Last year the Herald Sun in Victoria gave good editorial support to Melbourne’s Midsumma festival. “It’s a good time to be gay in Melbourne,” read one story. “Sure, we’re still behind the rest of the western world when it comes to marriage equality, but let’s be glass half full about this.” The media giant has been a gold partner sponsor of Melbourne’s Midsumma festival for the past two years, helping to print the program and lending advertising support in the Herald Sun to the LGBTI event.
But in the past few weeks activists have lobbied the festival hard to sever the relationship because of some of the coverage the company has been giving to LBGTI issues this year. The Australian cartoonist Bill Leak’s portrayal of the gay community as Nazis and Miranda Devine’s attacks on the Safe Schools Coalition were just some of the issues cited.
On Thursday the festival announced that while pulling out of the agreement “would be extremely difficult for Midsumma at this time” the festival would now “not be taking up any of the advertising benefits of the partnership offered by the Herald Sun”. “Herald Sun will not be marching at Midsumma Pride March or holding a stall at Carnival in 2017,” the statement said. “It is important to note that there is no money attached to the agreement. A full review of all partnership outcomes and value alignment is already planned and will be undertaken after the 2017 festival.”
Picnic protest
Also on Thursday, a group of women who work in film and television protested outside FremantleMedia headquarters in St Leonards, Sydney, against the production company’s decision to hire a female Canadian director for the upcoming Foxtel TV series Picnic at Hanging Rock. The importing of a Canadian director for a quintessential Australian production is a bizarre way to end a year which has seen the industry through Screen Australian champion gender diversity in significant ways for the first time.
The protest followed statements by the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) and the Australian Director’s Guild (ADG) over the hiring of Larysa Kondracki to shoot the series, alongside Australian director Michael Rymer. “Quite frankly we are astounded that, given the wealth of directorial talent in Australia, someone from overseas has been given the honour to helm the majority of this new version of Joan Lindsay’s novel,” the ACS national president, Ron Johanson, said.
The ADG and the New South Wales branch of Women in Film and Television (Wift NSW) staged the “peaceful picnic protest” and released a video spoof of the famous movie directed by Peter Weir. The president of the ADG, Samantha Lang, told Weekly Beast it was a perplexing decision on the part of Fremantle to hire a Canadian for a job that could easily have been done by an Australian woman, in particular a series that was publicly funded.
“It’s not rare for non-Australian productions to hire from overseas, but this is an Australian production, its not a co-production,” she said. “We are finding it hard to understand why there is a need for a Canadian director and perhaps Fremantle can explain that to us. Why wasn’t there an Australian director that could satisfy that remit? Lang said it would not be impossible to change directors now and has called on Foxtel and Fremantle to explain their decisions. Weekly Beast understands Fremantle will be making a public statement on Friday after meeting with members of the guild.
News gets pants back to front
The backlash to the Daily Mail Australia’s giant granny pants story on Samantha Armytage was brutal and swift. Posted on a quiet Sunday night, the story focused on the Seven personality’s underwear and “set out to demean and humiliate Armytage”, according to Guardian Australia’s Brigid Delaney. The Daily Mail added an apology, changed the the headline and removed references to Armytage’s underwear in the story. “An earlier version of this story contained critical statements regarding Samantha Armytage’s appearance,” the apology at the end of the article said.
“While the story has since been amended, we apologise for any distress caused to Ms Armytage or readers more generally.”
But the widespread condemnation from media outlets came with lashings of hypocrisy. News Corp’s popular website news.com.au followed the saga closely and had an exclusive story on Wednesday revealing Armytage had engaged the legal forces at Seven to threaten the Daily Mail Australia with a “costly defamation action if it does not offer an immediate retraction and public apology of its shaming of her underwear and dating history”.
“In a three-page smackdown by Channel 7’s legal counsel at Addisons law firm, the gossip site has been accused of using paparazzi photos, sold by Diimex, to ridicule and humiliate the TV presenter in an article published on Sunday.” Yep that’s right, but guess who also bought the set of paparazzi photos from Diimex for a considerable sum and published them? Yep news.com.au, which still has the pictures online.
Guthrie’s Sydney slapdown
You know we’ve entered the twilight zone when the ABC managing director turns up in the Murdoch press declaring she is not “Murdochising” the public broadcaster. But on Monday, after a week of controversial decisions, it was leaked to the Australian that Guthrie had assured her team everything was on track.
“Speaking for the first time since some staff were spooked by a review being carried out in part by a former News Corp executive, Ms Guthrie launched an impassioned defence of her plans, openly addressed a wild conspiracy theory being spread by insiders, and slapped down public outbursts by ABC personalities.”
The Oz went on to quote Guthrie telling “a closed-door briefing” of senior management in Sydney that there was “no hidden agenda or ‘Murdochisation’ of the ABC, whatever that means”.
At the briefing Guthrie defended the hiring of former Murdoch consultant Jim Rudder, saying he would bring “fresh insights” while criticising staff such as Robyn Williams, who had publicly complained about the cuts, as “mischievous and totally erroneous”.
We understand Guthrie has engaged the services of public relations queen Sue Cato, who is giving her personal advice on how to improve her image. Cato, a gun for hire for the top end of town, made headlines herself when she accidentally forwarded her own advice to Fairfax executives on handling the embarrassing timing of a $2.4m pay rise in 2014.
Weekly Beast will return in January
