Kerry O’Brien announced on the 7.30 Report last night that Michael Brissenden, the program’s political editor, had just filed his last report from Canberra. Mr Brissenden is off to join the somewhat large team of ABC reporters in the United States.

7.30 Report viewers will recall that Michael Brissenden seldom, if ever, broke a story during his time in the political editor’s slot.  Rather he repeated, or elaborated upon, the ABC News’ coverage of Australian national politics each evening.  In recent times, this position has been covered well by Chris Uhlmann, who is tipped to take over Brissenden’s 7.30 Report slot.

About the only story that Michael Brissenden ever broke on the 7.30 Report was his report — on 14 August 2007 — of an off-the-record private dinner which he and two journalists had with the (then) Treasurer Peter Costello two years previously.  The main problem was that Brissenden and his colleagues got the date hopelessly wrong — they could not even distinguish between a dinner in Canberra on a mild night in early autumn and one in the depths of a cold Canberra winter. [Do we know if any of the dinner party attendees were tired and emotional on the night? Ed]

Brissenden also misled viewers by brandishing a piece of paper which he claimed to be his notes of the dinner — whereas, in fact, what he held up was a collective note initiated by another journalist which bore a false date.  7.30 Report viewers have still not been informed of when the actual dinner took place.  And Peter Costello has denied the accuracy of the report – in addition to criticising Brissenden’s breach of journalistic ethics.

The ABC never properly investigated this matter and Brissenden consistently refused to provide a copy of the note of the dinner or to answer questions about the occasion – including the ethics of breaching the understanding that off-the-record means precisely that. [Strange that. I thought the ABC signed up to the Right-To-Know Coalition – Ed].

ABC management reluctantly acknowledged – sort of – that 7.30 Report presenter Kerry O’Brien should not have allowed Brissenden to report his own story, on account of the conflict of interest involved.  But MWD reckons this is a bit harsh.  After all, Brissenden only broke one story in over three years.  So it’s understandable that he would want to be involved in this – even if it meant breaching a confidence and getting his facts wrong.

The history of this event is documented in Issue 34 of The Sydney Institute Quarterly.  Issue 35, due out shortly, contains new information on Mr Brissenden’s one and only 7.30 Report scoop.

Deb Cameron’s – Pay-Attention-To-Aunty’s-News Mantra

Addressing The Sydney Institute last Tuesday, Professor Ian Plimer commented that his book Heaven & Earth: Global Warming – The Missing Science (Connorcourt, 2009) had been mauled by several reviewers on the ABC Radio National Science Show and Ockman’s Razor programs.  Plimer commented that no view even remotely favourable to his position had been heard on either of Robyn Williams’ programs and that he had been denied an immediate right-of-reply to his critics.

MWD awaits developments.  But perhaps the rationale behind this decision can be gauged by comments made by Deborah Cameron (the ABC’s leading eco-catastrophist) who interviewed Michael Brissenden on Metropolitan Radio 702 in Sydney on Tuesday 16 June 2009.  Ms Cameron revealed that, on such matters as climate change, ABC News does not report the news — rather it proclaims the ABC’s notion of truth.  Let’s go to the audio tape — commencing where Ms Cameron asked Mr Brissenden about whether Independent Senator Steve Fielding is likely to support the Rudd Government’s climate change legislation:

Deborah Cameron: Now I wonder if Senator Fielding has fallen in behind any particular camp. He’d be a poker player, this joker. Don’t you reckon?

Michael Brissenden: [Laughter] Well I don’t know. I’m not sure he’d be a particularly good one. Look, he went to a meeting with Penny Wong and the Chief Scientist yesterday because he obviously has some — as he has been expressing — he has some concerns that he needs to be convinced that human activity is causing climate change.  He took his own scientists in as well.  So, I’m not sure he’s not convinced of the science  I  just think he’s more convinced of one branch of the science than the other branch of the science.

And he says that he sort of came out of that basically  saying that although these scientists had tried to tell him that, while it was true that the world had not been warming progressively since 1998, that there had been a trend down – 13 of the last 14 years have been the hottest on record since 1850. And that the evidence that the climate was warming should also be looked at through the temperature in the ocean which, you know, had been increasing quite alarmingly.

Now some scientists argued this, certainly the Chief Scientist argued this with him. And he came out basically saying “Well, you know, I haven’t heard this ocean temperatures thing before” so…

DC: [Much laughter here]

MB:  Well, look, I think he’s still far from convinced.

DC: You know, all those news bulletins that the ABC puts out Michael. Why bother?

Deborah Cameron continued laughing at the prospect that someone does not accept the ABC News as gospel – or, rather, scientific – truth.

NANCY‘S PICKS OF THE WEEK: Phillip Adams — Doctor of Emails (Honoris Causa)

Nancy was thrilled to receive an email this week from Late Night Live presenter Phillip Adams following his citation in “Nancy’s Pick-of-the-Week” in the last issue.  It seems that the ABC’s Man in Black was upset by Nancy’s common courtesy in acknowledging Mr Adams’ many, many gongs and honorifics.  The fact is that Adams has declared all this and more in his approved entry in Who’s Who in Australia 2009.

The good news is that Phillip Adams is an enthusiastic reader of MWD.  So enthusiastic, in fact, that he believes that he was short-changed in the gongs area last week – as the following documentation demonstrates:

From: Phillip
Sent: Tuesday, 23 June 2009 2:12 PM
To: Gerard Henderson
Subject: your favourite subject – you

Well, in this case, me … Noting your latest and umpteenth attack makes it clear that an update to your dated data base  is long, long overdue….as well as two Orders of Australia I’ve got not just one but FOUR hon.doctorates … and you’ll have to add FAHA to the honorifics … let’s gloss over my being (along with Don Bradman and John Howard) an official National Treasure , a Walkley, the Human Rights Medal, a pile of AFI Awards, the Longford, Humanist of the Year and even an ancient Logie … etc etc etc … incidentally, would you like me to nominate you for an OAM? what are friends for?  don’t forget to take your pills …

To: Phillip Adams AO

From: Gerard Henderson

Date: 23 June 2009
Subject: Re: your favourite subject – you

Dear Phillip

Thanks for your note updating me on your many qualifications and gongs – honorary or otherwise.  Well done. In my Media Watch Dog on Friday – in my reference to Beatrix Campbell OBE  – I referred to you as follows:

Phillip Adams AO (1992), AM (1987), Hon. DUniv (Griffith), Hon. DLitt (ECU), Hon. DUniv (SA), FRSA.

I took all this from your entry in the current edition of Who’s Who in Australia. The Australian last Saturday slightly altered the list.  If you have (yet) more honorary degrees I assume that you will let Who’s Who know.  Your need for re-assurance demands no less.

As to your proposal to nominate me for an OAM, I must decline the kind offer.  I think it is ridiculous for opinionated columnists like me, or you, or the late Paddy McGuinness or Michelle Grattan or, indeed, Bea Campbell OBE (Stalinist, Retd.) to accept gongs from Government House or The Palace.

As to your “don’t forget to take your pills” advice – I would suggest that, as a complier of jokes, you need some fresh material.

Best wishes

Gerard Henderson

Romeo as Murder Victim

This week Nancy was also much impressed with Liam Houlihan’s reportage of the Melbourne gangland wars in the Herald-Sun. In Issue 15, MWD expressed concern about the confinement on remand of colourful Melbourne identity – and published author – Judy Moran. This is capable of having a deleterious effect on Melbourne intellectual life. Sure, MUP has signed-up Mick Gatto to publish his memoirs this October.  But the Melbourne literary scene is not so deep that it can afford to have Ms Moran away from the computer, so to speak, at her Majesty’s pleasure.

Fortunately, Liam Houlihan can pick a literary vacuum when he sees one.  In the Sunday Herald-Sun on 21 June, he reported the emergence of a brand new man-of-letters in Melbourne:

The last man standing in the gangland war has told how he was almost executed recently by a gangland figure. Underworld survivor Herbert Wrout was still recovering from an assassin’s bullet, which remains lodged in his spine, when a known criminal identity, who cannot be named, allegedly tried to finish him off with a knife.

Wrout is the last real target standing – not locked up or in a cemetery – from the bloody gangland war. Wrout is working on a gangland memoir Don’t Murder Me Again, which he says will reveal:

The gangland killings still continuing allegedly had their origins in a Romeo and Juliet-style relationship between Carl Williams and Sue Kane, who was arrested during the week in relation to Des Moran’s murder….

MWD awaits – with some considerable excitement – the publication of Don’t Murder Me Again.  As with Mr Gatto’s forthcoming tome, MWD anticipates that Mr Wrout’s autobiography will receive favourable reviews.  After all, who would not be touched by the compelling depiction of convicted murderer Carl Williams as Romeo and Sue Kane (who has been charged with being an accessory after the fact to murder) as Juliet?  [Good stuff. Maybe Mr Wrout should apply for a literary grant from the Australia Council or some such. Ed].

PAUL SHEEHAN’S PYNE

MWD was much impressed by Paul Sheehan’s opinion column in the Sydney Morning Herald last Monday on the Liberal Party and its current woes.  Your man Sheehan was not shy on being opinionated.  He described Christopher Pyne, the Leader of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives and the Liberal Member for Sturt, in the following terms:

Why would the Prime Minister, and an independent MP, refer to Pyne as the member for skirt?  Is Pyne, who is married with young children, a womaniser?  That has never been suggested. No the reason is in plain sight. Pyne is prissy, punctilious, irritating. Whenever he bobs to his feet or interjects, which is incessantly, I feel like lighting the mosquito coil.

That was just for starters and Mr Sheehan went on to bag Mr Pyne’s Liberal Party colleagues.  In Paul Sheehan’s opinion, Malcolm Turnbull is “the bruiser”, Joe Hockey is “the boof” and Christopher Pyne is “the bore”.  Sheehan reported that: “The Speaker finds him [Pyne] a pyne in the neck.  So does the press gallery.”  [Good play on words, don’t you think? Ed]

MWD looks back with a certain fondness on Paul Sheehan’s book The Electronic Whorehouse (Macmillan 2003) – which, according to the publisher’s blurb, railed against such media transgressions as “point scoring”, “axe grinding” and “sneering”.  At Page 17 of The Electronic Whorehouse, the author condemned “vanity” and “the cliché” as among “the worst of journalism’s standard operating practices”.  At Page 20, Mr Sheehan claimed that the problem with the media was that “opinion, commentary and propaganda reign victorious”.   And at Page 277, Paul Sheehan spoke out against “bile-jargon” and condemned members of the “news media” who engage in the practice of “constantly patronising or belittling elected representatives of parliament”.  Well now.

IN DEFENCE OF AMANDA DUTHIE (CONTINUED)

In Issue 14 MWD maintained that Amada Duthie had been treated badly by ABC management following the airing of the skit on terminally ill child cancer victims in the second edition of The Chaser’s War on Everything’s current series.  The point was that, prior to this skit going to air, ABC management had no problem whatsoever with The Chaser’s so-called satire and black humour being directed at the disabled in wheelchairs, young male victims of alleged sexual assault, breast cancer sufferers, the Holocaust and so on.

The point was that if ABC management approved such antics of The Chaser – along with their acts of trespass on private property – why should Ms Duthie expect that ABC management would draw the line on the “Make A (Realistic) Wish Foundation” gag?  By the way, this skit was not even original – having been “borrowed” from the American satirical team The Onion.  In 2008, The Onion did a spoof titled “Child Bankrupts Make-A-Wish Foundation with Wish for Unlimited Wishes”. The “Boys” at The Chaser seem to have lifted an American example of poor taste and re-packaged it as their own.

In the event, Ms Duthie, who was Head of ABC TV’s Arts, Entertainment & Comedy, lost the responsibility for comedy – which was handed over to her upward referral Courtney Gibson.  In short, Duthie was demoted and humiliated in the process.  However, yesterday The Australian revealed that Ms Gibson had been handed the inserts – including the “Make a (Realistic) Wish Foundation” skit – which screened in The Chaser’s War On Everything on the evening in question. Apparently Ms Gibson did not bother to view the material.  Senior ABC Management had given The Chaser “Boys” (average age 35) license to do as they please – so there was no reason to expect that Courtney Gibson or her boss Kim Dalton would have pulled the skit if one or both had viewed it.  Clearly Ms Duthie was a convenient patsy for ABC management’s mishandling of The Chaser “Boys” over many years.

SEND THE BOYS TO MECCA CAMPAIGN – EPISODE 3

Meanwhile it was great to see The Boys  back on air last Wednesday as The Chaser’s War On Everything re-commenced its ten-part series after two weeks in the sin bin.  And what courage Chaser executive producer Julian Morrow showed in doing yet another skit on the Catholic Church in St Peter’s Square.  The joke involved the usual Chaser stalking – along with a laugh at the Catholic Church’s wealth and beliefs.  The Chaser’s taxpayer funded trip to Rome did not provide any interviews with any senior members of the Hierarchy but there were lotsa opportunities to mock lesser mortals.

The whole episode was quite inspiring. Which re-enforces MWD’s campaign to Send the Boys to Mecca.  If Mr Morrow can laugh at Catholicism within the Vatican City then, surely, he can laugh at Islam within the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. The good news is that this week Nancy received another gift in kind. One more (brand new) body bag for the return trip. It’s a rather large one so it should accommodate Mr Morrow.  Only two more required.

Until next time.