Broadcast authority ACMA has commenced an investigation into comments made by Channel Nine rugby league commentators Ray Warren and Phil Gould, as fallout continues to spread from their anti-poker machine reform editorial.
An ACMA spokesman confirmed the investigation this morning, telling The Power Index that a statement would be released shortly.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie and fellow anti-gambling campaigner Senator Nick Xenophon have also written a letter to Channel Nine demanding an explanation over the comments.
Last week The Power Index reported that Clubs Australia was given advance notice by Nine that the editorial was going ahead. The lobby group said it did not pay Nine for the spot.
At the time Nine did not respond to questions about who commissioned the editorial. Today a spokesperson told The Power Index the network would be providing a "considered response" on the issues raised by Wilkie and Xenophon. The spokesperson did not return a second email asking about the ACMA probe in time for today's deadline.
"We are confident we are not in breach of any code provisions," a spokesperson said. "That said, we do not intend to offer a running commentary on the matter in the media."
Warren and Gould have come under attack from Wilkie and Xenophon for the half time message in which they slammed mooted pre-commitment technology for poker machines.
Senator Xenophon says he is "still pretty stunned" by Warren and Gould's comments which were "so clumsily worked into the commentary."
"We need answers from the network about who actually authorised this," he told The Power Index this morning. "Ray Warren says it was given to him as a job to do, the question is by whom."
Yesterday Warren told Fairfax radio that he did community service announcements "regularly" and the September 23 editorial "was no different". He said he believed the controversial policy could lead to job losses.
But the day after the match Warren co-hosted a Triple M sports show called Dead Set Legends, on which he revealed the comments were scripted, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
''It was a directive from up top that it be read by at least somebody, so I read it,'' Warren told co-host Dan Ginnane.
Warren said he supported the message and while he wasn't sure, believed it was paid for:
''I think it was an ad, if you like, it sounded like an ad. I think it was done on behalf of the rugby league, who is fully supportive of the clubs.''
Those comments seem to contradict a letter to a complainant from Nine's Network Compliance Manager Shelley Bates, who said the message was "purely the opining of the commentators" and "in no way an advertisement".
According to Media Watch, Bates said: "The comments were part of the program content and were in no way an advertisement. Furthermore the Nine Network did not receive any payment or other benefits for the broadcast of the information."
What is still unclear is how involved Phil Gould was in writing the remarks. In his response to Warren's initial half time comments, Gould called mandatory pre-commitment a "rubbish policy" that "won't work" and "will hurt."
Gould is a key Penrith Panthers identity, having been recently installed as football operations manager. Last year the Penrith Leagues Club took home more than $90 million from poker machines.
Gould has also been staunchly anti-pokies reform. In a column published in July he wrote that mandatory pre-commitment technology was "not a policy designed to benefit the Australian people".
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
#ACMA probes channel 9's pokies propaganda | Power index
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Andrew bolts damage: 'it's hip to be stupid' | Crikey #Ausmedia
I published my first piece of journalism in 1992. It was a story about the Aboriginal Housing Company in Redfern. In the last 20 years, I have used my skills across publishing mediums and literary genres to write positive stories about Aboriginal Australia with the aim of building bridges between black and white communities.
On April 15, 2009, with a flick of his pen, Andrew Bolt in his article ”It’s so hip to be black”, managed to burn down many of those bridges, by writing words about me (and others) that discredited me professionally, while also offending, insulting and humiliating me. People on his blog also made racist remarks, that also offended, insulted and humiliated me.
I have always identified and lived as an Aboriginal woman, I’m a Williams from Cowra, a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation.
Mr Bolt’s article suggests I made a “decision to be Aboriginal” which “was lucky, given how it’s helped her career” and that I had “won plum jobs reserved for Aborigines at Koori Radio, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board and Macquarie University’s Warawara Department of Indigenous Studies”.
What Mr Bolt failed to mention is that I am an established writer and highly qualified with a PhD in Media and Communication, and that in fact none of the jobs he mentioned were actually “reserved” or identified Aboriginal positions, and the Koori Radio role was actually voluntary and unpaid.
In his witness statement to the court Mr Bolt claimed to have used a photo of my mother on her wedding day as evidence to determine she, therefore I was of mixed-heritage and could not or should not identify as Aboriginal. The photo Bolt submitted was taken directly from my blog and a post I made on February 7, 2011, almost two years after he wrote his article, so his misrepresentations about me continued.
As former Chair, Deputy Chair and Committee Member of the Australian Society of Authors, I have long advocated and been part of campaigns to protect the rights of Australian authors. At the same time, I have always advocated for responsibility in writing, and an ethical approach to publishing.
I am pleased (although not surprised) with the judgment handed down today by Justice Bromberg in the Federal Court of Australia. I believe the result means that Australia will have a higher quality and more responsible media, and that to some degree the persecution of Aboriginal people in the press will be lessened. And that was why I chose to be part of this case. Australian readers also deserve better.
I thank my legal team: barristers Ron Merkel QC, Herman Borenstein SC, Claire Harris, and Phoebe Knowles, my solicitors Joel Zyngier and Nathalie Dalpethado (Holding Redlich) and Aislinn Martin (Tarwirri). I’d like to express my heartfelt gratitude for their tireless efforts in seeking justice for not only the named applicants but all those Aboriginal people who were reasonably likely to have been offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by Mr Bolt’s writings.
I am continuing to focus on what I love doing most, working with young Aboriginal people around the country and teaching them how to write their own stories, in the hope they too will one day have the position of privilege to publish their own words.
Finally, in the words of Dr Rosie Scott, award-winning author, former Chair of the ASA and former Vice-President of PEN Sydney – an organisation who fights for the rights of imprisoned writers who don’t have the ‘free speech’ we so readily enjoy:
“Free speech is the cornerstone of genuine democracy, but when writers publish disinformation dressed up as fact, lies as truth, slander as objective evaluation and call it free speech, they are devaluing its very essence and betraying all those who’ve fought for it.”
*Dr Anita Heiss is the author of adult fiction, historical fiction, children’s fiction, non-fiction and social commentary. Her latest novel is Paris Dreaming.
Andrew Bolt found guilty of racial discrimination #EpicFail
Conservative columnist Andrew Bolt has today been found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act over a 2009 article in which he accused fair-skinned Aboriginal people of playing up being black for career advancement.
Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that Bolt's article was likely to have "an intimidatory effect on some fair skinned Aboriginal people and in particular young Aboriginal persons or others with vulnerability in relation to their identity".
He also criticised Bolt for writing an article that contained "errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language".
The Power Index last month named Bolt the most powerful Megaphone in Australia because of his talent as a provocateur and enormous reach across TV, print, radio and online.
Author Anita Heiss, one of the nine applicants in the case, today released a statement celebrating Justice Bromberg's decision. She writes that Bolt's article "discredited me professionally, while also offending, insulting and humiliating me. People on his blog also made racist remarks that also offended, insulted and humiliated me. I have always identified and lived as an Aboriginal woman..."
The other applicants included indigenous academic Larissa Behrendt, former ATSIC chief Geoff Clark and artist Bindi Cole. In the article – titled "White is the new Black" – Bolt claimed Behrendt "looks almost as German as her father". Her father was, in fact, the late Aboriginal oral historian Paul Behrendt.
Justice Blomberg ordered no settlement on the parties, who will negotiate between them what measures Bolt and the Herald Sun will take.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Imaginary pokies campaign | Crikey
The pokies debate has exploded over the past 24 hours after Clubs NSW used its influence over the NRL to try to impose its campaign against Andrew Wilkie’s reform agenda on the AFL’s grand final week program.
With no NRL or AFL finals on Sunday, elements of both codes leapt into the media vacuum yesterday and won themselves a truckload of coverage in today’s newspapers.
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire kicked things off on Friday morning’s Channel Nine Today show with his reference to a so-called “footy tax”.
News Limited’s Samantha Maiden then pulled this together adding some Jeff Kennett quotes for a mischievous beat-up in the Sunday tabloids, which suggested a full-on AFL public advertising campaign was about to be launched. This is rubbish.
Meanwhile, Clubs NSW leapt on this News Ltd distortion and CEO Anthony Ball summonsed St George Leagues Club CEO Peter Doust to a midday doorstop yesterday at their Kogarah Taj Mahal. But the PR didn’t go all their way.
The Australian’s colour piece this morning on the punters at St George featured a member called David Kavanagh who savaged his own club when stating: “Is it worth someone killing themselves because of a gambling addiction, to see footballers?”
Like with most tax-exempt NSW Leagues clubs, the St George’s facilities are grossly over-capitalised. However, St George CEO Peter Doust told The Australian the Wilkie reforms would bring down the shutters on his operation.
“It means jobs, 200 jobs,” he said. “This is about our club fighting to survive. We will close if this system is successful.”
But a quick look at the latest financial statements for St George show a club with no net debt, cash of $3 million, $45 million of property, plant and equipment, retained earnings of $37.8 million and operating cash flow last year of $2.5 million.
It is a typically asset rich NRL Leagues Club whose latest financial statements even boast ownership of “a number of residential properties”.
It is true that $32 million of its $39 million in gross revenue came from losses on the 418 poker machines that it operates, but no one is suggesting the Wilkie proposal will force St George to close them down. Moving to low-intensity machines with a maximum bet of $1 is easy and cheap to implement and would cater for all those recreational gamblers they claim to serve. If St George wants to retain machines where addicts can lose more than $10,000 an hour, then a system of mandatory pre-commitment will be imposed to stop vulnerable people being fleeced.
While Media Watch has regularly exposed over-the-top claims by the NSW pokies industry, the position of the AFL clubs in Victoria is a lot more sensitive.
ALH, the joint venture between Woolworths and pokies billionaire Bruce Mathieson, operates venues for Collingwood, Carlton, Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs. The Carlton situation is tricky politically because Mathieson copped plenty of stick last year when he seemingly shafted the Western Bulldogs and Richmond by shifting some of their pokies business to his own team, Carlton.
Given the Mathieson connection as a former Carlton director, it made more sense for Woolies to prod its other client clubs to front a grand final week campaign.
Outgoing Hawthorn president Kennett and McGuire duly stepped up with their reference to a “footy tax” and Kennett even claimed they “threaten the survival of the code”. But two out of 18 AFL presidents does not make an AFL campaign. That position may be reached today at a meeting of all presidents, but Clubs NSW should not hold its breath.
The AFL itself has not joined the Clubs NSW campaign, as Anthony Ball and Peter Doust declared in front of a 15-strong press pack at the St George Leagues Club yesterday.
Indeed, new Geelong president Colin Carter stuck his neck out on the front page of The Australian Financial Review today when he was quoted as follows: “We are not at all opposed to this. The abundant evidence is that we have a national problem in this area.”
These words are especially important because Carter is a strong Christian who spent 15 years as an AFL commissioner and has served on the Wesfarmers board since 2002.
Wesfarmers operates several hundred pokies through its Coles hotels business but it has strongly differentiated itself from industry leader Woolies, agreeing to a range of concessions in 2009 after being targeted by anti-pokies campaigner Paul Bendat.
In a week when we should all be talking about the grand final, Jon Faine spent more than an hour on 774 ABC Melbourne this morning talking about the AFL and pokies. The pokies industry and people such as McGuire got slaughtered. Even NRL hero Steve Mortimer came across as a stammering fool. And it won’t help the AFL players either who are looking greedy with their hands out for massive pay rises after the record $1.2 billion media rights deal.
The question remains: why do these cashed-up athletes on huge six-figure packages need to be associated with targeting problem gamblers in the country with the highest gambling rates on earth?
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
New inquiry into media will not look into bias | AstroTurf'ing to continue | #Ausmedia
New inquiry into media will not look into bias
THE Gillard government has confirmed it will hold an inquiry into the media, concentrating on privacy concerns and whether media regulators had sufficient powers and were keeping up with rapid technological change.
But the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, told Labor backbenchers yesterday the inquiry would not look at allegations of media bias nor the concentration of print media ownership in the hands of News Ltd. And he said an inquiry should not be about the grievances of politicians.
He told the caucus he did not need a media inquiry to tell him that ''some News Ltd papers were biased'' and that News Ltd dominated the print media, which was not something the government could change.
Not looking into media bias ... Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has said an inquiry should not be about the grievances of politicians.
He also said there was no evidence of telephone hacking or other illegal practices in Australia of the type which have shaken the media industry in Britain.
Negotiations between Senator Conroy and the Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown, who wants much broader terms of reference, continued yesterday afternoon. An announcement on the inquiry is expected today.
Labor and the Greens are also discussing whether it will be a parliamentary inquiry - the Greens' preference - or an investigation run by an independent body outside Parliament, which appears to be the suggestion of the government.
The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, said the inquiry was ''a naked attempt to intimidate the media'' and would not be supported by the Opposition.
''There is no evidence of any significant new problems with the media in Australia,'' he said.
Some Labor backbenchers said they were worried it would appear that the Greens were dictating the terms of the inquiry, while others insisted it should look at News Ltd papers. One said the Murdoch empire was ''a threat to democracy''.
But the terms of reference are expected to concentrate on whether the present regulators - the Press Council for print media and the Australian Communications and Media Authority for broadcast media - had sufficient powers to oversee the media and provide people with grievances with sufficient ''redress''.
It will also look at how new media such as online blogs fit into the regulatory system and whether it makes more sense to have a single over-arching regulator.
The Press Council has proposed a single regulator, run either by a government authority or a non-government council, in a preliminary submission to a separate inquiry into media ''convergence''.
Senator Brown wanted an inquiry to also look at how the government could support quality journalism and whether the media was operating in the public interest. He has deferred a vote on a motion to set up an inquiry, scheduled for today, to allow time for the detailed negotiations with the government to conclude.
Mr Abbott suggested the inquiry was an attempt to deflect attention from the government's political problems.
''The problems of this government are not the fault of the media, the problems of this government are its own fault. It's not bad coverage that's killing this government, it's poor performance which is killing this government,'' he said.
The government's decision about an inquiry comes after a dispute with News Ltd over assertions about the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, made in a column published in The Australian, which the paper retracted.
After Ms Gillard accused it of contravening ''all known standards of journalism'', the chief executive of News Ltd, John Hartigan, said her complaints were ''pedantic''.
Darin Sullivan
President
FBEU
Monday, September 12, 2011
Media Inquiry | Push them off the fence! | #Ausmedia
The Government is genuinely on the fence today - it could go either way. The Greens are pushing hard for one, but the ALP is concerned about how it would look responding to pressure from the Greens - that's why we need pressure from the public (hint: that's us!).
If you think an inquiry is a good idea, click here and let your local MP or Senator know why:
http://newsstand.good.do/emaiMP