(Image: AAP/Dan Himbrechts)

Playing the hits It’s been only a relatively brief period but the COVID era has nonetheless produced a few tried and true story formats, one of which arced up at the weekend.

Step one: finding a group of people who are breaking no rules but have the temerity to not be breaking those rules in a pleasant public space. Step two: chuck a telephoto lens on your camera. Step three: profit (if we define profit as the wife of a former prime minister calling for people who’ve committed no crime to be arrested)!

The irony is — as is often the case with confected outrages — that there very much is a story represented by the images of beachgoers, and it’s not the one everyone’s banging on about.

Kids in poorer and more diverse south-west Sydney suburbs, already subjected to some of the lowest access to green space in the city, are having the basketball hoops removed in their parks. There is a legitimate debate to be had about inequality of freedom and how that is decided, one that’s being absolutely overshadowed by hand-wringing over people attempting to glean a little joy from miserable circumstances within the current COVID rules and risk profile.

The final word The Australian cannot, it will surprise no one to hear, allow the ABC the final word, even concerning an embarrassment most publications would like to put behind them.

Last week the Oz attempted to argue that, far from being relentless and petty in its coverage of the ABC, it was actually the public broadcaster that’s obsessed with it. The paper got some “research” to that effect from the Institute of Public Affairs, giving it to rising culture warrior Sophie Elsworth, who duly gave it the old Ctrl V Ctrl C treatment. The findings were incredible: Aunty had mentioned Murdoch and News Corp 1700 times in just 30 days. Except of course it hadn’t, because of course it hadn’t.

The ABC is always keen to correct the records when it feels it’s been wronged by another publication, but what followed was particularly sharp. “There were nowhere near 1700 unique relevant mentions of ‘News Corp’ or ‘Murdoch’ on ABC platforms during the 30 days” goes the response on the “correcting the record” section of its website. It assails the research on two fronts — it counts a single mention on syndicated material as many instances, and doesn’t differentiate between mentions of Rupert Murdoch, Murdoch Uni, any number of Murdoch streets, Lauren Murdoch or (we assume) Howling Mad Murdock. We’re sure ABC spinner Sally Jackson was particular pleased with the final note:

The Australian’s story is false, misleading and frankly ridiculous. The ABC has sought a correction from The Australian. And drivers should be careful of traffic conditions in Murdoch St, Cremorne, and Murdoch Road, South Morang.

The Australian published another story concerning the matter, conceding there were some “flaws” in the research (almost like the Oz and the IPA had some kind of shared interest in not checking too closely?) but, and this is pretty impressive, using the ABC’s response as evidence that the crux of the original story was accurate (bear in mind the following does not come from an opinion piece):

An ABC press release giving its account of the IPA data ­inspired a typically feverish ­social media pile on from ABC staff, its cheerleaders at Guardian Australia and, of course, Media Watch.

Responding angrily to our wildly inaccurate reporting about you? Um, why are you so obsessed with us? A further point to note is that the IPA only concedes it over-counted by fewer than 200 instances, putting the updated figure at 1525. Which still sounds very high, and is far in excess of the ABC’s estimation that the true number was “probably less than 10%” of the 1700 figure. It will be interesting if another “correcting the record” is on its way.