Tele runs with attack on ADF top brass – but omits Roberts-Smith war crimes allegations

The Daily Telegraph’s front page on Friday featured an exclusive interview with former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith, who accuses leaders of the Australian Defence Force of “shamefully protecting their own careers at the expense of rank-and-file soldiers”.

Roberts-Smith is fronting the Tele’s Save Our Heroes campaign, which is calling for a royal commission into the suicides of serving and retired military. The Telegraph held a Save Our Heroes summit in parliament house last week to press the government to hold a royal commission.

But the newspaper version of the story failed to say that the Victoria Cross recipient is being investigated by the Australian federal police for alleged war crimes in an Afghan village in 2012. Roberts-Smith vehemently denies the accusations and is suing the Nine newspapers that first reported them. An interview with Roberts-Smith will be screened on Sky News on Friday evening.

Roberts-Smith is the deputy chair of the prime ministerial advisory council on veterans’ mental health, which advises government on issues of mental health of veterans and their families.

At a meeting in July the council rejected the Telegraph’s call for a royal commission: “Council members agreed a better outcome for our veterans would be for the considerable energy and resources that would be attracted to a royal commission to be applied in better addressing the plethora of existing major reports and inquiries into veterans’ wellbeing and their recommendations.

“The council considers the current public rhetoric on calls for a royal commission into veterans’ suicide is damaging to [the veterans’ affairs department] and could paralyse the good work already being undertaken as part of [the department’s] transformation agenda, which has potential to negatively impact or unnecessarily delay services and entitlements for veterans.”

A final paragraph acknowledging the allegations has been added to the Telegraph’s online copy: “Mr Roberts-Smith has strongly denied war crimes allegations levelled against him and has launched defamation action against Nine-owned Fairfax newspapers.”

Bettina Arndt lights her own fire

Former sex-therapist turned men’s rights campaigner Bettina Arndt made news last year for her “Fake Rape Crisis Tour” of universities which sparked student protests, and #MenToo: The Other Side of the Story, her book about the “anti-male feminist agenda”.

This week she popped up with a ridiculous take on the bushfire emergency in the midst of a spate of bad takes which included the Australian’s front page blaming the Greens for the bushfires. Arndt tweeted that it was “brave men” who were fighting the fires and we should give thanks to them because it’s “usually men who do the really dangerous” work.

It didn’t take long for people to point out that hundreds of women were fighting fires too.

But that’s not Arndt’s only recent misfire. The woman who styles herself as a campaigner for men has even managed to rile the leader of an American men’s movement.

Arndt got into a slanging match with A Voice for Men founder Paul Elam, over his plans for an international men’s conference in the Hunter Valley next year.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors extreme and far-right activity in the US, has included Elam on a list of “male supremacists”.

After Arndt objected to the choice of location, Elam accused his former ally of “gynocentrism” and cancelled the conference.

“Some of you are likely aware that Paul Elam from A Voice For Men has announced that the ICMI conference in Sydney will not go ahead because I was threatening not to support the conference because of the chosen venue,” she wrote on her website.

“It’s true that, in a moment of passion, I said and also wrote in an email that I didn’t think I could support the conference if it were held in Hunter Valley. Understandably, Paul interpreted this statement as a threat.

“I am sorry I said it, and sabotaging the conference is the last thing I would ever want to do.”

After Arndt’s apology Elam said the conference would go ahead, but in Sydney.

Fray to steady Crikey’s leaking ship

Several recent departures from Crikey – managing editor Bhakthi Puvanenthiran, opinion editor Meg Watson, investigative editor Lauren Molan – appeared to signal something might be awry at the almost 20-year-old digital news site started by Stephen Mayne in 2000. Private Media’s chairman, Eric Beecher, has hired the experienced newspaper editor Peter Fray as editor-in-chief and managing editor, presumably to steady the ship.

Fray will leave UTS, where he is professor of journalism practice and co-director of the centre for media transition, next month to take up the job overseeing the editorial direction of the Mandarin and SmartCompany as well as Crikey.

The former editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald will take charge of the relatively new investigative unit, Inq.

It was only February when Private Media announced it would hire a dozen full-time journalists, funded by a Private Media investor, Cameron O’Reilly.

No Games – but no ‘hunger games’ either

ABC management’s latest pay offer to its 3,600 staff may signal the end of the hated “hunger games”, a description unions used to describe the way staff were made redundant in the past few years. Staff were put in a “pool”, from which they would have to compete against colleagues to prove why they shouldn’t be made redundant.

The new pay offer includes a voluntary redundancy provision which kicks in when more than 10 jobs are targeted, something ABC staff have not been offered before. With a new round of redundancies looming, this is an attractive offer.

ABC MD David Anderson told senate estimates “there will be job losses” but didn’t say how many or when.

The ABC has already saved about $1m by not covering the Tokyo Olympic Games on radio next year as it is tries to fill an $84m hole in the budget from a Coalition cut in May 2018.

In August ABC staff rejected the 1.7% offer; 66.7% voted against the proposal. The new three-year agreement is for a 2% pay rise per annum for the three years.

Cuts, cuts and more cuts at ACM

There has been a brutal purge of middle management at Australian Community Media, publishers of the Canberra Times, the Illawarra Mercury, the Newcastle Herald and 130 community-based websites. Managing editors started disappearing across the company earlier in the week, before any announcement was made.

The former Domain boss Antony Catalano and billionaire Alex Waislitz bought ACM from Nine Entertainment earlier this year, paying a fraction of the $3bn price Fairfax Media paid for it in 2007.

On Thursday Catalano sacked the managing editor of agricultural publishing, Brad Cooper, the national sales director, Penny Kaleta, the head of agricultural publishing, John Waters, and the digital sales director, Jason King. “I would like to extend my gratitude for the tireless efforts of these departing leaders over many years,” Catalano said in a note to shocked staff.

On Friday there were more names with the departure of all the managing editors from the different states: Kim Treasure, Andrew Eales, Mark Baker, David Coren and Sean Cowan.

Kiribati ‘misleads’ over 60 Minutes visa

When the Channel Nine reporter Liam Bartlett and crew from 60 Minutes were detained in a hotel on Kiribati last month, the government claimed they had arrived without the correct permits and put them under house arrest.

They were in the Pacific island archipelago to film a story about the recent decision of the Kiribati government to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan and establish relations with China.

Photojournalist Ben Bohane, a Pacific islands specialist, says the “shrill statements put out by the Kiribati government” were misleading and 60 Minutes did apply for a visa before arriving.

“A day after we arrived immigration took us in for questioning and told us the permit would cost $5,000, perhaps expecting we would baulk at the outrageous cost,” he said. “This fee suggests Kiribati is starting to use the same approach as Nauru with its $8,000 media visa, which also has no guarantee of being approved and acts as an effective block on all foreign media coverage of the refugee detention centres.

“As far as I am aware, the Kiribati government has not issued any foreign media permits for the past two years since the ferry sinking disaster in January 2018 which claimed 95 lives. Now they are concerned about sensitivities around the diplomatic switch to China, for instance blocking all local media coverage of a pro-Taiwan public demonstration on 27 September. Our attempts to access footage of the demonstration shot by an independent local cameraman were blocked.”

The story will air on Nine on Sunday.