The Palestinian journalists and videographers working with Australia’s national broadcaster to bring us the stories from inside Gaza are hungry and weak, the ABC’s Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran said this week. One colleague “does not have the strength to hold a camera any more”, has lost 34kg and can hardly talk on the phone, Doran wrote.
“And it could seriously impact how we can tell the broader story of the Gaza war.”
The scenes of aid seekers scrambling for food, babies lying silently in hospital beds and Palestinians protesting against Hamas for prolonging the war would be impossible without these Palestinian freelancers, Doran warned.
The ABC correspondent was among some of the world’s biggest news outlets, including BBC News, Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Associated Press and Reuters who said they were “desperately concerned” about the journalists in Gaza after widespread warnings of mass starvation.
With Israel denying international reporters access to Gaza, most of the world’s news outlets rely on Palestinian freelancers to inform the world, but hunger and lack of clean water is making them ill and exhausted, with some telling agencies they are too weak to work.
“One of the biggest and most important stories in the world … will soon be more difficult to tell, as our colleagues struggle to help us tell it,” Doran said.
Doran’s online analysis was accompanied by several broadcast reports on starvation on the 7pm bulletin across the week. “The ABC has worked with a variety of independent journalists in Gaza over the past two years, but in recent weeks that has become increasingly difficult as displacement and starvation make it harder for journalists in Gaza,” a spokesperson for ABC News told Weekly Beast.
Following Trump’s playbook
Meanwhile, the Murdoch campaign to denigrate if not privatise the ABC – “a massive government-funded monstrosity” – continues apace.
According to Daily Telegraph columnist and blogger Tim Blair, an Australia without the ABC is “beautiful” and we should follow the US administration’s lead and defund public media.
In May, Trump issued an executive order blocking NPR and PBS from receiving taxpayer funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
This week, federal lawmakers voted in support of the plan to claw back $1.1bn from the CPB, the umbrella organisation that helps fund both NPR and the non-commercial TV network PBS.
“Donald Trump’s modern and visionary US government is now preparing to slash some $1.7bn from public media funding,” Blair wrote. “That’s an ABC-and-a-half delightfully subtracted from taxpayer outlay.
“Think of all the money we’d save, and all the economic, cultural and emotional energy we could direct instead towards the positive and productive.
“Also, think of all the ABC presenters who’d suddenly be able to reach much larger audiences just by shouting on public transport.”
Blair’s view is not shared by the majority of Australians, who consistently rate the ABC’s impartial coverage of local, national and global affairs as the country’s most trusted news source.
The ABC news website is number one on the monthly Ipsos news rankings, with an audience of 13 million. The Daily Telegraph meanwhile comes in at 17, with 3 million. (Guardian Australia is sixth with 7.3 million.)
And this week, the ABC was celebrating 15 years of the ABC News channel, which is Australia’s most watched news channel.
Old dog still barks
Another ABC critic, Gerard Henderson, is using his new platform on Murdoch’s Sky News Australia to continue his decades-long criticism of Aunty. His campaign began in his tedious Media Watch Dog column in 1988 as a newsletter mailed out by the Sydney Institute.
The rightwing thinktank run by Henderson publishes his lengthy screed each week online, and for more than a decade it was republished by The Australian each Friday. The Australian stopped carrying Henderson’s Media Watch Dog column late last year, but Hendo found refuge on the website of Sky News.
His new home also gave him access to Sky’s media program where he appears to variously “slam” ABC Insiders, “question” why the ABC didn’t cover Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon press conference or “torch” the ABC “for continually promoting the Teals even after the election”. These videos are then published by The Australian. The Oz continues to carry his opinion column, which the paper picked up after the Sydney Morning Herald dropped it.
Daily Mail cops criticism
Victoria’s deputy premier, Ben Carroll, was highly critical of the Daily Mail for publishing a claim on Tuesday that a child at a centre where alleged childcare paedophile Joshua Dale Brown worked had tested positive for an STD. At a press conference Carroll said the story was not true and the Department of Health had asked the publication to take it down.
“It is highly insensitive to families, and it is completely untrue,” Carroll said. “From what we have advised, there is no child that has been tested positively for an STD. This must be horrifically traumatic for all families and parents involved in this, and we do hope that the author behind it makes contact with the Department of Health and gets their facts straight.”
The editor of the Daily Mail, Felicity Hetherington, did not comply with the request and the story remains online.
“As the article states, it is based on information provided by sources close to the investigation,” she told Weekly Beast. “The article will be also updated to include Mr Carroll’s comments.”
The lead paragraph of the story was amended to include the word “reportedly” and the headline includes the deputy premier’s denial.
“A child who attended a daycare centre where a worker was subsequently charged with more than 70 child sex offences has reportedly been infected with a sexually transmitted disease,” the new version says.
The new business of influence
Influencer and fitness model Tammy Hembrow, 31, is a staple in the Daily Mail, where her outfits, relationships and workout routines provide near-daily fodder.
So when the Daily Mail reported this week that Hembrow’s “very revealing outfit” of “a tiny silk crop top and matching skirt set by Arcina Ori” was worn to the Australian Financial Review magazine’s 30th anniversary at the Sydney Opera House, we sat up and noticed.
The first edition of AFR magazine, in 1995, carried a cover story about how Australian dynasties preserved wealth, and not much has changed. The anniversary edition features a gold-foiled cover with its gatefold partner Rolex.
A celebration dinner at the Opera House’s Bennelong restaurant, sponsored by Range Rover which ferried some guests to the venue, was attended by everyone from Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull and ABC chair Kim Williams to business leaders Robin Khuda of AirTrunk, Morgan Stanley chief executive Richard Stanley and the managing partner of Gilbert + Tobin, Danny Gilbert.
It turns out we should not have been surprised Hembrow was a guest. She held her own among the finance crowd, many of whom were members of the Rich List, Young Rich List and the Power List from the AFR.
In 2022, Hembrow’s then $38m fortune saw her appear on the magazine’s Young Rich List for the first time. She used social media to build businesses including fitness app Tammy Fit and clothing brand Saski Collection.
The latest rich list has her fortune at $56m.
Tributes for Peter Ryan
Former ABC News Breakfast host Michael Rowland has paid tribute to his colleague Peter Ryan OAM, who died on Friday aged 64 from metastatic thyroid cancer.
We told you in June that Ryan, the ABC’s senior business correspondent and a 45-year veteran of journalism, was retiring.
“When I last saw him in hospital a few weeks ago, Peter was full of old stories and good cheer, despite his health challenges, Rowland said. “An avowed Beatles tragic, he gave me no shortage of tips and fun facts as I was heading off on a visit to Liverpool. It was an afternoon I will always treasure.”
Ryan leaves behind his wife, Mary Cotter, and daughter Charlotte.
Language warning
Your reaction to a viral video published by the Nine Entertainment youth outlet Pedestrian TV probably depends on your age.
At a press junket for the movie The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Pedestrian reporter Rebekah Manibog casually asked one of the movie’s stars, Vanessa Kirby, the following question: “But jumping right into you, Vanessa, you’ve kind of become a social media icon for your forcefield, snatched, cunty fierceness face.”
Shock and confusion crossed Kirby’s face as she interrupted Manibog’s question with: “Oh, oh my god, I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”
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Her co-star, Pedro Pascal, saved the interaction by jumping in to explain the slang, which is apparently so common in queer and internet culture, the reporter felt comfortable throwing it into an interview.
“Cunty-face just means fierce, fabulous, beautiful, strong, it’s good, it’s good, I promise,” Pascal said.