Vince is the Media Show with Jack Outen.
Hello and welcome to the Media Show. Tonight we'll have the media's reaction to the Trump verdict and a Sydney UNI professor in hot water. But first, the ABC's star political correspondent, Laura Tingle survives another day to campaign against the Coalition, and despite calling the country racist and claiming that Peter Duttan's budget speech was dangerous, there have been
no real penalties. Now, if you need a refresh, this was Tingle last week at a writer's festival with her insightful analysis we are a.
Racist capulate's face if we always have been a stray pressin To give a license like that I find profoundly depressin and a terrible prospect for.
The next election.
Sure, the ABC has been humiliated for anyone with a neutral eye watching along, but the response from Boss David Anderson has just been bizarre. Here he is at centered estimates saying that Tingle has simultaneously been punished but also did nothing wrong.
Im mature nation, regardless of political views, should be able to discuss such issues in a respectful and intelligent way. The ABC's role and the work of our journalists like miss Tingle is to help facilitate those debates on our platforms. Finally, Miss Tingle does not deserve the ferocity and frankly vicious attacks that we've seen this week.
So what was it? Was Laura Tingle cautioned because what she did was wrong? Or do you defend her? Now? Anderson seems to want it both ways, and that incompatible logic is what hurts the ABC the most. There was also a bunch of excuses the ABC made for Tingle that don't add up. They claimed she made the comments in her personal capacity when the event was advertised by the ABC on its own website, Join us at the Writers' Festival, the ABC Roade and it's taxpayer funded website in April.
They even had ABC shows at the event. But more to the point, as we reported last week, some of the worst comments Tingle made were broadcast by the ABC itself. Heresue was an Insiders one week prior to the Writers' Festival.
But I think what was concerning is for a political leader to come out and say, not only is housing the fault of migrants, but you can't get a childcare space, you can't get through the traffic on the roads, you can't get in to see the doctor because of migration. That is lighting this thing up in a really disturbing way, regardless of the arguments about whether there's you know, there should be more or less migration, regardless of whether his
policies make sense. And I would say that they don't make coherent sense in what he's put out in his budget reply. You know, the hot buttons he's pressing there, I think are very dangerous for our community.
Well, Anderson was asked about this by Sarah Henderson because it meant the ABC actually did publish bias comments. His core argument, which save Tingle, is completely dismantled by this fact.
She said, the hot buttons he's pressing that they are very dangerous for our community. She again, she again was very yeah. She again was very disparaging of mister Dutton and whistling, thank you, we will have order.
Don't you love those interjections? When we have radicals from the Greens Party siding with the ABC on the issue, doesn't that just prove the point Tingle is their person. They love her because she campaigns for them and their policies, and you pick up the bill amazingly Anderson still backs Tingle's right to say absurd things like a major election policy is dangerous.
If you look at miss Tingle's reporting, she has laid out what was mister Dutton's budget reply speech and laid out caution with regard to that, and I think by summarizing it in that fashion in those comments at the Sydney Writers Festival was a mistake.
Well, let's bring in the panel. I'm joined by media writer at The Australian, Sophie Elsworth and PR Council's Christy McSweeney. Now, Sophie, I want to start with you, well done. This has been your story. You broke it, you got the audio and you published it and what a firestorm did it set off?
Well, Jack, I think it's important with this story to show Australians what ABC taxpayer funded journalists are putting out in the public domain, whether it's on platform or off platform. Now, Laura Tingle attended the Sydney Writer Festival as an ABC journalist. She can't just divorce herself of her duties from the ABC and as a board director the staff elected board director. But look, this is a real headache for ABC. It's
caused problems this week. Clearly among management. I suspect Kim Williams is very unhappy with this because for once they came out and actually said she was cautioned over this commentary criticizing Peter Dutton. Mister Anderson also said jacket sented estimates it was a misstep, a mistake, and that he regretted that it had happened. But as always the ABC, high profile, particularly female high profile stars protected at the ABC no matter what they do. All that's really happened
here is Laura Tingle has apparently been told off. She's issued an essay about why she could make the statements, and the caravan rolls on. But they now have a problem on their hands because she's the most senior political correspondent and I think she's damaged her credibility to show that she can be objective and impartial in that role.
Well, I completely agree. I think her job's untenable. Peter Dutton has criticized her, She's shown her true colors, and we're going to be getting into an election period soon and she is presumably going to be playing a very front and center role. Now. Christy picking up on what
Sophie is saying about David Anderson's performance. I noticed that, yes, he was criticizing her to a degree in a very measured and controlled way, saying that she'd made mistakes, but then in other conversations completely backing her, explaining it away, attempting to minimize. What did you make of his performance?
Well, First of all, Jack, I'd like to say I attended the Opposition leader's budgeting replys spoach and packed out sold out ballroom of people in Canberra, gave it a very very good reception and didn't think it was incoherent, and I certainly didn't as an interested observer and someone who listens to a lot of speeches, I certainly wasn't
on the Joe Biden train of incoherence. Secondly, I will say that it's very clear that ABC management is not cautious of how this is presented to the public, though cautious of how this is presented to the government, and cautious of how it's presented internally to the staff. We know that particularly here in Melbourne and also in Sydney, the ABC City newsrooms and the senior staff. Essentially it
is the tail wagging the dog. The similar problems at Channel nine, so it is an internal knot and that is how the ABC considers it in the hierarchy of priorities to protect their messaging on this.
Yeah, very very strange stuff. Let's move on, though, because the Australian Jewish Association has also weighed into the Laura Tingle saga because she made a strange excuse for her Australia as racist comment in a statement she said, we clearly have an issue with racism. For some months now, for example, the Australian newspaper has been devoting considerable space to its alarm about a rise in anti Semitism in Australia. Wait,
so Laura is pretending that she was talking about Jewish populations. Now, what an absurd attempt to pivot And what did the Jewish Association think of this?
Well?
CEO Robert Gregory labeled it ridiculous. Laura Tingle should not drag in the Jewish community to defend her ridiculous statement. Australia is perhaps the least racist country in the world. Ironically, the ABC, where Miss Tingle works, has significantly contributed to anti Jewish sentiment with its inaccurate and biased reporting, including recently describing hermus terrorist rocket attack on the Jewish state as a show of resilience. Now let's bring the panel
back in to discuss Sophie. Laura Tingle put this statement out to explain her comments in greater context. As soon as I saw her talking about anti semitism, I thought, it's just completely bizarre because that's clearly not what her comments were targeted at. Her comments were in response to the budget reply speech, which was about immigration. Well, Jack, she.
Did publish or the ABC published her thirteen hundred and eighty word explanation about why she made these remarks at the Sydney Writers Festival. Now that strikes me as almost essay like and an awful lot of backpeddling after what has been a disaster for her this week. It's damaged her professionally. And this is the thing, Jack, These journalists get on these platforms at these leftist activist writers' festivals. You can hear in the audio she's applauded by the crowd.
Probably everyone there thought none the wiser and thought it was quite normal.
But when you put.
These remarks out into the public forum, there's a lot of people that disagree with what she's saying. So I think it's a little bit disingenuous to try and wrap this in with coverage of what's happening in Israel. But again, she's trying to get herself out of this giant hole that has damaged her professionally.
Yeah, it's a good point. And there was also reference Christy by the Jewish Association to the fact that the ABC has had this issue with this show of resilience post that they did on Instagram, and he's saying, well, it's a bit ironic that you're saying you're standing up for anti Semitism when your organization is calling terrorist attacks targeted rocket firing onto Israeli citizenry, you're calling that a show of resilience. It's absurd.
Look, it's clearly a tactic for the ABC to clutch at straws to demonstrate they do not have a conscious bias towards this. And if I was part of the Jewish community, I'd be absolutely horrified at the ABC using their coverage of the Israel atrocities to prove a point about them being unconscious about them being unbiased. I'm not surprised that Jewish identities have decided to make public statements relating to that.
Yeah, really, strange stuff. Let's move on all night. All eyes are on Nine as speculation mounts that CEO Mike Sneezeby will leave the network over his handling of the Darren Wick allegations. Now, Sneasbury has survived thus far despite the pressure, but the headlines are getting more brute by the day. Nine Boss Mike Sneezbe a dead man walking.
Nine Entertainment chair Peter Costello has refused to publicly back in battle Chief Executive Mike Sneezeby as the Media Group seven person board prepares to meet for the first time since sexual harassment allegations against former News boss Darren Wick were revealed. Now, Sneezeby's main vulnerability is the fact he handed Wick a near one million dollar payout despite knowing the serious allegations were hanging over his head. So will Sneezebe whether the storm or will he soon find himself
out of the job. Let's bring the paddle back into discuss Sophie, You've been doing some brilliant reporting on this, really leading the pack. What do you make of Sneezebe, specifically putting aside the Darren Wick allegations. Does he hang on to this job.
Well?
At the moment. The answer is yes. There's been meetings are at nine, you know, with staff all around the country all week, even today there was meetings with staff about what's going on. This is something that has giant opened a giant can of worms and shown that there is a problem within the organization of how they deal with harassment allegations, you know, claims of inappropriate conduct. I
think Nine thought this story would go away. We are now nearly two weeks on from when we broke that story first at The Australian, and this story is far from over. There's a lot of people within the nine organization incredibly displeased with how this has been handled. It's damaged their brand, it's damaged their reputation. And I think Mike sneeze Mey is hanging on to his job with dear life. But he is safe for now. But Jack, you and I know in this industry you can be
gone quickly. You think you're safe one minute and you go on the next. So I think he'll be trying to work in overdrive to make sure he can hold onto that CEO position. But interestingly Chairman Peter Costello has not spoken out publicly to date supporting Mike Sneezebee.
Yeah, that's really interesting that the silence from Costello and Christy. What do you make of the situation?
I think Sophy is entirely correct and well done Sophie on bringing issues to the store on this story to light. From a brand and reputation standpoint, it's only going to get worse. So you and I know that the one thing media survives on is advertising dollars, and nine now wrapping all of their print and broadcast and news radio publications under the one banner and seeking to spread advertising dollars out across all of them. This is going to
start really impacting in a drastic way. If this start continues to.
Roll on and be unresolved, we'll see how it all plays out. But we're going to take a quick break. When we're back. Meet the Sydney University professor who tried to minimize the October seven attacks. Welcome back. Now on to yet another case of radical leftist morons using phrases such as misinformation and fake news to spread actual fake news. But this one is worse than normal. The latest conspiratorial
rant came from a university lecturer. Meet Sujatha Fernandez who gave a lecture to students claiming that mass rapes and sexual violence committed by Hermas terrorists was all just a hoax. The Australian reports a University of Sydney professor has told first year students that Hermasa's mass rapes and sexual violence in October seven were fake news and a hoax peddled by the media, and that Israel had engaged in ethnic cleansing propped up by Western governments had repressed domestic dissent.
Now even the compromised ICC has stated that it has evidence to prove that these rapes occurred. The BBC has published the full charges against the Harmask commanders and it includes rape and other acts of sexual violence, including rape in captivity. The un has also cited evidence for the mass rape claim. Now all of this information is public,
but this professor thinks it is all rubbish. Her direct quote was Western media has played the role of an ideological state apparatus by suppressing coverage of the atrocities, peddling fake news, promoted the hoaxes that her Musk beheaded babies and carried out mass rape in order to shore up support for Israel, and distorting events but we contacted the university, which told us she remains in her position and that
they are investigating. They also wanted us to know on background that they respected her freedom of speech and academic freedoms. Truly crazy stuff, especially when protesters are taking over campuses across the country, intimidating Jewish students and in one case even storm the lecture hall of a Jewish professor spreading conspiracy theories that minimize October seven should be a line that no one crosses. Well, Sophie, let's go to you. This was an exclusive by The Australian, So well done
on your masthead for breaking this. These academics, they've completely lost the plot and I thought it was very bizarre for the media team to try and talk about her freedoms from an academic point of view. What about that could possibly be academic?
Well, it's interesting when you get the media and communications team at universities involved.
This is a.
Pr problem for them and they need to try and squash it very quickly. Jack. And also for the university lecture our professor to be criticizing the media, I think is a pretty poor thing to do. But she sounds like she could be in a bit of hot water, and it is under investigation, but problematic when you have these academics on very good salaries educating the up and
coming students of this country. So I think they have to address this pretty promptly before she continues on her way and who knows what else she will be telling people, including studentsh.
It's such a good point, I mean, Christy, this is someone who is shaping the minds of the future leaders of the country. Universities get billions of dollars from the taxpayer every year. Shouldn't there be some accountability rather than these highly paid pr teams essentially covering up these scandals.
Well, Jack, we've tried that before, universities having to justify their research, and more to the point, we did it with foreign influence too, with China. To submit to the government what research institutions you're partnering with overseas, and then
we would evaluate your research funding. Julian Lisa is calling for a judicial inquiry into universities, particularly around the promotion of the right of these encampments to exist, and I dare say that idea could be extended to include content that's being provided to young people in classes certainly around this. The other thing we know is that to attain the tenure or to attain the title of being a professor, you only attain that if your research is peer reviewed.
That means it has to be true. And this doesn't seem to be extending into the classroom. I'm as horrified as any other Australian who has heard those comments.
Yeah, well, I mean, what do we expect the students to do if you have some teacher who's supposed to be in that position of trust and privilege telling them that October seven was a hoax. Of course they're going to be going to these encampments and protesting and everything because they're trusting someone who is telling them something that's
patently false. But anyway, let's move on now to the Donald Trump hush money trial and how the media has reacted to a jury finding that the former president is guilty of thirty four counts of falsifying business records.
A historic day in America. A former president of the United States now a convicted felon. We've been holding our breath as a country for a long time, waiting for the cavalry to arrive in the form of the rule of law, and it did arrive today, and it's a majestic day. The test for US now as a country is whether or not this former president and his allies will have succeeded in trying to undermine the rule of law so that people reject this as a legitimate function
of the rule of law in our country. A wide range of options. He could get up to four years.
He could also do weekends in jail.
Let's bring the panel back in Sophie. A few of the typical media outlets doing a bit of a victory lab. What do you make of the reaction? Look, I think.
It's very interesting to see the reaction today from the US media. There certainly seemed to be appear that some media presenters and media personalities were quite thrilled with the result with Donald Trump, but I don't know that this will really do him the immense harm that many would hope, and including in Australia, it seemed that some of the reporting seemed to be a little bit gleeful that this
was a guilty verdict. So it'd be really interesting to see how this plays out, particularly in the run up to the presidential election. But President Trump has a huge social media platform.
He can put a.
Spin on this that suits his agenda. He's already come out doing and I think we'll see more of this in the coming weeks and days as the fallout from this continues.
And Christy, how does this play out from a pr point of view? Does this help Trump? Does this play into the narrative that the state is attempting to shut him down? Or do you think that this will impact him negatively?
This is like the halftime at the Super Bowl ad spot this verdict today. Everyone in America has watched it, and it's only going to increase the encourage his base. And you know, from what I have listened to of legal experts across many of the networks, Democrat based and Republican based networks, some of them have been prudent enough to gain coverage from legal experts who have put forward
a view that this was a really confected argument. And there are many people CenTra see the legal profession, who are thinking this doesn't really sit well with me. How the justice system has been manipulated by this very very strange legal argument that only has one or two precedents. So it might pull people from the center who just think, oh my God, our democracy is being so confected at
either end of this scale. But if you're even slightly inclined to like Trump, I think you're going to like him a whole lot more.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch. Christy, Sophie, thank you so much for joining me. That's all the time we have for tonight, But up next is lefties losing it.