Top-rating broadcaster Ray Hadley has accused fellow rightwing commentator Andrew Bolt of being “soft on paedophiles” in an extraordinary blast on his 2GB morning show.
Hadley took aim at Bolt for his widely condemned comments about ABC Four Corners and St Kevin’s victim Paris Street on the Bolt Report.
After Street wrote an open letter to Bolt saying his comments made him sick, the News Corp journalist apologised on Sky News for upsetting him, saying he regretted using the phrase “hit on”.
On Friday’s show Hadley said Bolt’s claim that Street wasn’t sexually assaulted but was “hit on” was “demeaning, insulting and beyond the pale”.
“You do a lot of good in the community, but, by crikey, when it comes to paedophilia you’ve got a very poor record,” Hadley said. “A very poor record. Which has compelled you to apologise to Street today.
“Mr Bolt has a history of defending people who are convicted of paedophilia. He has a history of it! Even when appeals are denied, he has a history of it. Now that’s on his conscience, not mine.”
“But I’ve been an ambassador for Bravehearts for two decades, Mr Bolt. I’ll stand by my record in condemning paedophilia against yours any day of the week.”
Sky News host Andrew Bolt says ABC journalists have “falsely, maliciously, and hurtfully” implied he was dismissing or trivialising the actions of a former sports coach at St Kevin’s College Melbourne.#BoltReporthttps://t.co/TAbG55NJYE
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) February 19, 2020
Hadley said Bolt’s comments on the case showed he was ignorant of the facts and had a complete lack of understanding of the victims of child sexual abuse.
“Defending paedophiles! ... Then apologising when he’s attacked by me and others. That poor boy shouldn’t have been penning that letter. He shouldn’t have been subjected to that on Sky News. And I hope that there’s been a lesson well-learned here by Mr Bolt.
“And the only reason you made an apology is because you’ve been targeted by various social media groups for your creepy behaviour!”
Camp Hill murders coverage condemned
Many of the front pages about the horrific murder of Hannah Clarke and her three young children in Brisbane on Wednesday focused on the scourge of domestic violence and the “evil”, “unthinkable” act of a “mongrel” man who killed his estranged wife and children. The Courier Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the West Australian were strong in their condemnation on Friday.
No "good bloke" crap from the @dailytelegraph, @couriermail or @westaustralian today. Evil is the word of the day. pic.twitter.com/HEhYh1iFEl
— Matt Bevan 🎙 (@MatthewBevan) February 19, 2020
But not all the coverage has been appropriate and some headlines received criticism online for lauding the murderer, such as “Ex footy star who died in burning car” from Fox Sports and “Ex-Rugby League star Rowan Baxter, his wife and three children die in car fire tragedy” from the UK Mirror.
The Daily Mail had particularly appalling takes: “‘Chin up bro, everything will work out’: Chilling last post to ex-footy star days before he was torched to death inside a car with his three kids as friend says he was ‘depressed about splitting from his wife’” and “Ex-footy star who died in burning car showered kids with love”.
It’s hard to explain how much the horrific murder of Hannah Baxter and her children is haunting me. A young mum I never met and a family I have no connection to. But the brutality of this is sickening. The media reports glorifying the man who killed them is disgusting.
— Sarah Hanson-Young💚 (@sarahinthesen8) February 20, 2020
However, some critics leapt to condemn reporters without understanding the legal restrictions media face in reporting unfolding events. The police don’t immediately confirm what they suspect, making it hard to report some facts early on, such as whether the car was deliberately set alight.
Drone delivery tall tale takes flight
There was a rare light-hearted news story to emerge from the coronavirus outbreak last week. An Australian couple quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship off the coast of Japan had ordered bottles of wine by drone.
“An Australian couple quarantined on a cruise ship due to the deadly coronavirus kept the party flowing by getting a drone to deliver wine straight to their cabin,” the Australian reported.
Aussie couple ordered wine via drone on quarantined coronavirus cruise ship https://t.co/V5lIJnihgC pic.twitter.com/4ZCnwAaRo8
— New York Post (@nypost) February 11, 2020
“Jan and Dave Binskin, from Queensland, have chronicled their journey of boredom and booze while stranded on the Diamond Princess ship off the coast of Tokyo for the past week.
“‘Thank God for drones, the Japanese Coast Guard did not know what the fuck was going on’,” the couple was quoted as saying.
The Oz was not alone. Fox.news.com was also excited by this yarn: “We’ll drink to that,” the Fox reporter wrote. “An Australian couple has made the best of a bad situation.”
This tale of the resourceful couple made it into the Mail Online, the New York Post, nine.com.au, Pedestrian.tv, Gizmodo, Yahoo.com.au and US news site ABC 14 News
“Inventive Aussies stuck on coronavirus cruise ship in Japan get their wine club to bring them two cases of booze delivered by DRONE,” the MailOnline said.
It was a great story but it wasn’t true. ABC’s RN Breakfast burst the bubble with an interview with the Binskins in which they told Fran Kelly it was “just an upbeat, positive prank” they posted on Facebook where it was picked up by reporters who didn’t check its veracity. The wine came from the cabin steward and not a drone.
Days after a the publication of a comprehensive fact check by AFP Fact Check all the stories remain online.
Fake news, real risk
The drone story was just one of many fake news stories around the coronavirus scare. Last week we had the map showing the pattern of global air traffic 10 years ago was used by several major Australian media organisations to show the alleged spread of the epidemic.
This week researchers from East Anglia University looked at the impact of scare stories, rumours and false information about diseases such as norovirus, flu and monkeypox and found that about 40% of people in the UK believe at least one conspiracy theory of some kind.
They say the misinformation on social media during infectious disease outbreaks, including the current novel coronavirus epidemic, can cost lives.
Climate chasm at ABC
Despite ABC chair Ita Buttrose declaring an ABC staff climate crisis advisory group “was one of those ideas that is not going to happen”, the ABC staff’s Melbourne Climate Crisis Group has written to the managing director, David Anderson, with a raft of ideas already. One of the issues raised is that ABC news does not have a dedicated national environment reporter. There is an environment reporter in the science unit, but Nick Kilvert is an online environment reporter who sits outside the news division. Environment stories are largely covered by science and technology reporter Michael Slezak, a former Guardian Australia environment reporter.
You know, there was a high-level group in the federal government working on preparing for exactly this sort of crisis. They embarked on “project climate ready”. But it was abandoned.
— Michael Slezak (@MikeySlezak) January 4, 2020
https://t.co/8pQXtQiUdY
“We currently only have one national science and technology reporter,” the group told Anderson. “Most of their time is spent covering environment issues. Given the dominance of environment issues in the news the ABC should be investing in a team of ‘specialist’ science and environment reporters. Despite their best efforts, the specialist reporters are unable to to respond to all the daily climate change stories which emerge, and there are concerns that many important issues go unreported due to a lack of reporting staff.”
Given even News Corp’s the Australian has an environment reporter (Graham Lloyd), as does the Sydney Morning Herald (Peter Hannam) and Guardian Australia has an environment editor in Adam Morton and two environment reporters – Lisa Cox and Graham Readfearn – surely it’s time ABC?
The group also called on Anderson not to cull staff in the regional and local division in the upcoming budget cuts brought on by an $84m reduction in funding. “This summer it has become abundantly clear that we cannot afford to lose any more reporting staff in our regional and local division, It is literally now a matter of life and death.”
The ABC’s bushfire coverage over summer has been widely praised, most recently last week in a meeting between Buttrose, Anderson and prime minister Scott Morrison to discuss the looming budget cuts.
Breakfast ratings bump for ABC
Some good news for ABC News Breakfast, which is enjoying a record growth in audience in 2020 and has risen to second place behind Seven’s Sunrise. Not such good news for Nine’s revamped Today show with Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon, which, despite extensive promotion, is yet to bounce back from record lows.
Well that’s a nice yarn to wake up to - happy Saturday folks!Breakfast TV ratings: Sunrise extends lead over today while ABC News Breakfast breaks new record https://t.co/nzZUgG7scG
— Lisa Millar (@LisaMillar) February 14, 2020
ABC News Breakfast audiences are up 23% in January, compared to same month in 2019, with its metro average audience sitting at 172,000.
Sunrise was also up, but only by 5%, while Nine saw a year-on-year drop of achieved a metro average audience of 2% with audiences averaging 203,000
On one day this week Today had 173,000 viewers across the five-metro market behind Lisa Millar and Michael Rowland’s 178,000 viewers on the ABC. Sunrise pulled 272,000.
ABC rolls out Revelation
The Sydney Institute’s executive director Gerard Henderson made some extraordinary claims about the ABC on Sky News this week. The occasional Insiders guest and author of the weekly attack on the ABC, Media WatchDog, said the national broadcaster was untrustworthy and had a vendetta against all Christian institutions. Despite his own appearances on the ABC, he said the reason the former headmaster of St Kevin’s college didn’t agree to be interviewed by Four Corners was because the program couldn’t be trusted to give him a fair hearing.
"Abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system."@FergusonNews presents #RevelationABC – a ground-breaking documentary series on the criminal priests and brothers of the Catholic Church.
— ABC TV + iview (@ABCTV) February 19, 2020
Starts Tuesday 17 March.
Read more: https://t.co/dBRvO4FYpf pic.twitter.com/viqE4mU7LW
We can’t wait for Hendo and Andrew Bolt to see award-winning reporter Sarah Ferguson’s new ABC TV series on the Catholic church.
Revelation, a three-part documentary series, features interviews with two serial paedophiles in the Catholic church who claim: “Abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system.”
