It was never about the money, Michelle Guthrie says of ABC board brangle | Weekly Beast

“It was never about the money,” Michelle Guthrie told invited guests at a posh lunch on Thursday, the day after it was revealed under parliamentary privilege that the former ABC chief had pocketed $1.64m since being sacked by the board.

Guthrie told the invitation-only audience at Sydney’s Union Club that she had taken legal action against the ABC board because what they did to her was “wrong”.

The former executive for Rupert Murdoch’s television empire was dumped two and a half years into a five-year term after she failed to inspire the staff, Canberra or her own management team. She has always maintained she did a good job and she was “devastated” to be removed.

The first female MD of the ABC was the guest speaker to mark International Women’s Day at the historic Bent Street club, where her chosen topic was equity for women in the CEO ranks.

Free of pesky reporters, the audience was receptive to the former lawyer and media executive’s pitch as she talked about the glass ceiling being more like a “concrete ceiling” and told them only 7% of chief executives are women. She didn’t discuss her hasty exit from the ABC or the bombs she threw on the way out during her speech but was compelled to answer a few questions during the Q&A.

Monitoring the monitors

Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper and television empire is really quite cross with the online activist group Sleeping Giants Oz and its volunteers who have managed to disrupt some of its advertisers with targeted tweets. Sleeping Giants Oz encourages people on Twitter to complain to brands who advertise on Sky News when Andrew Bolt, Rowan Dean or other “after dark” presenter uses what they call hate speech. The health fund NIB dropped its ads after being targeted over Bolt’s support of the convicted child abuser George Pell.

We discovered this week that the social media monitoring firm Brandwatch had been studying the tweet activity of Sleeping Giants Oz via a story in the Oz and Bolt’s editorials.

The Australian used the Brandwatch research to attack an academic for being one of the Sleeping Giants tweeters who are approaching brands who advertise on Sky. The newspaper reported on Monday that the academic was “responsible for about 43 per cent of activity across the top 10 most engaged accounts between January 1 and February 21”. It published his photograph, contacted his employer about his tweets, and pointed out that Sky supported the university financially through a scholarship.

“While refusing to condemn the lecturer, the West Australian university is also insisting it ‘greatly values’ its longstanding relationship with Sky News, which provides an annual scholarship to ECU’s best journalism students,” the Oz reported.

A spokeswoman for Sky confirmed it had hired Brandwatch. “Sky News Australia has a subscription with Brandwatch which provides tools to assist with understanding brand perception and consumer reactions from public online conversations on social media,” she said. “As a result, the conversation around the Sleeping Giants campaign has been part of our ongoing brand tracking.”

ABC under ‘sustained assault’

It was left up to the ABC’s staff-elected director, Dr Jane Connors, to drop some truth bombs at public hearings for the Senate inquiry into alleged political interference at the broadcaster this week. Unlike the rest of the board, who dodged a lot of questions from senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Kristina Keneally, Connors was direct and forthcoming. She said she had been warned by her predecessor, Matt Peacock, that the former ABC chair Justin Milne was “sensitive to Canberra” but she had never witnessed political interference at board level herself.

Connors, a 30-year veteran of Aunty, said the pressure the ABC had been under was nothing new. “I think staff have watched over the last 10 to 15 years a climate, nationally and internally, of assault on public broadcasting and its very tenets both from commercial broadcasters and from elements of government,” she said. “While I have no proof – I’m not privy to government deliberations as to any direct connection – I do feel the ABC has been under sustained assault through a combination of funding cuts, complaints and broader ideological movements. I deplore it and I know my fellow staff members do as well.”

The first rule of Jetstream …

In hair-raising evidence, the inquiry heard more detail about how Milne pressured Triple J to reverse its decision to move the Hottest 100 away from Australia Day to please the Coalition, which he hoped would fund his pet project, Jetstream.

The independent South Australian senator Tim Storer’s question to the acting managing director, David Anderson, produced a rare moment of mirth. “On a different topic, what is the status of the project Jetstream?” he asked. “What has occurred? Where is it at?”

Anderson: “We don’t talk about Jetstream.” Storer: “It’s like Fight Club, is it? The first rule of Jetstream is you don’t talk about Jetstream.”

Buttrose Barbie

The incoming chair, Ita Buttrose, has already made encouraging noises about the importance of ABC independence, making her a welcome choice, despite being a captain’s pick by Scott Morrison.

Buttrose hadn’t been to her first ABC board meeting when Mattel revealed the publishing legend has been immortalised in the form of a Barbie Doll as part of the company’s 60th anniversary promotion. The Buttrose Barbie is wearing a pink jacket and carrying a black handbag in the Instagram image.

Jobs at risk

The ABC is still facing an $84m shortfall over the next three years from July – on top of a hole in the budget where the $43m grant for news gathering used to be. Anderson told the committee that the Coalition had not yet confirmed that the funding for additional newsroom resources would be renewed, putting a number of jobs and services at risk.

“When it comes to looking at what our expenditure will be over the next three years, I have stated before that it is difficult to maintain all of our services as they are, currently, with that budget reduction.”

Labor’s communications spokeswoman, Michelle Rowland, has called for the Coalition to tell the ABC if the additional funding would be forthcoming.

“Funding for this news-gathering initiative, which strengthens local and regional news, runs out in only a few months yet still the minister has not confirmed whether it will be continued,” Rowland said.

Devine comedy

It was Miranda Devine’s turn to spruik her wares to readers of the Daily Telegraph on Thursday. The full-page ad for Devine’s commentary is part of a News Corp Australia’s “We’re For You” national branding campaign.

“As a journalist for 30 years I know how to dig for the story,” Devine said without a hint of humility. “As a proud Sydneysider I know what makes this city tick. As a mathematician I know the importance of assembling the data for a logical argument. My science background equips me with informed scepticism about green lies. I was the first to write about the scourge of Safe Schools and will never let the politicians responsible off the hook.”

The page of her adventures for the Tele doesn’t mention her support of Pell or any of the wider reactions to her more colourful stories, like the time in 2013 when she donned a headscarf and spent a day at Lakemba mosque. “I’ve gone undercover in a mosque and flown to Afghanistan and Iraq to interview our troops.”

Feel the churn

When drawing up a list of the nation’s most prolific journalists one would expect to see some real stars at the top of the rankings. But, because of the Daily Mail’s business model, the most prolific reporters are the ones who churn out stories based on the original reporting of others.

According to the media monitoring provider Streem the top five spots went to Daily Mail Australia reporters, with some pumping out more than 1,000 stories in a year, or an average of 4.5 every day.

But when you remove the DM pack, the list makes more sense. It is dominated by sports (Michael Lynch from the Age) and business reporters (Scott Murdoch from the Oz), as you’d expect. But there are some political writers in there too. Notably, Guardian Australia’s political editor, Katharine Murphy, clocked up 556 bylines between 1 March 2018 and 25 February 2019 – all of them original work! The Australian Financial Review’s political editor, Phil Coorey, was there too with 616 bylines and the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald’s chief political correspondent, David Crowe, with 533.