Media Week: Febrile media, radio fight gets personal
This week, an Adelaide radio spat gets very personal, and we ask who’s more “febrile”: the media or our fickle politicians?
Roo versus the Nuff Nuffs
Competition between sports presenters on Triple M and FIVEaa tipped over into personal attacks this week.
It started on Monday when Crows director Mark Ricciuto had a discussion on his Triple M breakfast show with co-host Chris Dittmar about the prospects of interim coach Scott Camporeale continuing on in the top job next year.
The quote which caused blowback from FIVEaa was this apparent comparison of Camporeale’s win-loss record with a less-than-succesful former Port coach: “(Camporeale’s) doing a good job at the moment isn’t he? He’s having a real crack and he’s very impressive in the media. Matty Primus did win five out of his seven games as a caretaker coach – he went pretty well.”
FIVEaa’s drive sports presenter Stephen Rowe went into meltdown that afternoon about the alleged disrespect to Camporeale.
“I was filthy hearing this from a club director,” he told listeners. “I was just disgusted.”
The next day, Triple M drive presenter Dale Lewis hit back on behalf of his station-mate, saying the “nuff nuffs at the over 55s” had taken Ricciuto out of context.
“So there’s the boys trying to whack Roo. Selective editing, just like their hearing…
“Talk about trying to grab a headline on an afternoon when you’ve got a boring shit-arse show on. Is that too much?”
And Lewis did seem to have a point about selective editing. He played the rest of Ricciuto’s comments, which were glowing about Camporeale’s record, possibly even over-positive.
“He’s seven and three since he took over and the first one you need to write off cos that West Coast game they weren’t ready to play, then the Sydney game was one of those games where they were just terrible, and then the Geelong game I reckon you can write that off as well,” Ricciuto said. “I reckon realistically he’s seven and one.”
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Ricciuto himself hasn’t spoken about the skirmish, but Media Week understands he’s angry and hurt by the treatment of his comments on FIVEaa and in The Advertiser.
Camporeale says he didn’t hear the comments, and he didn’t seem to care when asked about it yesterday.
Abraham’s Richard Carleton moment
The late Richard Carleton, one of Australia’s toughest journalists, is well-remembered for his piercing first question to Bob Hawke in 1983 after Hawke had taken the Labor leadership at the expense of Bill Hayden.
“Mr Hawke, could I ask you whether you feel a little embarrassed tonight at the blood that’s on your hands?”
A bristling Hawke was outraged at Carleton’s “impertinence” (watch video of the famous exchange below).
ABC 891’s Matthew Abraham was just as direct this week in his opening question to federal minister Christopher Pyne, one of the forces behind Tony Abbott’s demise as Prime Minister this week.
Pyne, for his part, was Hawkish in his response, bristling at Abraham’s “stunningly rude question”:
Q: “Chris Pyne, why did you rat on Tony Abbott?”
A: “What a ridiculous opening question Matthew. I’ve known you for so long – that really kind of takes the cake. .. I gave a long interview to David Speers yesterday on Sky where I talked about this change and I’ve decided that will be the end of me talking about this issue.”
Q: “So you’ll talk to Sky but you won’t talk to people in Adelaide on your local ABC station?”
A: “Last time I looked Sky was broadcast in Adelaide.”
“Febrile media” part 1
Journalists around Australia guffawed at outgoing Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s suggestion this week that a “febrile media” was somehow to blame for his demise.
Abbott played media games as relentlessly as any political figure in recent Australian history, constantly drip feeding spin to his favoured media outlets.
He also favoured the most genuinely “febrile” media contributors in Australian political debate, particularly Sydney shock jocks Ray Hadley and Alan Jones.
On Monday, Abbott came to Adelaide for what would be his final announcement as Prime Minister (details of which his government had already massaged through the Murdoch press).
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Crammed into the Traffic Management Centre in Norwood with the local press pack, Abbott was hoping to focus on his government’s contribution to the billion-dollar Northern Connector.
However, with leadership stories running in the national media for days – including spurred by targeted briefings from his own office – Abbott wasn’t going to get away with ignoring the elephant in the room.
The Australian’s Michael Owen, who has been criticised in the past for his combative approach, was one of the local reporters holding Abbott to account.
He hammered away, as reported by InDaily. And good on him and the other reporters who refused to ignore the obvious story unfolding.
Febrile? More like, doing their job.
“Febrile media” part 2
Aforementioned Christopher Pyne has today tempered his previously noted outrage at being accused of being one of the players behind Tony Abbott’s axing.
He’s also abandoned his short-lived policy of not talking again about the leadership changeover.
In an interview on Channel Nine today, Pyne revealed he’d changed his allegiances from Abbott to Turnbull in the space of 24 hours.
He said Abbott was given a warning by the party room in February and seven months later things weren’t any better.
“It was very hard for anyone to argue that he wasn’t given absolutely every opportunity to prove that he was the best person to lead the party,” he said.
“Febrile media” part 3
With the blood still being swabbed off the Liberal Party’s guillotine on Tuesday night, someone in the party found time to call The Advertiser with the hot tip that Christopher Pyne would be Defence Minister in the new Turnbull cabinet.
That confident prediction looked less certain as the week proceeded, with interstate party figures questioning whether the massive submarine spend should really be subject to backroom political deals.
And in an unusual move, Sunday Mail columnist Lainie Anderson this morning broke the usual code of journalism to peg who she believed to be the source of that Tiser story.
On ABC 891’s “Spin Cycle”, the crew were musing about Pyne’s initial refusal to talk about his vote in the leadership spill, when Anderson offered this comment: “I’m surprised he had time to vote, he was so busy getting that leak out to The Advertiser.”
Naughty corner
In a tumultuous week in politics, some readers didn’t appreciate InDaily’s interview with the head of Onions Australia about the demise of onion-munching Tony Abbott.
It came under close consideration for this week’s “naughty” award due to its egregious use of puns, but the man himself wins the prize for blaming the media for his own demise. His fickle colleagues didn’t rate much of a mention but last time we checked they were the ones casting the votes.
Top of the class
There was some excellent work this week, including from News Corp’s Sunday political reporter, Samantha Maiden, a former Adelaide journo who made a lot of the running on the growing leadership tensions in the Liberals. Then there was this astounding and brutally insightful article about the inner workings of Abbott’s office by veteran reporter Niki Savva in The Australian.
But when the nation was watching the leadership coup unfold, the only place to watch was ABC television. Host Greg Jennett, and political reporters Chris Uhlmann and Sabra Lane kept the flow of useful information coming, despite the fact they had to fill big gaps between the action. Over on Sky News, viewers were treated to a partisan shouting match between commentators.
Media Week is published on Fridays.
