First of all, here's what we have for you this week:
- Killer Grabs: Quotes from around the traps.
- The scrambled attempt to silence ABC journalists — By Scott Mitchell
- The Good Ones: The best journalism, opinion and entertainment for you to enjoy.
Right now, Australia and Israel are locked in the most bitter and personal diplomatic dispute since the latter state was created in 1948.
Over the past week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Anthony Albanese of "abandoning Jews" and "empowering Hamas". The catalyst for these extraordinary, incendiary and completely deranged comments was a story published by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that was quickly debunked by Lamestream.
On Thursday, Netanyahu alleged that Hamas had congratulated Albanese. We know now that is simply not true, despite The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald's attempts to defend their reporting. But that's become the bedrock of Netanyahu's assault on Albanese, an attack promulgated by virtually every mainstream outlet in Australia.
You would think that now a piece of misreporting has become central to the relationship between Netanyahu and Albanese, other media outlets would be willing to dig into how and why The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald ended up publishing something so misrepresentative, so clearly aligned to the Israeli government's ambitions and so obviously an attempt to disrupt domestic Australian politics. But from the biggest mainstream outlets, there has been nothing.
The ABC's Media Watch program didn't touch it. The best The Guardian, the giant multinational outlet that constantly tries to convince its readers it is the last bulwark against fascism in order to squeeze money out of them, could muster up was describing the story as "slightly confusing".
Israel couldn't ask for a better friend than the Australian media establishment.
We would love to hear any ideas or feedback at all, whether it's about the look and feel of it, what you want to read more about from us or how often you'd like to hear from us.
It's against this backdrop that the ABC decided to announce a new set of policies designed to restrict what it's staff can say in public: on social media, at public events and even in group chats.
The original policy was scrapped in the wake of the damning Lattouf judgement. But the ABC is definitely not responding to the verdict by embracing the reaffirmed right of its staff to express political opinions. It's the opposite, and it's already been blasted by experts.
In this week's newsletter, Scott has a detailed breakdown on the background to this new attempt to gag staff, what's different from the last version, and questions whether ABC management have any idea what they are doing.
Killer Grabs
"He's pretty much become a national joke. He's probably Australia's most hated man." – Zali Burrows, former Palmer United Party candidate and lawyer, speaking about her client Bruce Lehrmann.
Look, she probably isn't wrong.
But whose fault is that?
"There are further documents I prepared but I’m embarrassed to say they’re not here. Can we finish early and resume tomorrow morning?"
– Zali Burrows.
Burrows didn't have a great time in court this week in her attempt to appeal Lehrmann's defamation loss. She struggled to get across the brief and continually asked for more time, which the Federal Court denied.
In response to this particular request, Justice Wigney was straightford: "I don’t think so."
"The Saturday Paper’s special correspondent Jason Koutsoukis also in the race, after the position was readvertised recently." – Nine newspapers on Guardian Australia's ongoing hunt for a chief political editor.
"Some of the names that had been rumoured for the role include [...] Jason Koutsoukis." – Crikey on the ABC's recently concluded hunt for a chief digital political correspondent.
They say most journalists really want to be actors. If that's true, then the Canberra press gallery's Jason Katsoukis got hint of the star treatment from the press this week, getting publicly linked to more potential projects than Austin Butler fresh off of Elvis.
We're all for print journalists getting the Variety magazine treatment. Can we just get a few more descriptors such as 'circling the role', 'attached to the project' and 'gathering momentum'?
The scrambled attempt to silence ABC journalists
By Scott Mitchell
The ABC’s regime for policing the social media of journalists was embarrassed during the Lattouf trial and dumped just hours after a court found it had acted unlawfully in terminating her after a post on her instagram. It turns out the replacement policy, announced this week, could be open to unlawful use; senior ABC managers are not clear on when it will apply, the media union and lawyers are highly critical of it, but it’s going ahead anyway.
The biggest news organisation in the country has announced the new rules while journalists from across the media – including at the ABC – have been exercising their rights to political expression by attending rallies calling for an end to the slaughter in Gaza, while others have taken a stand against the killing of journalists by Israel. Action that in the past has brought significant heat from the right-wing media and lobby groups.
