The clash between the frontline Sky News journalists who anchor the daytime schedule and the rightwing Sky After Dark commentators was played out live on screen on day one of the election campaign.
The Sky News chief political reporter, Kieran Gilbert, had been on air since the early hours of the morning when Scott Morrison called the election, when Paul Murray joined him on set.
Weekly Beast readers will remember last year’s hot mic admission from Murray: “You can say Sky News at night is a Liberal echo chamber. I will wear that badge if you will also attribute that badge to others.”
Not long after he arrived, Murray heavily criticised Bill Shorten as vision showed the opposition leader talking to voters. This appeared to irritate Gilbert and he let fly. It got so testy that the political editor, David Speers, had to step in and break it up.
Murray repeatedly took pot shots at Shorten, calling him “disgusting”.
Murray: “I am just saying it is an excruciating process for those of us watching this stuff.”
Gilbert: “You’re not a big fan of Bill Shorten’s. He could have orchestrated the second coming and you probably wouldn’t have been too positive about it. So that’s the starting point isn’t it?”
Murray: “Well, I could say you’re not a massive fan of Scott Morrison if we’re going to get into this game, Kieran. I’m more than happy to play. If you want to play let’s get into it.”
Gilbert: “That’s not true, that’s actually not true. I had Scott Morrison on my program very regularly. Probably more than anyone did when he first started out in parliament. Someone I think very highly of actually, Paul.”
Murray: “Do you want to go low or go high?”
Speers: “Let’s go back to Bill Shorten.”
Hearts for Eryn Jean Norvill
When a judge accuses you of publishing “recklessly irresponsible pieces of sensationalist journalism of the very worst kind” you’ve got to find the positives somewhere.
So the day after Geoffrey Rush was awarded $850,000 in initial damages when the court ruled that the Daily Telegraph had defamed him with its “King Leer” stories, the tabloid focused on the love shown for its star witness, Eryn Jean Norvill, with a “Sydney hearts EJ” headline.
The actor had received a “wave of support” and social media had “lit up with #IstandwithEJ messages”, the Tele reported.
There was nothing in the print edition on the judge’s comments about the “paucity” of information the reporter Jonathon Moran had before publishing, or the fact Norvill was not a source and had been dragged by the Tele into the spotlight only to be harshly criticised by the judge.
Big stink at the NT News
There was a delightful correction in everyone’s favourite paper, the NT News, on Thursday. “Thursday’s NT News quoted Jason Hanna as comparing the stench of a group of hypothetical tourists to Darwin to ‘a brew house fart’.
“That was incorrect. Mr Hanna said the group would have smelled ‘like a brewery horse fart’.
“The NT News sincerely apologises for the error.”
Jobs to get their teeth into
In other Top End news the paper has announced three new roles through the industry newsletter Telum Media: “Lauren Roberts will probe for the truth as UFO Reporter: Judith Aisthorpe snaps up the coveted Crocodile Reporter role and Will Zwar has hooked the Barramundi Reporter round.”
EV insanity
The government’s pre-election scare campaign on electric cars was a flop, with all but the partisan media largely ignoring the message that Labor was about to take utes away from tradies. Alan Jones branded Bill Shorten’s electric vehicles plan “an economic suicide note” and Rowan Dean said electric cars are “a complete and utter nonsense” on Sky After Dark. The Herald Sun’s Rita Panahi said they’d never catch on in Australia. In the Australian, Judith Sloane, Nick Cater and Chris Kenny ran the Liberals’ scare campaign hard.
But outside the 2GB/Sky News/News Corp bubble, was anyone listening? The reporting from the Canberra press gallery was straight down the line.
“Despite criticising Labor’s electric vehicle target of 50% by 2030, the government is using a similar policy to project emissions reductions,” reported news.com.au. Only the government’s cheerleaders, like Tim Blair at the Daily Telegraph, were trying to whip up a frenzy of outrage against the cars.
The newsreader on KIIS FM just said Scott Morrison was “full of it” on electric cars and Kyle Sandilands described the scare campaign as “crazy”. I’m not sure this is cutting through.
— Michael Koziol (@michaelkoziol) April 9, 2019
Morrison had attacked Labor’s policy by claiming “Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend” for Australians who love four-wheel drives.
But this argument quickly fell apart when it was pointed out that the government’s own modelling for how it will achieve its obligations under the Paris agreement assume a similar target. When he was environment minister, Josh Frydenberg had praised EVs.
Then Toyota contradicted the government’s messaging on HiLux drivers.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor claimed ute drivers "would be left stranded under Labor", but Toyota says it will offer an electric version of the HiLux within six years. | @smh Do you have a question? #QandA https://t.co/Fc8s1sg0xH
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) April 11, 2019
The Australian’s tech reporter Chris Griffith reported that the Tesla boss, Elon Musk, had said sales could hit 50% of new cars “even faster than Bill Shorten’s 2030 target”.
Musk had tweeted “Australia could do this in far fewer than 11 years”.
Also in the Australian, Ben Packham reported that the tech entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes had declared Morrison’s claim that Labor’s policy would “end the weekend” was “batshit insane”.
The Sydney Morning Herald had its own issues with the policy. The paper ran an “exclusive” front-page headline on Tuesday saying an increase in electric vehicles “puts grid at risk”.
On Thursday there was quite the correction: “The headline of a front page story in the Herald on Tuesday incorrectly suggested that a report by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency warned an increase in electric cars would put the grid at risk. Neither the report, which was actually done by Evenergi, or the article stated this.”
‘Seventies-style curly hair’
On Thursday Netflix Australia released a trailer for Chris Lilley’s new “mockumentary” series Lunatics, which premieres on 19 April. Lunatics is the first show for Lilley since 2014’s Jonah from Tonga was screened by the ABC, coming under fire for its portrayal of Tongan culture and Lilley’s use of “brownface”. The comedian has been criticised a number of times for his portrayals of non-white characters, including for using blackface to portray an African-American rapper in Angry Boys.
There was an immediate backlash on social media when one of the characters appeared to be a woman with darker skin than Lilley and an afro. Was Lilley doing blackface again?
Lunatics comes to Netflix on April 19 pic.twitter.com/KEw83nUuuT
— Chris Lilley (@ChrisLilley) April 11, 2019
While Netflix stayed quiet on the controversy Lilley’s longtime collaborator Laura Waters tweeted a clarification late on Thursday. Waters produced all five of Lilley’s ABC/HBO/BBC comedy series: We Can Be Heroes, Summer Heights High, Angry Boys, Ja’mie: Private School Girl and Jonah From Tonga.
Correcting some confusion - in the new show Lunatics, Chris Lilley is not portraying a woman of colour. When the series is released you will see that Jana is a white woman with huge 70s style curly hair.
— Laura Waters (@LauraWaters1) April 11, 2019
Resettlement plea
More than 8,200 writers, journalists, academics, publishers and editors have signed a petition calling on the Morrison government to resettle in Australia the journalist, writer and film-maker Behrouz Boochani, who has been detained for more than five years on Manus Island.
Signatories to the petition coordinated by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance include the writers Caroline Jones, Christos Tsiolkas, JM Coetzee, David Marr, Kate McClymont, Quentin Dempster, Helen Garner, Kate Grenville, Andy Griffiths and John Marsden.
Slippery promises
Actors dressed as Bananas in Pyjamas will be campaigning in marginal Liberal electorates every weekend during the election campaign to remind voters that on election eve in 2013 Tony Abbott promised “no cuts to the ABC or SBS”.
The researchers Alexandra Wake and Michael Ward wrote in the Conversation that the ABC has had an accumulated reduction in available funding of $393m over a five-year period, starting from May 2014 when Abbott cut the budget. “According to current budget forecasts, this also means the ABC stands to lose $783m in funding by 2022, unless steps are taken to remedy the situation,” they wrote.
