When the director of ABC television, Richard Finlayson, sent an all-staff email on 1 April saying he wanted to “really F… the television floors” at the broadcaster’s Ultimo headquarters some staff thought it was an April Fool’s day joke. Except it wasn’t.
In Finlayson’s bizarre email he also revealed that he had hired an expert to improve the decor and atmosphere for those working in the executive division. “We have engaged a creative designer to come up with some innovative, mood-enhancing wall decorations and colours, suggest soft furnishings for breakout areas,” he said. “I want to really F… the television floors. Funky, fun and functional. Cheers, Richard.”
The renovation – with its sound-proof rooms and glass walls – sounded more suitable to a start up in silicon valley than to the offices of Aunty. “Feature walls will soon be painted in bright, lively colours, monitors will be installed into all four meeting rooms so they can be used as viewing rooms,” he said.
“The entrance to Level 7 will be remodelled so that we have a formal reception and guest seating area. The walls in and around the digital TV citadel will come down just like the walls of Jericho so that the TV executive are move visible and accessible. We will be free from the confines of our offices.”
But very few people shared Finlayson’s enthusiasm for “f’ing” the TV floor and most staff thought the renos sounded rather lavish, coming at a time when the outgoing managing director Mark Scott was telling the government he would have to cut staff and programs if more money was not found in the federal budget.
The renovation follows the announcement last month of a restructure that would see the barriers between broadcast and digital broken down, putting iview, children’s digital and the broadcast channels all under one roof.
Needless to say on Monday April 4 there was a lengthy clarification from the boss. It wasn’t his fault he explained: “Dear all, I hope you had a great weekend. I feel I need to clarify the information sent out in this note. The information was written on my brief from the temporary executive assistant replacement. It was well-intended but the choice of words was not exactly how we would have communicated the information.”
“It was intended only for those impacted by the renovations, not the entire division. Apart from whatever you might read into f’ing Level 7, the Level 7 renovations are taking place primarily because we need/want to shift the team from TV digital products from Level 9 to Level 7 to work alongside the TV programming and scheduling team, and within the expanding digital network division there is simply no longer room on Level 9.”
Finlayson went on to say that renovating was a way “to ensure that precious light is equitably shared”. “Funky fun and functional, well yes, but the reality is that this is a very low-cost and interim renovation and we’ll need to manage expectations. It’s not going to be a Google campus but yes we are adding some colour to future walls, turning the areas into a shared open space and creating six, well-equipped meeting and viewing rooms where there was previously one.”
Watching the Media Watch Dog watching the media
We do love it when Gerard Henderson gets confused, especially when he is criticising another journalist. And so it was on Saturday when the Australian published his Media Watch Dog column containing an item “Richard Flanagan’s Conscription Confusion” in which Hendo said the winner of the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2014 is “ignorant” because in his Age column about the Easter Rising he confused the terms plebiscite and referendum.
Our resident history buff tells us the referenda in 1916 and 1917 “were called by all concerned at the time—politicians, activists, journalists— referendum” so Hendo is wrong on that. But that is not all. The Australian’s media watch dog can’t tell Age columnist Martin Flanagan from his brother Richard Flanagan, the acclaimed Tasmanian novelist. Which is quite some error for a media watch dog. The item remains uncorrected a week later.
What is a raid when there is no raid?
Do you remember the story published by the Herald Sun online last August “Taskforce Heracles police raid CFMEU offices”?
The story said “CFMEU offices in Swanston Street have been raided … before 9am” by police from Taskforce Heracles, established to examine allegations referred to it by the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption.
No raid took place and the story, which was also run on The Australian’s website, was corrected later that day. Now the Australian Press Council has ruled that the story breached the general principles for accuracy and in its adjudication has revealed that News Corp Australia admitted that they weren’t sure that their sources for the erroneous story were actually present at the offices of the CFMEU when the phantom raid took place.
“The statement that police had conducted the raid was clearly inaccurate,” the council said. “Despite the publication’s claims that the report was supported by information from three credible sources, it acknowledged that it was not known whether those sources were ‘at the office’ as reported. As such, the information may have been hearsay, requiring greater caution in its use.”
The council also said the story was published after the CFMEU personally told the journalist no raid had taken place and a union official tweeted that there had been no raid.
The Press Council did not uphold the entire complaint, as it found that the Herald Sun “realised its error, it published a swift, clear and prominent correct” which amounted to “adequate remedial action”.
Job spills and appointments at Fairfax Media
Fairfax Media continues its consultation with staff about plans to reduce the editorial team across the Herald, the Age and the Australian Financial Review by 120, or one in five journalists.
It has made some new appointments, after all the jobs were spilled and people had to reapply, including appointing Bevan Shields, federal editor and Canberra bureau chief for Fairfax Media.
Higher up the food chain Mark Forbes has been appointed editor-in-chief of the Age and the Sunday Age following the resignation of Andrew Holden in February.
Fairfax editorial director Sean Aylmer said Forbes was an outstanding journalist and the ideal person to continue the Age’s transformation, “providing quality journalism to its audiences across print and digital”. Forbes has been the Age’s news director for three years.
And in the latest instalment of what on earth is going on at Fairfax in terms of quality control, the Australian Financial Review published a large white space where text should have been in the Rear Window column on 1 April.
ABC host Tim Wilson has a certain ring to it
ABC Melbourne radio host Jon Faine has revealed the broadcaster has tried to get more right-wing people on air at Aunty, even auditioning the now-Liberal candidate in the Victorian seat of Goldstein, Tim Wilson, for the role of fill-in host before he was appointed human rights commissioner.
Faine was responding to a Fairfax Media column from former Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes which argued that ABC radio does favour left-wing hosts in the capital cities.
“Jonathan’s views are Jonathan’s views,” Faine told a Friends of the ABC rally in Melbourne’s Federation Square. “We bend over backwards to make sure there are all sorts of voices heard. We were putting some time into Tim Wilson being a fill-in host, so to say that we don’t do those things is demonstrably not true. I’ve got to think of the toughest questions I can of every guest – that’s my job and that’s what the audience expects of me. That’s the ABC’s role – we’re not there to mimic the commercials. Nobody ever tells me what to do [at the ABC].”
