News Corp appears to have failed to convince Australians why Waleed Aly – The Project host, first-time Gold Logie nominee, long-time “nailer” of “it” – should not win Australian television’s top award, despite publishing a list of reasons claiming to argue precisely that.
Australians have rallied around Aly on social media after the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun both published a bizarre column on Tuesday, titled “Six reasons why Waleed Aly should not win Gold”. Both Aly and his co-host on The Project, Carrie Bickmore, have been shortlisted for a Gold Logie.
Journalist Victoria Hannaford began with an acknowledgement that there was “no doubt” that Aly’s nomination for the top award in Australian television had “sparked chatter”.
But Hannaford then presented an oddly strident list of reasons why Aly “shouldn’t win”, which started out counterproductive (“We need better programming on commercial TV, and Aly is the exception that proves the rule”) and concluded with social media tips (“if used judiciously, it’s just another way to engage with your audiences”).
this is so unconvincing you wonder if writer is secretly trying to signal their resistance, like a POW broadcast https://t.co/h34D8AiU15
— michael safi (@safimichael) April 5, 2016
In her fourth case for Aly not to win an award, headed “Diversity needs to become the norm”, Hannaford suggested that Aly’s “fierce intellect, sharp wit and talent” was not the only reason “his voice has risen”: “the fact that he’s an Australian of Egyptian background and a Muslim should be incidental, not remarkable”.
Other reasons she gave can be broadly summarised as “Leigh Sales should have been nominated for one as well”; “Aly is biased, or maybe just knowledgeable”; and “The Project is less popular than other shows”. At least one point – that The Project has fewer viewers than Sunrise – was not just confused but false.
The RendezView opinion site, published on both the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph’s websites, is subtitled “The meeting place for news-making views”; at the time of writing, the piece had close to 800 comments and late on Wednesday was the No 1 story on the Daily Telegraph website.
As Hannaford despairingly concludes (with the caveat “rejecting social media is no crime”), Aly is not active on Twitter, where he is broadly beloved by leftwing or Millennial Australian users (and especially those at the intersection of the Venn diagram).
More weeks than not, in fact, Aly’s take on the issues of the day on The Project is being heaped with praise on social media, as parodied on SBS’ Backburner last month: “Waleed Aly Totally Nails Eating A Sandwich For Lunch.”
As such, it was perhaps inevitable that #IStandWithWaleed would be trending on Twitter on Wednesday.
"Six reasons why Waleed Aly should not win Gold". An actual article in the Herald Sun today. pic.twitter.com/p1sNV58WE2
— Clementine Ford (@clementine_ford) April 6, 2016
@TomCBallard And Muslim, don't forget Muslim.
— Joanna Lazar (@La_FemmePetite) April 6, 2016
Guys please tweet your support for Waleed Aly #IStandWithWaleed pic.twitter.com/zGeZqgWYY0
— Mariam Veiszadeh (@MariamVeiszadeh) April 5, 2016
Murdoch cretins say Waleed Aly shouldn't win a Gold Logie? And the end result of printing this toxic sludge? #IStandWithWaleed is trending.
— Duncan Watson (@DuncanWatson8) April 6, 2016
The #PutOutYour... meme – time-honoured in its versatility and quite rapidly becoming a one-size-fits-all response in Australian internet culture – made quite possibly its first appearance of 2016 with #PutOutYourPhd – because “smart people should be allowed to win Logies as well”.
Smart people, we have to stand together #putoutyourPhd #istandwithWaleed pic.twitter.com/D7DIOyYUHP
— Jeff Wortman (@jeffwortman14) April 6, 2016
The editor of RendezView, Sarrah Le Marquand, told Guardian Australia that “readers will choose to interpret opinion columns in their own unique and diverse ways”. Over the years, she’d been accused of being both a “Murdoch stooge” and a “bleeding heart feminazi” off the back of the same piece.
“To be an opinion columnist or editor is to work in what is arguably the most subjective medium of all,” she said, and the scathing reaction to Hannaford’s column only reiterated this.
“That a column that expressed admiration for Aly’s ‘rare gravitas’, ‘fierce intellect, sharp wit and talent’ ... has seen many determined to portray Victoria’s words as racist says more about the column’s critics than it says about the column itself.
“But far be it from me to stop bored people on Twitter from having fun with their latest outrage. Twitter has always been a nuance-free zone and actually reading columns takes a lot more effort than does jumping aboard the latest hashtag.”
But the response to the column was characterised less by cries of racism than those of “???”, as comedian Wil Anderson alluded to in paraphrasing Hannaford’s argument to his 490,000 followers in a string of tweets headed “Six Reasons Why This Is A Terrible Article”:
Argument 1: He’s better than everyone else. The show that Gold Logie winner Karl hosted was shit. That’s Waleed’s fault.
Argument 2: There is more worthy in his field. Hang on, are you saying that year Alf Stewart won he was the best actor around?
Argument 3: Aly’s biased. Yep, against Isis. I assume this means you are saying The Daily Telegraph is pro Isis. Controversial
Argument 4: Diversity needs to be the norm. You know this is an argument FOR him to win right, so now you only have five reasons.
Argument 5: He needs to be truly popular to win. He is on the SAME SHOW as last year’s winner, and doubles Today Show Karl won
Argument 6: He’s not on social media. I guess that’s why you’re lucky he won’t respond to this stupid article #GoWaleed
Hannaford was not forthcoming about what she meant. Though rejecting social media is, after all, no crime, her response was muted for someone who is all in favour of its judicious use, limited to retweeting others’ takes. The most generous of all came care of self-described “typical Aussie bloke”, Dave “Hughesy” Hughes, who took the column as a pro-Aly piece to “drum up support”.
Guys, I'm not sure we needed an #istandwithwaleed hashtag just because someone wrote an article in the Telegraph saying he's great.
— Adam Liaw (@adamliaw) April 6, 2016
Hope this tweet makes the inevitable Victoria Hannaford follow up piece about her dumb article being teased on the internet.
— Scott Dooley (@scottdools) April 5, 2016
Actually read story and realise the writer admires him and knows article will drum up support! #usebrain #please https://t.co/Bj7rBullCn
— Dave Hughes (@DHughesy) April 6, 2016
The only tweet she wrote on the matter was in reply to Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes, thanking him for linking to her piece and following her on Twitter: “You just bumped my numbers.”
@mumbrella Hi Tim, thanks for the follow - you just bumped my numbers!
— Victoria Hannaford (@vhannaford) April 5, 2016
Did Hannaford intend for the article to be a satire? Was it, in the language of the pick-up artist community, a “neg” to endear herself to Aly? Was she exercising reverse psychology, guaranteeing him the gold? From her retweeting comedians alone, we cannot know.
The fact that it is more or less impossible to make head nor tail of Hannaford’s view of Aly from several hundred words on the subject is probably indicative of how much credence the piece deserves. On balance, it’s more positive about Aly than not, but that’s besides the point – it is a conduit for page views, its sole reason for publication fulfilled by the headline and every click it gets from someone trying to work out whether it’s offensive or not.
The only thing dumber than "6 reasons Waleed shouldn't win gold" is being offended by a newspaper column about television.#IStandWithWaleed
— John Johnsonson (@JohnJohnsonson) April 6, 2016
Seeing as Aly isn’t on Twitter to retweet their praise of him, users might do better to #StandWithWaleed on another platform: TV Week magazine, which owns the Logies.
But for further convincing that this is perhaps not worth our collective hashtagged outrage, head to the front page of RendezView: Hannaford’s list is currently bookended by pieces headlined “Every orgasm I have is a show of defiance to my rapist” and “I entered a chilli eating contest. It was not pretty”.
But then, you know, you just bumped their numbers.
