Facebook’s face off with Canberra and the media
A parliamentary committee recommended that digital platform operators such as Meta and Alphabet should be hit with a levy to fund journalism, reports The AFR’s James Thomson.
Earlier this year, Meta said it would not renew the agreements it reached with publishers (including Nine Entertainment Co, publisher of The Australian Financial Review) in 2021, after the government introduced a bargaining code to force the tech giants to financially support journalism. Meta and Google have paid more than $200 million a year to publishers over the past three years.
But the Labor-backed committee said Meta’s refusal to renegotiate its deals showed the code “is broken and should be replaced with alternative revenue mechanisms, such as a levy system, on the broader operations of the digital platforms”. The Greens and the Coalition were even more strident in their criticism of the tech giants.
Meta responded predictably, declaring the committee’s recommendations “ignore the realities of how our platforms work, the preferences of the people who use them, and the value we provide news publishers who choose to post their content on our platforms”.
Facebook blasts proposal to levy tech giants to fund journalism
Facebook’s parent company Meta has criticised the findings of a federal government inquiry that called for a new tax on tech giants to fund journalism, and for the government to create a new ministry for “digital affairs”, reports The AFR’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
A Labor-controlled committee into social media released a second interim report late on Monday, focusing on Meta’s decision to abandon deals struck under Australia’s landmark News Media Bargaining Code.
The committee found the law, which was introduced by the Coalition government in 2021 and has transferred $600 million into local media companies over that time, is “broken” and should be supplemented by an alternative, like a levy. A spokeswoman for Meta insisted its platforms deliver value for news outlets without any further payment.
Former banker from Melbourne will take charge of Disney succession plan
A banker from the suburbs of Melbourne has been given the responsibility of steering Disney through one of the toughest succession dramas in corporate America, reports The Australian’s Eric Johnston.
Former Morgan Stanley boss James Gorman will take charge as chairman of media major Disney next year and his first job will be to find a replacement for two-time chief executive Bob Iger.
The Morgan Stanley boss delivered a textbook succession when he retired from his former bank last year.
Gorman had been in the role for 14 years and had rebuilt the Wall Street bank from a lender which was reeling from crisis during the GFC to a safer, confident bank of scale.
The obsessive Collingwood fan left Melbourne in the 1980s to make it in New York and quickly found his way in banking.
Gorman grew up in Glen Iris and studied law at Melbourne University. He recalled, during a speech last year, how he financed a career change by borrowing $40,000 at an interest rate of 24 per cent to study business at Columbia University in New York.
News Brands
The Australian wins big on excellence at News Awards
Journalists at The Australian have scored a raft of wins at the 20th annual News Awards, celebrating News Corp Australia’s most talented journalists, photographers, cartoonists and videographers in a live event linking newsrooms around the country, reports The Australian’s Stephen Rice.
The Investigation of the Year award went to The Australian’s media team – led by James Madden, Sophie Elsworth and Liam Mendes – for their groundbreaking coverage of sexual harassment and abuse allegations at Nine.
Madden singled out for thanks the many unnamed sources at Nine who worked with the team to bring the story to light. Since that toxic culture was exposed by The Australian, many of the most senior figures at Nine have left the company, not least chairman Peter Costello, who shoved Mendes and knocked him to the ground at Canberra airport as he was being questioned about the scandal. For that encounter, and for a series of video reports from as far afield as Ukraine and Israel to the back streets of Alice Springs, Mendes also won the Visual Journalism of the Year award.
The Australian itself won the award for News Brand of the Year, capping off a remarkable 60th anniversary year for the newspaper. Editor-in-chief Michelle Gunn highlighted the energy and excitement the paper’s younger journalists brought to the newsroom.
Nine news boss Fiona Dear sent an after-hours email to staff: ‘I know you’re hurting’
Nine Entertainment’s television news and current affairs boss Fiona Dear has told staff in an after hours email that she knows employees are “hurting” following the scathing findings of the independent review into the company’s workplace culture, report The Australian’s Sophie Elsworth and James Madden.
Dear, who took over from former news boss Darren Wick in May, sent the email at 8.29pm AEDT on Monday. In the three days prior, The Australian had repeatedly asked her – with no response – as to why she had failed to address the news division about the report’s devastating findings, nor sought to discuss ongoing concerns with her staff.
The independent review was originally set up to focus on Nine’s news and current affairs division but was later expanded to include the entire company and found there was widespread misconduct.
Dear is yet to schedule an all-staff meeting to discuss the findings of the independent report compiled by workplace consulting firm Intersection.
She told Nine’s broadcast division on Monday night: “I wanted to say how proud I have been at the professionalism you’ve all displayed in the telling of this incredibly painful story last week and how you’ve handled yourselves since the release of the report.
“You have continued to deliver high-quality journalism despite what we are going through as a team and a broader business.”
See also: Fiona Dear says 9News looking to extend longest winning streak in a decade
Top food critics to visit Ben Shewry restaurant after ‘oppressive’ rebuke
Weeks after one of Melbourne’s best-known chefs, Ben Shewry, excoriated food media in his new book, some of the world’s top critics will visit his fine dining restaurant as part of a taxpayer-funded tour, report Nine Publishing’s Calum Jaspan and Tom Cowie.
Attica in Ripponlea will host reviewers from The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy on Tuesday night, part of a tour around the country showcasing Australia’s food scene.
It comes after Shewry called such lists “oppressive” in his memoir, Uses For Obsession.
Tourism Australia has organised the itinerary, which was supposed to include Melbourne’s Reine & La Rue, part of Nomad Group, before it was dropped following its owner Alan Yazbek’s arrest for holding a Nazi sign at a pro-Palestinian protest this month.
Instead, the group will dine at Attica, just hours after visiting Andrew McConnell’s Gimlet in the CBD.
The critics were flown to Australia on business class flights, paid for by Tourism Australia. The itinerary was carefully crafted and developed to showcase Australia’s food, drink and produce across Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart, this masthead was told.
Radio
Sick of feeling invisible, Jo Stanley created her own radio station
Earlier this month, Jo Stanley and her husband, Darren McFarlane, launched Broad Radio: Australia’s first network for women, by women. Aimed at a 40-plus audience, it’s a mix of live programming, talkback, music and podcasts, streamed through a free app that connects to cars, speakers and headphones.
Stanley, 51, largely enjoyed her time in commercial radio. But she acknowledges that the diverse team of women she has assembled have had their fair share of frustrations.
“I think all of us come from the same experience of feeling like we didn’t matter,” says Stanley, when we meet at St Kilda’s Hotel Esplanade. “We felt we’d been made invisible, or disappeared in ways both small and large.”
Sitting beside her is Tracee Hutchison, 62, one of Australia’s most respected broadcasters and music experts.
“I had the great fortune of starting my career as a very young woman in community radio and then the Sydney version of Triple J, at a time when women had already smashed a lot of those barriers,” says Hutchison, who serves as Broad’s music director and host of its Friday drive show, Fierce. “I was raised in radio by incredible women, but I’ve also experienced a long period of time where that hasn’t existed for me. Had it not been for Jo, I didn’t think I’d ever have worked at this level again.”
Television
‘I wanted to be in fights’: Ex-Home and Away star in new role
Philippa Northeast can add a raft of new skills to her resume thanks to her latest acting gig, reports News Corp’s Jonathon Moran.
The former Home and Away star honed her horse riding skills, brushed up on her fitness and learnt to fight ahead of taking on the role of Susie in new Aussie TV show, Territory.
“I wanted to learn all of the skills that Susie needed to have and wanted to be on location in the outback filming, I wanted to be on the horses, I wanted to be in the cars, I wanted to be in the fights,” Northeast told The Daily Telegraph.
Territory will premiere on Netflix tomorrow (Thursday), telling the story of the Lawson family cattle empire based on fictional Marianne Station.
Northeast and her fellow cast lived on Tipperary Station in the Northern Territory for four weeks during filming, followed by two weeks at Kakadu National Park and the final shoot period in South Australia.
Merrick Watts says he will not be returning to SAS Australia
Merrick Watts has revealed he won’t be appearing on SAS Australia, following inaccurate reports of Ant Middleton confirming his return to the Channel Seven show, reports Savanna Young at Daily Mail Australia.
Speaking on The Fox’s Fifi, Fev & Nick on Tuesday, the 50-year-old comedian set the record straight after the Herald Sun reported he’ll be taking on the role of a DS team member.
‘A few people have asked me, but this is the first time I’ve spoken to the media about it because the media didn’t bother to ask me about it at all,’ he said on radio.
‘They just went and wrote it, and I read it, and I was like, “That’s interesting, I didn’t know that.” So that’s news to me.
‘So look, I mean, I’m just waiting for the call now from Channel Seven to tell me that I’ve got the job. But other than that, I don’t have the job. It’s not true.’
Co-host Fifi Box asked Watts if the position ‘was even an option’, to which he replied: ‘No. Not only have I not been spoken to about it, no one has been spoken to about it. It’s never come up.’
‘I don’t know how this came about. Somebody’s obviously had a bit of a laugh,’ he added.
‘It’s unfounded, untrue. I won’t be returning to SAS Australia.’
Sports Media
Pacific Championship 2024: Australia v Tonga, PNG vs. Fiji TV ratings blow Bledisloe Cup out of the water
A second-tier rugby league international has blown away rugby’s union’s prized jewel — the Bledisloe Cup — in a television ratings bombshell, reports News Corp’s Dean Ritchie.
The NRL has trumpeted remarkable international television ratings for week one of the Pacific Championships, which has provided a massive boost for expansion hopes.
The headline event of the weekend, the Australia v Tonga game, attracted a national reach of 1.54 million on free-to-air, and a total national average of 698,000, as per Voz Data.
But it was the ratings from two rugby league minnows that stunned rugby league executives.
Papua New Guinea’s 22-10 upset win over Fiji at Suva’s HFC Bank Stadium achieved a reach of 839,000 on free-to-air.
It outperformed the second Test between the Wallabies and South Africa in Perth in August and the second Bledisloe Cup match in Wellington.
The second Bledisloe Cup match had a national average of just 283,000. The two-Test Bledisloe national average was 380,000. These figures are based on reach and national average audience and do not include subscription Fox or Stan.
Australia versus Tonga surpassed one million total viewers on free-to-air and subscription, a sharp increase of 49 per cent on the corresponding game last year between the Kangaroos and Samoa.