In a week which saw absurd levels of coverage of Schapelle Corby’s return to Australia, no angle was too trivial for a hungry media.
Everyone, it seems, has a Corby story, and no story is too ancient or too silly to recount. As Guardian Australia and ABC’s Media Watch showed earlier in the week, the rolling news channels went to town on the story, and the madness wasn’t just confined to TV. News Corp’s popular website news.com.au revisited an old feud between media personality Kate Langbroek and Corby which took place more than 10 years ago. Corby said the KIIS FM radio host had failed to identify herself as a member of the media when she visited the convicted drug smuggler in jail – and gave her “lollies and tampons”. In her 2006 memoir written with Kathryn Bonella, My Story, Corby took issue with Langbroek for milking the visit in subsequent media appearances. Langbroek denies Corby’s version of events.
But it was Corby’s newly minted Instagram account which provided much of the daily fodder for the media in the absence of Corby making an actual public appearance or giving a paid interview – or even an unpaid one – to exploit.
The Daily Mail raced to compare the Gold Coast’s Corby with Sydney publicity executive Roxy Jacenko, by pitting the two women together in a battle for Instagram followers which neither signed up for. “In a matter of days convicted drug trafficker Schapelle Corby has amassed over 171,000 followers on her newly launched Instagram account,” the Mail reported. “This means she has now overtaken Australia’s PR maven and Instagram queen Roxy Jacenko, who has 170,000 followers and has uploaded almost 4,000 posts over the years.” Corby now has 185,000 followers and rising.
The Sydney Morning Herald also feasted on Corby’s Instagram feed, crafting an article around a snap of the two dogs she had to leave behind. “Corby has always loved dogs,” wrote seasoned foreign correspondent Jewel Topsfield. “When she was in jail, Mercedes brought her a puppy called Stanley – ‘one of the puffball dogs that old people usually have’. She wrote she pampered him more than any Paris Hilton pooch, until she reluctantly had to give him back to Mercedes because there were too many Muslims in her cell who couldn’t go near him for religious reasons.”
But the Herald outdid itself with a startling new angle about Corby and the rugby league State of Origin game on Wednesday night, a huge TV event which attracted more than 3.5 million viewers. “NSW are bracing for a potential collision course with Schapelle Corby and the media circus when they check into the Sofitel in Brisbane on Tuesday,” the SMH reported. The Herald stuck with the story even though the NSW Rugby League chief executive, David Trodden, insisted the Blues won’t be distracted. As so it proved.
Fairfax bidders take their turn with Senate
As two private equity firms descend on Fairfax Media’s books for a potential $2.7bn takeover they might be asking themselves how the wall-to-wall Corby coverage fits with the company’s claim to be an outlet for quality journalism rather than just a media company attached to a money-making property website called Domain. The two suitors, TPG Capital and Hellman & Friedman, will be meeting with the Fairfax board over the next few days, and Weekly Beast understands the latter has accepted an invitation to appear before a Senate committee examining public interest journalism.
TPG Capital gave evidence to the committee last month, telling senators it would abide by the 1988 Fairfax charter of editorial independence and would be “responsible stewards” of quality journalism. Now Hellman & Friedman will be expected to follow suit.
Auntie bites back
News Corp joined Fairfax Media chief Greg Hywood this week in publicly blaming the ABC for damaging its viability as a business by operating in the digital space.
The Daily Telegraph’s national political editor Sharri Markson argued that one of the greatest threats to quality journalism in Australia was … the ABC. Why? because it didn’t confine itself to TV and radio but dared to put its content online, and because it spent “$360,000 a year of taxpayer dollars buying up search terms to lift its Google rankings”.
“And so, the public broadcaster towers in the Australian media landscape like a lazy giant, while other media stables have to fight and innovate,” she wrote.
On Thursday the ABC volleyed back, publishing a lengthy analysis of the way in which newspapers have historically tried to influence the ABC’s independence via Late Night Live. “How the newspapers tried to kill an independent ABC news before it even began” marks the 70th anniversary of its first “truly independent” news bulletin on Sunday 1 June, 1947. According to the ABC, as far back as 1936 Sir Keith Murdoch, Rupert’s father, bitterly opposed the ABC broadcasting a news bulletin at 7pm because it might undermine his profitable business model. The first bulletin’s preamble was: “This is the news that you don’t have to fetch and carry. It comes to you with the turn of the knob that a child can turn. Nobody has to bring it home, it is there. It is the butterfly that flies into your net. The view you can get without having to go to your window.”
Chaos at Fairfax as the axe hangs
The way Fairfax is managing the departure of one quarter of its newsroom – 125 journalists will leave the mastheads – has been described as “staggeringly incompetent”. Journalists have told Weekly Beast the process is in chaos because the payout estimates given to staff who put their hands up were inaccurate. By Friday, people who applied for voluntary redundancy were expected to have been told whether their applications had been approved. It is believed the company got the numbers it required but not in the right departments, meaning some people will be knocked back and others will be forced to take redundancy. A couple of the names who have gone public about leaving are digital guru Stephen Hutcheon, who started at the Herald 35 years ago, and music writer Bernard Zuel, a 25-year veteran of the paper. One source says an entire department in one area of editorial has applied for redundancy. Now due to the stuff-up in the estimates the painful process will drag on well into next week, leaving the workforce in limbo.
The Fairfax Media editorial director, Sean Aylmer, has admitted the error in a memo to staff. “As many of you are aware, we have identified errors in some estimates,” Aylmer wrote to staff as the disaster unfolded. “This predominantly relates to the incorrect inclusion of casual service and some calculation errors. We have been working as fast as possible to reissue the correct estimates to the affected staff. In some cases we are giving those employees extensions to indicate if they want to proceed with their VR application based on the revised estimate. We recognise this is a very challenging period and appreciate your patience as we work through all of the applications. We hope to advise people as soon as possible if their application has been successful.”
The Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance is warning staff at the Age, Australian Financial Review and SMH to check their figures and get in touch with the union before signing anything.
Boy band fronts media
At an event this week at Parliament House to express support for the government’s media package, senior executives from major media companies gathered en masse. They were there to help support efforts to abolish the two-out-of-three rule, which restricts cross-media ownership by preventing moguls from controlling a free-to-air TV station, newspapers and radio stations in the same market. While the high-powered group may not have influenced the outcome of the bill, they did leave a lasting impression and it wasn’t a positive one.
Among the men in suits who represented some of the country’s major media organisations were Foxtel CEO Peter Tonagh, Seven West Media chief Tim Worner, Nine CEO Hugh Marks, Ten Network chief Paul Anderson, Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood, Macquarie Media COO Adam Lang and News Corp executive chair Michael Miller. There was just one woman: NOVA CEO Cath O’Connor.
