Two weeks after Kate Torney left the ABC for the last time, a shortlist for her replacement as director of news has been drawn up and interviews are about to begin.
There are two strong internal candidates and at least two strong external candidates, both of whom have had distinguished careers at the ABC.
ABC news executive and former Washington correspondent Craig McMurtrie, the head of news gathering, is acting in the role and has an impeccable political and international news reporting background.
Gaven Morris, the head of news content, is the man behind the establishment of ABC News 24 and his experience is more in management roles and in rolling news, at CNN and Al Jazeera English.
Externally, there is Max Uechtritz, the chap who led the charge to remove former ABC managing director Jonathan Shier from the job in 2001 after 18 months of chaos. Uechtritz, a former foreign correspondent, has since led news teams at Nine, the former Ninemsn, al-Jazeera English and Channel Seven.
Another former ABC correspondent, who is now Seven’s network director of news, Rob Raschke, is also on the shortlist. Raschke has been sidelined at Seven since former Today Tonight boss Craig McPherson was appointed director of news and public affairs over the top of him.
Applications for the top job – managing director – have also closed. Mark Scott steps down in the middle of next year.
The new faces of News Corp’s Oz digital dailies
You may have noticed the familiar faces of entertainer Barry Humphries and his alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson on TV screens and elsewhere this week.
Humphries is not popping up to promote a film or a stage show. The Australian entertainer has been paid a substantial sum to spruik Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspapers.
He is the face of News Corp Australia’s tablet and mobile editions of the company’s metro mastheads: the Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, the Courier-Mail and the Advertiser.
Publishing boss Damian Eales said: “When you think about Australian comedic icons, they don’t get much bigger than Dame Edna and Sir Les. They are national living treasures. They appeal to the spectrum of our readers, and we were delighted they were both on hand to lend their irrepressible humour to our campaign.”
Humphries is trying to encourage readers, in particular older readers, to pay for the tablet and mobile editions of the papers. While digital subscriptions are growing, print circulation is dropping by about 8% a year.
In media interviews Humphries wasted no time praising News Corp, criticising the ABC and bemoaning the so-called political correctness that has invaded Australia. “The ABC has become increasingly leftwing,” he told the Australian. “And I was surprised that [the ABC] can be so openly of the extreme left.”
He also saw a conspiracy behind the production of the brilliant The Killing Season political series from Sue Spencer and Sarah Ferguson.
“They were getting very worried about they [sic] relationship with the prime minister so they made this program with Rudd and Gillard to ingratiate themselves. The Killing Season, one of the best things the ABC has done,” he said.
Consider your verdict
Channel Nine’s answer to the ABC’s Q&A finally has an air date. Karl Stefanovic’s The Verdict will start on Thursday next week at 8.30pm.
This is the panel show which piloted using the former Labor leader Mark Latham as a guest despite his recent bizarre and abusive behaviour. The audience at home will be asked to vote on weekly topics via the Your Verdict voting site at 9Jumpin.com.au.
If the trailer is anything to go by this will not be a subtle show. Audiences will vote on whether Malcolm Turnbull is a “hero or a villain”, whether Australians are “racist or realistic” when it comes to boat people and whether Jesinta Campbell is a “model or a role model”.
“Hold on to your hats, folks. It might get bumpy,” Stefanovic says.
Sharp words and Devine retribution?
Perhaps one topic on The Verdict next week could be who is editing the Daily Telegraph after two misfires in the one weekend resulted in widespread condemnation of two of the paper’s columnists.
Gossip columnist Annette Sharp’s article on Saturday, “13 reasons Jesinta and Buddy should postpone their summer wedding”, has been criticised by mental health groups and may be the subject of legal action from Campbell for suggesting the model should delay her wedding to the football player because he has a mental illness.
Miranda Devine, whose equally divisive column on domestic violence appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, is not backing down. Despite a backlash, which included dozens of negative comments from Telegraph readers on the paper’s website and Facebook page, Devine is standing firm.
In a second column she blamed “femi-fascists” for the furious response and repeated her argument. Tired of using her old “feminazi” tag Devine dug up the lesser known “femi-fascist” to characterise her critics.
“The classic modus operandi of feminist outrage sites such as MamaMia is to make up a line, pretend I said it and then attack me for (not) saying it,” Devine wrote. “This is the intolerance of the femi-fascists.”
Devine went on to detail statistics she says support her argument that “domestic violence is concentrated in communities where the underclass lives, where welfare dependency has emasculated men, where drug and alcohol abuse is rife, and intergenerational social disadvantage is entrenched”.
“But these are not facts the man-bashing femi-fascists who control the domestic violence industry want to hear,” she said.
Journalists, including a former News Corp colleague Colleen Egan, have been quick to criticise her on Twitter.
@RosieBatty1 I don't usually comment on my colleagues but i apologise for @mirandadevine . Be thinking of you tomorrow
— Colleen Egan (@ColleenEgan1) September 27, 2015
Laurie Oakes gives some freedom advice
Channel Nine’s veteran political editor Laurie Oakes used his speech on press freedom at the Melbourne Press Club on 25 September to respond to a slur published in the Australian newspaper a whole 12 months earlier.
Oakes argued in the well-received speech that journalists had not done enough to fight restrictions to press freedom before they were brought in: “The problem was we were alarmed but not alert. Alarmed by the terrorism threat, but not alert to the potential impact of countermeasures on press freedom.”
The Australian’s editorial had argued last year that it did not believe its investigative, defence and security reporters would be “significantly affected” by the proposed laws and had criticised Oakes and other journalists who were arguing the press freedom cause – including Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy and the ABC PM host, Mark Colvin.
“Oakes argued that ‘fighting terrorism is obviously important’ but added a qualification: ‘accountability journalism is important too’,” the editorial said. “He made a sweeping statement that ‘journalists could go to jail’ simply for ‘holding those in authority to account’. They could be reading from the same song sheet as the Greens. ‘Jailing our journos won’t make us safer,’ the fringe party proclaimed.”
As Oakes observed, “When the Australian compares you to the Greens you know you’re really in bad odour”.
