Glenn Stevens grilled — by Kochie. There will be a few noses out of joint at some of the big news outlets over the big interview that got away: Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens has appeared on the Seven Network’s Sunrise program, to mark the central bank’s 50th anniversary. The first part of the interview aired today, the second tomorrow and the third is on Wednesday.

Today’s encounter was fairly fluffy, but there was one quote picked up by the market: Stevens said it would be unwise to keep interest rates too low for too long, and it would be potentially disruptive to raise them at too fast a pace. In fact the limited length of the interview showed the limitations of Sunrise and its key producer, Adam Boland. Another three minutes of Q&A from David Koch on a few serious parts of the economy would have made it a far more memorable interview. Koch knows the subject matter, but there was no trust in the Sunrise audience for enduring more than 4-5 minutes of economic discussion.

Property was the key part of this interview segment. Stevens said people may be imprudent if they gauge that the road to prosperity is to “leverage up” by investing in real estate with prices already high. He said he had children and knew that soon they would be wondering if they could afford to buy property. On Wednesday we will get a look at the central bank’s vault in Sydney for the first time.

As a coup, it was great, as an interview of someone who just doesn’t speak to the media, except through official statements full of economic jargon, it was a failure on the part of those who run Sunrise. To allow him (indeed, to try and force him to address people in everyday non-jargon) would have been a bigger coup, for all involved. — Glenn Dyer

The director and the company collapse (but she doesn’t work for us). Normally the Fairfax business media is quick to highlight the role of boards and management when a good company goes bad very quickly. The problems at Allco, Babcock and Brown, Mirvac, GPT and Centro come to mind where writers, commentators and columnists have pilloried the management and boards of the companies involved for allowing their companies to lose millions, indeed billions.

So you would have thought Fairfax writers would have been giving everyone at Sigma Pharmaceuticals a touch up over its impending disaster. Sigma is expected to reveal losses of more than $250 million today or tomorrow. They have been promised for more than  a month and were to be released last week, but were delayed until tomorrow at the latest. An unexpected loss of that size and the poor disclosure has produced some criticism at Fairfax, and a fairly defensive attitude at the same time.

Certainly chairman John Stocker has been end of a barb or two; this one from the Sydney Morning Herald‘s CBD column is an example, while the news reports have been straight as a die, as have various columnists in the SMH, the Australian Financial Review (locked) and The Age.

All but one mentioned the name of Sigma’s head of its audit committee, Linda Nicholls. That was the story in the AFR, which said she was also chairman of Healthscope and a former chairman of Australia Post. None of the reports mentioned that she was a new director at Fairfax, one of the trio of newcomers chosen by chairman Roger Corbett. So why the lack of mention?  Why is there a criticism-free zone in the Fairfax media newspapers around the chairman of the audit committee of a listed company that is going to report a huge and unexpected loss? — Glenn Dyer

The Tele‘s plain-speak. It seems that Lorem Ipsum is a little too highbrow for The Daily Telegraph. None of that fake-latin placeholder text; our readers want plain English.

29-03-2010 1-00-45 PM

Rupert wants everyone to pay — but no kids

“Rupert Murdoch’s preregistration for The Times paywall seems to suggest that it’ll welcome anyone — even newborns. But the 13-page Ts+Cs might put them off … if the lack of security doesn’t.” — The Guardian

Alleged? ACA names him anyway

“The Nine Network’s A Current Affair this week did something that Australian media is generally reluctant to do: it named a man — a TV dad, from a popular 1980s sitcom — as a child molester.” — The Australian

Ad “retargeting” coming to a site near you

“If someone visits a page on an advertiser’s own site or YouTube channel, Google can now show a related follow-up ad to just that person when they visit another site which shows Google ads.” — Tech Crunch

CNN faces the wrath of Scientologists

“The Church of Scientology’s aggressive suppression tactics against journalists are well-documented (recall the recent spat between the church and the St Petersburg Times, or that Tom Cruise indoctrination video and ensuing media standoff). It sounds like CNN and Anderson Cooper are about to find out first-hand. — The Wrap

Hey, Murdoch. On the BBC just f-ck off

“In language worthy of his most famous creation, Malcolm Tucker, The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci today called on the BBC to do more to defend itself from its critics — and “find someone to articulately tell James Murdoch to f-ck off”.” — The Guardian