Sky falls on Tony Abbott as News Corp columnist urges him to sue for defamation | The Weekly Beast

They may share a name but there is nothing similar about Sky News UK and Sky News Australia, at least where Tony Abbott is concerned.

The Australian Sky is wholly owned by News Corporation while Sky UK is owned by Comcast and hasn’t been part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire since he sold his shares in 2018.

Interviewing health secretary Matt Hancock, Sky News UK host Kay Burley asked if Abbott was the right person to be a trade envoy for Britain when he is a “homophobic misogynist”?

It wasn’t like anything you would hear on Sky News Australia, or any other TV network here to be fair.

“He says he feels threatened by homosexuality, he also says elderly people should be left to die naturally from Covid and men are better set to exercise authority than women,” Burley said, to which Hancock just repeated that Abbott was the right pick because he was good at trade.

Australian Sky News panellist and Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi said the interview was “absolutely despicable” and called on the former prime minister to sue for defamation.

“Defamatory BS from a repeat offender” she said. “Tony Abbott should consult a lawyer. These unfounded slurs, pushed by his loony Left political opponents, are stated as fact by ‘journalists’ in the UK.”

But Burley wasn’t alone in her characterisation of Abbott. Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, told Burley that Abbott’s views were “deeply offensive and wrong” and he was “not the kind of person who should be a trade envoy for the UK”.

Kenny report

While we’re on Sky, we heard from Sky host Chris Kenny who was most unhappy that we wrote that “Aunty is the focus of most of his journalistic efforts at Sky News and the Australian”.

Kenny, an associate editor at the Australian, would like it known that across his two columns and six television programs a week the ABC made up just 10% of his output.

In the spirit of reconciliation, we are happy to report that on Thursday Kenny wasn’t talking about the ABC. He railed against Victoria’s “extreme lockdown” and the “nanny state” of the “socialist left premier”.

“Just imagine for a moment if John Howard or Tony Abbott were doing this, imagine if Jeff Kennett had tried to lock his whole state down,” Kenny said.

“They’d never have done it of course, but if they’d tried people would have revolted, the unions, the media, the human rights bodies would have been outraged and mobilised.”

Facebook’s friends

Some journalists had their stories ready to publish this week when Facebook announced on Tuesday morning it would block Australians from sharing news if a landmark plan to make digital platforms pay for news content became law.

Although it was big news for Australian publishers, Facebook’s mammoth PR machine targeted US journalists for the scoop and the exclusive interviews while ignoring the entire Australian media.

Dylan Byers from NBC along with Bloomberg and the New York Times reported the news first.

Sources told Weekly Beast the targeting of the US media indicated Facebook’s main concern was that the mandatory code would set an “international precedent” and they clearly wanted to signal to the US that they would play hardball.

Media diversity

There was progress of sorts in diversity in the media this week with the appointment of a news director for SBS, Mandi Wicks. Wicks, who replaces Jim Carroll, is now the only female TV news director in Australia. Her appointment came amidst a bruising debate at the multicultural broadcaster over the diversity of management and the board and the treatment of some Indigenous and non-white staff. Managing director James Taylor has hired an independent investigator to speak to disaffected staff.

A popular director of audio and language content at SBS for nine years, Wicks now lines up with the ABC’s Gaven Morris, Seven’s Craig McPherson, Nine’s Darren Wick, Ten’s Ross Dagan and Sky News’ Mark Calvert.

A webcast on media diversity held by Media Diversity Australia on Thursday was bombarded with racist and sexist messages in the Q&A section during the seminar. The messages, seen by Weekly Beast, were very ugly.

ABC redundancies

Early last year we tipped that the ABC Africa bureau based in Nairobi, Kenya, would close, ending decades of brilliant reporting by ABC correspondents including Marius Benson, Zoe Daniel, Sally Sara, Martin Cuddihy, Ginny Stein and Andrew Geoghegan.

That time has now come and the sole remaining producer has been made redundant. Coincidentally, former Africa correspondents Daniel and Geoghegan left the ABC in the same round of redundancies. Geoghegan, who said he was “forced to go”, posted a classy farewell video on his last day.

The ABC says it has not had a correspondent based in Africa since July 2018 and the bureau will close in January 2021.

“We’re facing significant budget pressures and, regrettably, we’re having to make changes to all our teams we’d prefer not to be making,” a spokeswoman said. “We’re seeking to protect as much of our international newsgathering operations as we can and keep as many correspondents in the field.

Africa will be covered by flying in correspondents and using freelancers.

Big softies?

Emma Alberici popped up on Twitter again this week to thank some off-air colleagues but also to make a rather pointed comment about her “trusted colleagues” being the giant soft toys from Play School.

Alberici may have been a high-profile departure, but she hasn’t been the only one. It’s been an exodus. The ABC has confirmed there has been more than 200 redundancies since June, including more than 80 in news. As reports of the number of senior women leaving Aunty emerged, the ABC was keen to disavow that senior women were targeted in any way.

“In relation to the assertion about more senior women being made redundant, we have not received any individual complaints about age discrimination in this process,” the ABC said in a statement. “As a commonwealth employer, the ABC is bound by the Age Discrimination Act, and takes any allegation of ageism and age discrimination in our workplace seriously.”

The corporation admits that a higher proportion of more senior employees opted for redundancy and that, in identifying redundant roles, a number of senior positions were targeted.

“We will continue to have discussions with the unions about any concerns around ageism in the redundancy process and if specific instances are raised we will of course look into that decision,” they said.

Gonski review

The outgoing ANZ Banking Group chairman, David Gonski, has made some remarkable comments about Rupert Murdoch in an interview with the Australian Financial Review.

“Rupert Murdoch, this may be the wrong thing to say to your paper, was what I would regard as one of the most consummate businessmen I have ever met,” Gonski said.

“In the middle of a meeting one day he said: ‘I’m just going to dictate an editorial’.

“And as far as I know, he had no papers in front of him and it sounded to me perfect. I couldn’t believe there was just a perfect piece of prose.

“And this in the middle of determining whether he was going to be buying a very expensive printing company.”

For conspiracy theorists it was proof that Rupert really does dictate the editorials in his Australian newspapers.