Perhaps our readers can help us work out what the following events have to do with one another. High-profile ABC journalist Louise Milligan delivered a speech at a gala dinner for the Women Lawyers Association in the ACT in late October. According to a column in The Australian by Janet Albrechtsen on November 1:
Some women at the gala dinner were in tears, many more were hurt and upset, as they sat through an address they say shamed female barristers and lawyers who defend people accused of sexual crimes. Female defence lawyers who attended that evening, from senior members of the profession to more junior ones, claimed to The Australian they felt under attack by Milligan’s address.
Milligan responded on Twitter that it was “(typical) misinformation by The Australian“, listing the good feedback her speech had gotten and claiming that Albrechtsen “put to me multiple inaccuracies about the speech, including phrases I never used. I replied they were demonstrably untrue. She ran inaccuracies anyway, without my individual denials”:
Of course, even if the initial piece was 100% accurate, it would have nothing to do with Milligan’s abilities as a reporter. But that didn’t stop the Oz spinning out the tale for several more days — Milligan has said, pointedly, that a young female journalist writing one of these follow-ups said she was simply acting on the instructions of her editor: “She’s the 4th young woman at News Corp who has told me this”.
Just when you thought the matter could waste no more of our time, the ABC leadership had to attend Senate estimates to be grilled by culture warrior Liberals (the main kind still in Parliament after the teal wave). Senator Sarah Henderson used her unique access to important and highly paid public servants, such as ABC managing director David Anderson, to continue to drag the speech story out. It was only thanks to South Australian culture warrior and ice cream fantasist Alex Antic, who accused the ABC of “grooming children” (they had a drag queen on Play School once), that Henderson’s line of questioning was the second-dumbest thing to happen at estimates that day.
The ABC, for its part, put out a press release that was simply a list of Milligan’s achievements as a journalist. Impressive, but if we’re being consistent it doesn’t particularly prove that she’s not capable of a tone-deaf speech. Of course, we draw no false equivalence between the Oz having several reporters attempt to spin nothing much into a major story, which was then picked up by politicians and the ABC simply copying Milligan’s storied CV into a press release, but it contributed to some of the drearier elements in Australian journalism. Most particularly the sense that at a certain level, a lot of time and money that could be spent holding the powerful to account are instead directed towards published correspondence between high-profile rival media figures, the public interest barely factoring in.
Regardless of who you are, once you’ve gotten under the skin of those at The Australian (you must be doing something right) their vindictive vendetta is relentless.
They’re just awful, awful people
Swine, revolting swine. Perhaps a bit tough on the pigs but.
At least their Gadarene ancestors were minding their own snouts before being bedevilled.
Wow. I had no idea that defence lawyers, accustomed to retraumatizing rape victims, could prove to be so sensitive to criticism.
Apparently some of them were upset that their colleagues (enthusiastically) applauded Milligan’s speech. Poor petals.
Frightening, when the next generation of young lawyers reveal that they would be standing in the lynch mob trying to string up Tom Robinson, rather than shoulder to shoulder with Atticus Finch.
Milligan meanwhile is just another narcissistic, reactionary media autocrat, licensing herself to adjudicate on legal matters. Anyone with a brain and a progressive instinct should resist fawning over her ‘work’ just because she’s famous. Not a single one of her #MeToo era stories has turned out to have any real ‘justice’ substance on its own merits.
Not one. She’s all populist soft pap prog bandwagon, faddish hashtag, gargantuan diva ego, taxpayer-platformed p*ss and Twitterverse-amassed wind.
To paraphrase that classic anthem of alienated Boomer offspring “It’s not easy being a sea-green Incorruptible…” which was an almost unique point of agreement between Mark6:4, Matthew 13:57, Luke 4:24, John 4:44.
Madame Guillotine awaits.
The original above was withheld but the shorter version below was not.
Can anyone advise what was the problem with the fist?
Suspect the bible refs triggered the Crikey Woke Bot into crisis meltdown defcon ultra.
To paraphrase that classic anthem of yoof “It’s not easy being a sea-green Incorruptible…” which was an almost unique point of agreement between Mark6:4, Matthew 13:57, Luke 4:24, John 4:44.
MadameG awaits.
No one likes it but it’s a defence lawyers job to test the allegation..You may not like it but rape victims are only treated slightly different than any other complainant as it should be.b The defendant has to prove nothing as it should be. The prosecution has to prove the case they have brought. If you want to change the system to lower the standard of proof for rape expect to make the appeals court busy and through precedent we will end up back where he started.
All that is fine except if you are the rape victim…
And ‘IF’ you are not?
A peeved wife of Potiphar?
Jesus, I c’n see why you’re conservative! Too much bloody bahble bashin’.
Janet Albrechtsen just wants to be the blonde darling of the ultra right in Australia.
Following that earlier trip to the US she is attempting become Ann Coulter Down Under
Problem is she just ends up helping to kick along her desperately sophomoric, poorly researched, written and flawed articles in the Australian version of Völkischer Beobachter
She caught my attention many years ago when one used to read The Australian regularly…..
In one opinion or comment article she claimed that ‘anti-white racism’ was significant in Australia; simply an imported US nativist talking point.
Oz legacy media is right wing, catering to middle aged and older, plus suffers from too many commentators, influencers, think tanks guests, MPs’ talking points, presentation, spin, UK/US content and censorship by omission; ‘political activists masquerading as journalists’.
And the BBC is by and large pretty regressive on economics. I’d place its stance as roughly aligned with Sir Keir Starmer who resides around “Tepid Tory” on the spectrum, one pixel to the left of whoever happens to be the Tory PM at any given moment. This malady is found throughout the world including Oz.
Yes & no, as much economics of the left can be as old hat as the radical right; BBC channels IEA (like IPA) or Tufton St. Koch think tank talking points. Starmer has to put up with attacks from both is own left and the Tory right via proxies.
The fact is, Louise Milligan is one of the most brilliant journalists we have in Australia. Her investigative stories have brilliantly exposed so many shortcomings in powerful people. Another fact, this creates enemies, but when that reporting comes from those enemies that have the power to mislead us, misinform us or try to taint Louise’s image, then they should be called out. Yes the Conservatives all want free speech and individual freedoms, but not when it is used against people they perceive as their enemies for simply exposing the truth to all of us. Free speech has responsibilities and if they use it as a type of propaganda machine for the Conservative element then they should be dealt with. It would be easy to ask everyone to boycott such media outlets (and they all seem to be part of the Murdoch press). Tell everyone to try the New Daily, Crikey, the Saturday Paper, the Guardian and the Conversation. Perhaps we need an intervention, which the public are happy to call for on power prices set by free enterprise. All Journalists should be regulated the same way the ABC is, rather than have defamation laws to protect victims which favour those that can afford the best lawyers. If a Journalist is shown to be spreading misinformation and misleading the Australian public, they should be named and suspended. Repeat offenders may be banned for life from being published. Maybe then we will see proper reporting of the truth. As John Lennon once said “Just gimme the truth, all I want is the truth”. A progressive reform I am sure those lying manipulative Conservatives would surely oppose!
Brilliant?
Pell – nope, didn’t do it.
Porter – career destroyed, yay, but no justice for anyone, and appalling reportage selectivity and agenda-driven, wilful gaps in her yarn.
Tudge – what did that highly-contrived yarn achieve, apart from $650k for Rachelle Miller for, what – having an affair with her boss? Or some other totally unconnected ‘ordeal’? We don’t know. Story not followed up.
Laming – oops. Hey hubby, give me $200k of taxpayer money to bail out my journalistic ineptitude, will ya?
If this is brilliant the ABC really is knackered.
Yeah and Mudrake’s “fair and balanced” with eternal culture war on the ABC. Generally speaking, the ABC generally goes out of its way to be not much more than milquetoast left. Mudrake by comparison is solidly Far Right. Look at the countries it inhabits FCS!
‘Milquetoast left’?? Ha! The ABC these days is a more effective (because subtler) supporter of neoliberal economics and US exceptionalist/neo-colonial foreign policy than Teh Oz. The trade-off for lickspittling to the ‘centre-right’ ALP/LNP consensus on the Big Things is a free reign to the likes of 4C and 7.30 on the Little Things, allowing these urban-lefty groupie collectors to vanity publish personal gripes, grievances and obsessions – dressed up as social ishoo ‘yarns’ – with impunity.
It’s the unspoken Public Broadcaster Third Millennium Settlement. It gives us the worst of both ABC worlds. Zero scepticism or scrutiny on the big power questions of our era. Endless pointless, narcissistic posturing and activism on Woke Piffle. What, exactly, has all the #MeToo noise of the last three years from the ABC achieved, in terms of real equality and reform for those women who need it (hint: NOT Parly House staffers and millionaire CEOs.) Answer? Nothing. Meanwhile we’re about to nuke China at the same time as we’re entering a Depression.
Where are the ABC reporters pushing back against the failed orthodoxies on these economic and FP questions? Answer: they’re all off spending a sh*t-ton of taxpayer loot bodging up glorified YouTube videos about some old Uni mate who once got called a slag by some random boorish asshat on a Hen’s night. Woo, woo…another Walkley in the bag!
Janet Albrechtsen – I refer to her as “Janet from another Planet”, as most of her articles are so far fetched that a fair amount of it could almost be called Comedy.
The Australian sure has an unbelievable mix of Journalists that produce so much twaddle.
Albrechtsen’s greatest hit, I think, was an opinion column in The Australian headlined ‘Pegagogue’s prejudices’ back in 2008.
Albrechtsen’s Year 12 ‘contact’, you see, had dutifully reported (uncorroborated, as far as we know) that the Geography teacher had said something unfavourable about ‘globalisation’.
(This was back in the day when ‘anti-globalisation’ was portrayed as a left-wing thing, equivalent to wanting to give up civilisation for a life in the trees, etc. Now, of course, ‘globalisation’ has miraculously been reframed as left-wing/George Soros thing).
Albrechtsen’s piece tortured logic to the point of no return and concluded that, because “the left” took over all the schools in the 1960s, and that a teacher had reportedly said something which accorded with the News Corp house-view of an alleged left-wing anti-globalisation ‘agenda’, all schools had therefore become strict orthodoxy factories that allowed no freedom of thought or speech.
Albrechtsen’s Year 12 ‘contact’, of course, was a victim in all of this this. Poor thing. (Or maybe she just made it all up to please Mum?)