Host lets rip in comments during commercial break, saying he never
reads Fairfax and Guardian columnists. Plus: ABC’s alumni reunite
The Sky News host Paul Murray says he’s happy to admit that Sky News after dark “is a Liberal echo chamber”.
“You can say Sky News at night is a Liberal echo chamber,” Murray said. “I will wear that badge if you will also attribute that badge to others.”
It’s a candid admission, but Murray didn’t realise his comments would inadvertently be made public. During a commercial break on Paul Murray Live, he was shooting the breeze – and dropping copious F-bombs – with his guests, the Western Australian Labor MP Matt Keogh and the former New South Wales Liberal leader Kerry Chikarovski.
It was nothing unusual, except that someone left the microphone on and their five-minute chat was uploaded as part of the Paul Murray Live podcast. Until someone realised and took the entire episode down.
“If you want to advocate for a republic the best thing is an eminent Liberal, not a lefty Liberal, a conservative Liberal,” Murray says of Fitzy. “But I don’t want fuckin’… ”
Chikarovski interrupts: “Of all the columnists in the Herald I refuse to click on him because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing there’s another click for him.”
Murray: “I’m like that about Peter Hartcher, Fitzy. I will not read any political opinion piece by any of the Guardian’s political people. Will not read it.”
This adamant statement reminded us of the time Peter Dutton said: “The crazy lefties at the ABC, Guardian, the Huffington Post … are completely dead … to me.”
Labor’s Keogh does his best to join in the lefty bashing, saying Murray would be the best leader of the republican movement because “he’s got the trust of a whole group of people who would traditionally not go down that pathway”.
Commenting on Murray’s refusal to read Guardian Australia’s political columnists, Keogh says: “It’s also sort of irrelevant because it’s such a small audience who votes for the Greens.”
Murray: “I agree, I view it as a Greens echo chamber. 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.”
He then gets angry about the way the Greens have handled accusations of sexual harassment. “These are the people who have pushed the threshold of ‘an accusation equals guilty’ to the point – unless of course there’s an accusation against them. No, fuck you! You can enjoy the system you’ve created for everyone else. You know, you can enjoy the hair trigger of accusation and …. [the commercial break ends].”
Changing of the guard at the Walkleys
The former ABC broadcaster Quentin Dempster has stepped down as chair of the Walkley Foundation after more than a decade and will be replaced by another ABC veteran, Kerry O’Brien, it was announced at the 63rd Walkley awards gala dinner in Brisbane on Thursday.Guardian Australia’s editor, Lenore Taylor, will replace the former Sky News chief Angelos Frangopoulos as chair of the Walkley judging board in 2019. Claire Harvey from the Sunday Telegraph will be deputy chair. Walkley Foundation’s chief executive, Louisa Graham, also revealed that the Walkley public fund grants, worth $50,000 in the first half of 2019, will be distributed to Australian journalists next year.
The 63rd Walkley award winners will be featured on a dedicated Walkley channel on Apple News and, thanks to a grant from Google and Deakin University, the Walkley archive will be digitised, making it a searchable online resource. The organisation is, however, still dogged by the unhappiness over its decision to drop the international category for reporting while streamlining the awards in 2017. The categories for interview, artwork and journalism leadership were dropped at the same time.
Last July the rumour mill was rife that Foxtel’s acclaimed drama Wentworth would not be returning for an eighth season. With season seven set to air in 2019, Foxtel and the production company Fremantle Media Australia insisted that they were still in talks but some cast members said on social media they had been told season seven would be the last. Fans started a “Save Wentworth” campaign.
But this week came good news. Wentworth has been renewed for 20 new episodes for the 2020-21 season.
Old aunties catch up
A new ABC lobby group, ABC Alumni, was launched in Sydney this week at an event at the broadcaster’s Ultimo headquarters, which was packed with VIPs and former ABC journalists. The ABC’s acting managing director, David Anderson, who was one of the speakers, quipped that there were so many famous journalists in the audience he was pleased he wasn’t taking questions.ABC Alumni is a group of former ABC staff “concerned about the serious threats to Australia’s public media, amid constant attacks from hostile politicians, Murdoch and some other media, and the digital disruption facing all broadcast organisations”.
It’s is the brainchild of the ABC broadcaster and staff-elected board member Matt Peacock, who has just retired from both roles. Peacock told the room he hadn’t invited the perennial ABC critic Gerard Henderson, who was a “wannabe alumni”.
Wentworth redemption
In the audience were public broadcasting supporters and former staffers including John Hewson, Kerryn Phelps, Bob Carr, David Hill, Jonathan Holmes, Quentin Dempster, Peter Manning, Tim Bowden, Stephen Crittenden, Helen Grasswill and Greg Wilesmith.“We all passionately believe in the principle of a free, independent and fearless ABC,” Peacock said. “We are a rallying point of support for the ABC. There are already 200 of us and we’ve lodged three submissions.”
The alumni will also provide training and mentoring for ABC staff. “We intend to hold social gatherings where you can witness punch-ups to settle old scores.”
Another speaker, the former 7.30 Report host Kerry O’Brien, said the prime minister had said on Insiders that he was “watching the ABC”.
“The message to Scott Morrison is everybody in the country who supports the ABC across the political spectrum, and there are many, many of them – they make up the majority of people in this country – should be watching Scott Morrison as the government goes through the process of appointing a new ABC chair,” O’Brien said.
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