopolitan.
