The Content Makers

Margaret Simons on Media

Confirmed: the ABC dumps its national sports wrap

No comment one hour is confirmation the next, it seems. This morning I had a story in the Crikey email tipping that the ABC was dropping the sports presenter from it’s news bulletins. While the tip was strong, I could not get confirmation from the ABC.

But lo and behold, hours later the following internal memo, closely followed by a media release in similar terms, puts a spun version of the same news.
Readers will remember the fury that greeted the introduction of the national sports wrap some years ago. Melbourne viewers were particularly incensed that reportage in that sports mad town would now be done from Ultimo.

Now there will be no hosted sports segment at all but a clip reel put together in Sydney.

Read More »

Google Compromises on China

A post has just gone up on the Google corporate blog indicating that the company has compromised a little in its dealings with the Chinese authorities. Those who follow these things will remember that in March Google  announced that it had decided to withdraw its agreement to censor search results in China. This followed the company being on the end of a “sophisticated cyber attack” from inside China.

From March, Google automatically redirected all searchers to its Hong Kong based site, which remained uncensored and offered results in simplified Chinese.

Now, faced with the possible refusal to renew its licence to operate – which is up for renewal tomorrow – Google has revived its Google.cn Chinese based site, but included a landing page that contains a hotlink through to the Hong Kong site.

Will this be enough to guarantee that Google will remain in the game in China? Is it an unacceptable compromise on the company’s stated commitment to refuse to censor?

I spoke a few moments ago to Lucinda Barlow, the company’s regional communications manager. She is tight-lipped on the detail of the negotiations with the authorities. It is clear, apparently, that the redirect was not acceptable to them – but reading between the lines, it is NOT clear that the Google solution of the Google Hong Kong hotlink, described as “consistent with our commitment not to self censor and, we believe, with local law” will be enough to guarantee that Google will have its Chinese licence renewed.

More in the Crikey email tomorrow.

ABC Open Producers Announced

The long running process of setting up ABC Open – Auntie’s innovative program under which citizens in regional areas will be assisted to tell their own stories using digital technology and Web 2.0  - is at an end. Today the ABC has announced who the producers will be and where they will be based. 

The process has been very slow. The scheme was first announced by ABC Managing Director Mark Scott late last year at the Media 140 conference. The whole thing was meant to be in place by the beginning of this month, but a few weeks ago I wrote this piece for Crikey about slowness, and the resentments the scheme was causing in regional newsrooms that were expecting to host one of the new “geeky with social skills” ABC Open producers.

I was assured by  the head of multi-platform and content development for ABC Radio, Linda Bracken, that all would be well and that special efforts were going in to communicating and reassuring traditional ABC regional content makers. Perhaps, but the discontent certainly hasn’t settled. Two weeks ago, I received an email from one hard-pressed regional radio staffer who said that with only days to go before “their” producer arrived, it  still wasn’t clear what resources they would be sharing. All he knew was “my desk will be shoved in a corner”.

This is an exciting project, but the logistical challenges shouldn’t be underestimated. Many ABC regional offices are already too small, already have multiple lines of authority, and already feel underappreciated.

We have to hope it will work. It could be very exciting, but let’s hope the vision doesn’t clash with the reality.

In the meantime, the listof producers can be read here. It seems that most have substantial experience in mainstream media or independent film making.

I’ll be watching this project with interest, and I’d be glad to hear from any ABC Open producers, other ABC staff or community members about how the work proceeds.

More from The Australian

Another few thousand words from The Australian today, on page six and in the editorial, justifying its position and attacking all its critics, including me. As well as implying that no journalist until now had  looked properly at the issue of corruption in Victoria.

Extraordinary stuff.

There’s not much I feel I need to say. The paper is unwittingly making my points for me. It’s all on display. If I were to say anything, it would be about arrogance, tunnel vision, self obsession and glass jaws. There, I’ve said it.

But I did enjoy this piece of commentary from Mumbrella.

Wikileaks Under Attack

Many of you will have seen some coverage in today’s newspapers about action against the Wikileaks site. I opened up my email this evening, and found the below message from the Editor in Chief, the elusive Julian Assange. I had been trying to get hold of Assange recently on another matter. I assume that is why I ended up on the mailing list.

The leaks this email refers to concern some of Wikileaks biggest, and most reported stories. This, I suspect, is merely one step in what is likely to be a long saga. Read More »

Me and The Media Section of The Australian

Those who follow the media will have seen that I am the subject of an attack in The Media section of The Australian today.

I have just returned from a long weekend away out of email and telephone contact (which can certainly help put things in perspective after a torrid week), so did not receive calls from the author of the piece, Geoff Elliott, in which he sought my comment. That’s a shame, because what he writes is wrong in key respects. His email to me with my reply, sent moments ago, is below.

The background to this attack is my reporting, first on the so-called Ozleaks case (see here and here) and more recently my long piece for the Crikey email on Thursday about The Australian’s reporting concerning Victorian Police Commissioner Simon Overland. Since I wrote that piece, The Age and Sunday Age have chimed in. 

In the meantime, I arrived back to my email and mobile phone to find the following correspondence from the author of the piece in The Media section of The Australian. Here it is, with my reply. The episode of The World Today that is referred can be found here.

Margaret, I’m writing an article for tomorrow’s newspaper in which the following is stated: 

From Simons’ reporting it is clear there has been selective and often inaccurate leaks from the OPI and Victoria Police designed to discredit Cameron Stewart and the newspaper. Not that this was done with any discretion. On one remarkable occasion on April 15, in the course of the federal court hearing, the OPI media officer Paul Conroy approached Misha Ketchell of Media Watch and Margaret Simons, greeted them warmly, joined them at the rear of the court immediately behind the legal team for The Australian and some distance from his director, and whispered intently throughout the proceedings. 

Would you like to comment on that? Do you dispute its accuracy? 

Also, you made some comments to the ABC’s World at Noon last week (transcript below) which appears to contain information not on the public record (see bold). Did that information come from the OPI or its proxies? 

Best

Geoff Elliott

 

Dear Geoff, I have just returned from a long weekend away, during which I was out of phone and email range. I have now caught up with your messages and with what you wrote for this morning’s newspaper. 

I appreciate that you tried to get hold of me. However what you wrote is inaccurate. 

  1. I have never been the recipient of leaks from the OPI or Victoria Police. I wish. 
  1. Regarding the court hearing on 15 April, I arrived early. Ketchell arrived shortly afterwards, and we sat and talked. Conroy arrived with the OPI Director just before the hearing got underway. He certainly greeted us. We were not sitting at the rear of the court, but in the middle. I barely spoke to him during the hearing, largely because I was live-Tweeting, as the Twitter record will attest. It is true I spoke to him after the hearing. But so what? Of course I have spoken to Conroy during my reporting of these events. I have also spoken or been in touch with Whittaker and half a dozen others in The Australian news room. 
  1. Your piece today alleges that I have been “on the drip” from the OPI, and offers as evidence the World Today interview, in which you say I “cited certain characteristics of the investigation that were not public”. The bit you have bolded from the transcript  indicates that these items are that Stewart’s alleged source had been named by him before in an article, and that action has resulted, that the key piece of evidence against the alleged source would be a record of interview between Stewart and the OPI, and that there was also an email trail involved. 

The information that the transcript of interview with Stewart was a key piece of evidence was not the product a leak, and it IS public. It was said by the OPI lawyers in open court at the same hearing you refer to elsewhere in your report. I Tweeted this live at the time, and reported it more fully for Crikey later. 

The other two pieces of information have not been made public before. I can assure you that my sources for this information do not include the OPI, any of its “proxies” or the Victorian Police. 

I will publish this correspondence on my blog this afternoon, and of course will write more for Crikey. 

Yours Margaret Simons

Criminal Courts the Next Venue for Ozleaks Case

The criminal courts are likely to be the scene of the next episode in the thorny saga of how The Australian  newspaper reported leaked information on the Operation Neath anti terrorism raids last year.

Yesterday the Australian and the Victorian Office of Police Integrity settled their case before the Federal Court after a morning of tough negotiation.

The Director of the OPI, Michael Strong, told Crikey this afternoon that he now intended to move “very soon” to brief prosecuting authorities about criminal offences, with the alleged source of The Australian’s story – a Victorian police officer currently suspended from duty – the main person of interest.

In the meantime it seems that The Australian has succeeded in preventing the OPI from issuing a report containing criticism of its conduct in researching and publishing the story. But The Australian has also conceded significant ground, abandoning its attempt to have the OPI’s entire investigation declared invalid and the evidence suppressed.

The Director of the OPI, Michael Strong, told Crikey  he had made some concessions in the settlement and that “certain disputed issues and tentative findings” would not appear in his report, which he hoped to have tabled in Parliament in July – although this may be delayed depending on the timing of the trail of those charged with terrorism offences as a result of Operation Neath.

“I needed a circuit breaker, and to get it I had to make concessions, “ Strong said. He said there was a limited period in which charges could be laid, and that the deadline had been fast approaching, adding to the urgency of being free to brief prosecutors.

But Strong stressed that the evidence gathered in the investigation remained “in tact”, and able to be used to brief prosecutors and the Commissioner of Police.

Meanwhile the editor of The Australian, Paul Whittaker said the paper had gone to court “only as a last resort”.

“We had serious concerns with the way the investigation into the alleged leaking of details of Operation Neath was being conducted by the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity and the Office of Police Integrity. We commenced the action in the Federal Court because we believed the police misconduct agencies were acting beyond the scope of their powers and that the newspaper wasn’t being given a fair hearing in relation to a number of issues, only one of which involved the agencies’ dealings with Cameron Stewart. We are happy with the settlement.”

Assuming the Victorian police officer suspected of being Stewart’s source is now charged, it would seem that Stewart is likely to be a witness in the case. The OPI has previously said in court that the key piece of evidence is a transcript of an interview between the OPI and Stewart.

But Strong,  saying he wished to “keep to the spirit” of the settlement agreement, refused to comment on the suggestion that Stewart would be a witness.

If Stewart is placed in the witness box and quizzed about his source, it takes the conflict between the newspaper and the OPI to a new venue, and a new level.

More on this story, and the aftermath of the settlement, in the Crikey email tomorrow.

Jonathan Holmes on the ABC and Breaking News

I have been a critic of the ABC’s ability to break news in the past, while also noting that the seriously good Four Corners program on Securency a couple of weeks ago showed that Auntie is getting better at cross-platform promotion and making the best of what it’s got.

Last week  ABC Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes gave his take, quoting me.  He defends Auntie against the latest outbreak of bile from The Australian, but also worried that already overstretched reporters will be even less able to cut the mustard due to the demands of the new 24 hour news service.

The wonders of E Bay.

Regular readers will know that a few weeks ago Borders sent me, unasked for, a freebie – a nice new Kobo e-book reader. In what one reader described as a sanctimonious post I declared that I could not keep it. I decided to give it to the local Rotary op-shop.

Well, guess what. They put it on E-Bay, where it sold for $222.50, plus postage. This is $33.50 more than the retail price!

Extraordinary.

Meanwhile, I have ordered an Apple iPad. I’ll let you know how I get on with it.

Malcolm and Me

So, the news is out. The story I have not been able to write for the last four months or so – Malcolm Fraser’s resignation from the Liberal Party. It has killed me to watch him do more than a dozen public events over the last few weeks, including the Canberra Press Club, for heaven’s sake – and not be asked the crucial question that would have brought this story out earlier.

As his co-author, I had received the news in confidence, and he held me to that confidence. Which hurt.

But now I am released, and will write more on this for the Crikey email today.