Category Archives: Australian media

Adele interview bungle leaves Australian TV reporter ‘mortified’ and reportedly costs station $1m

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‘This is the most important email I have ever missed,’ Seven’s Matt Doran says after failing to listen to singer’s new album 30

A “mortified” Australian TV reporter has tried to explain how he bungled an exclusive interview with the singer Adele about her new album.

The host of Channel Seven’s Weekend Sunrise, Matt Doran, and a crew flew to London for the chat, which reportedly cost A$1m to secure and would have been Adele’s only Australian interview. After Doran conceded during the interview that he had only heard one track from her latest work, 30, the interview was canned.

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Malcolm Turnbull on Murdoch, lies and the climate crisis: ‘The same forces that enabled Trump are at work in Australia’

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Systematic partisan lying and misinformation from the media, both mainstream and social, has done enormous damage to liberal democracies, the former PM writes

The United States has suffered the largest number of Covid-19 deaths: about 600,000 at the time of writing. The same political and media players who deny the reality of global warming also denied and politicised the Covid-19 virus.

To his credit, Donald Trump poured billions into Operation Warp Speed, which assisted the development of vaccines in a timeframe that matched the program’s ambitious title. But he also downplayed the gravity of Covid-19, then peddled quack therapies and mocked cities that mandated social distancing and mask wearing.

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News Corp Australia won’t muzzle commentators as it ramps up climate coverage

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Newspapers to cover ‘all views’ and ‘not just the popular ones’, indicating the Murdoch empire may continue its pattern of climate science denial

News Corp Australia has confirmed it will ramp up its company-wide coverage of climate change next month but says its stable of commentators won’t be “muzzled”.

The executive chairman of News Corp Australasia, Michael Miller, says the mastheads will cover “all views” and “not just the popular ones”, indicating the Murdoch empire may continue its pattern of climate science denial and ridicule towards climate action.

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Sky News Australia banned from YouTube for seven days over Covid misinformation

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Digital giant issues strike after channel posted videos denying the existence of disease and encouraging people to use discredited medication

Sky News Australia has been banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after violating its medical misinformation policies by posting numerous videos which denied the existence of Covid-19 or encouraged people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

The ban was imposed by the digital giant on Thursday afternoon, the day after the Daily Telegraph ended Alan Jones’s regular column amid controversy about his Covid-19 commentary which included calling the New South Wales chief health officer Kerry Chant a village idiot on his Sky News program.

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Far-right commentator Katie Hopkins dumped by Big Brother after Australia hotel quarantine claims

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Seven terminates contract and British far-right figure expected to leave country after joking about plans to breach quarantine rules

British far-right figure Katie Hopkins has been dumped as a cast member of Seven’s Big Brother VIP and will leave the country after breaching her contract, Guardian Australia can reveal.

Hopkins, 46, broadcast a live video from what she claimed was a Sydney hotel room on Saturday morning, describing Covid-19 lockdowns as “the greatest hoax in human history” while joking about elaborate plans to breach quarantine rules.

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Australian ad showing Covid patient gasping for air ‘could increase vaccine hesitancy’

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Scare campaigns can make people more fearful of jab side-effects, expert says

A new Australian government Covid awareness advertisement featuring a young woman gasping for air in a hospital bed has been criticised for leaning into scare tactics and for urging vaccination among a group who are still not eligible for the recommended vaccine.

The federal government released two ads at the weekend, one featuring the young woman, which also carries a message for people to stay at home and get tested, and the other showing a parade of arms bearing Band-Aids after vaccination with the tagline: “Arm yourself against Covid-19.”

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George Pell: news organisations fined more than $1m over reporting of sexual abuse verdict

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Victoria’s supreme court fines the Age $450,000 and News Corp more than $400,000 for contempt of court over coverage of cardinal’s initial conviction

A dozen of Australia’s largest media organisations have been fined more than $1m for contempt of court over their coverage of Cardinal George Pell’s sexual abuse conviction.

On Friday the Victorian supreme court justice John Dixon ruled the 12 organisations had “usurped” the role of the court by breaching a suppression order on Pell’s now-quashed conviction for child sexual abuse.

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ABC reappearance at Senate hearing could reveal details of agreement with Christian Porter

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Questions need to be answered after broadcaster refuted claims made by minister, Sarah Hanson-Young says

The ABC will be hauled back before Senate estimates to discuss details of its agreement with Christian Porter that led the industry minister to drop his defamation suit against the broadcaster.

The Senate communications committee will hold a hearing as early as next week at which the ABC managing director, David Anderson, will be asked who proposed the settlement and why the public broadcaster agreed to it.

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‘Hundreds’ of photos exist of Australian soldiers drinking from dead Afghan’s prosthetic leg, court told

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Ben Roberts-Smith’s lawyers in his defamation action say they have been overwhelmed by new tranche of documents including the images

There are “hundreds” of photos of Australian soldiers drinking from a prosthetic leg – allegedly taken from a slain Afghan – at an unauthorised bar at Australia’s military base in Afghanistan, a court has heard.

The existence of some photographs was previously known, and a handful had been widely broadcast and published. But the full extent of the photos from the Australian soldiers’ underground bar, the Fat Ladies’ Arms, was revealed before the federal court on Wednesday.

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News Corp exclusive on Chinese ‘bioweapons’ based on discredited 2015 book of conspiracy theories

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Report in the Australian newspaper promoting Sharri Markson’s book on origins of Covid criticised as misleading and alarmist by China analysts

The Australian’s exclusive about a “chilling” document produced by Chinese military scientists is based on a discredited 2015 book containing conspiracy theories about biological warfare which is freely available on the internet.

Written by the paper’s investigations writer, Sharri Markson, the report last Saturday said Chinese military scientists “discussed the weaponisation of Sars coronaviruses five years before the Covid-19 pandemic” and predicted a third world war would be fought with biological weapons.

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NSW health minister condemns media for naming Sydney ‘barbecue man’ at centre of Covid outbreak

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Brad Hazzard says AFR story that identified man was ‘appalling’, and warned it would undermine public health

• NSW restrictions: what you can and can’t do under new coronavirus rules
• NSW Covid hotspots: list and map of Sydney case locations
• Follow the Australia live blog

The New South Wales health minister has said a newspaper’s decision to name the man who visited numerous barbecue shops in Sydney while infected with Covid-19 was “appalling” and would undermine public health.

Brad Hazzard said the Australian Financial Review’s story identifying a patient “stinks” because it may discourage the public from cooperating fully with the contact tracers in the future and the man had not consented to have his identity revealed.

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Beyoncé looked glorious on my magazine cover. ‘Are you going to lighten her skin?’ my boss asked

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Being urged to retouch then re-retouch the singer’s photo left Justine Cullen shaken. In this extract from her new book she recalls the ‘cookie cutter’ cycle her industry was trapped in

I stood and knocked tentatively on my publisher’s office door, holding a printout of my latest cover gingerly in my fingertips. The cover I held in my sweaty hands this time was Beyoncé, and she looked … well, she looked like Beyoncé. She looked perfect.

The publisher held the cover in her hands and looked at it approvingly. “It’s wonderful,” she said, nodding. I gave a relieved little sigh and turned to leave the room. But, just as I got to the door, she glanced back up from her computer screen and piped up, nonchalantly, as though having an afterthought: “Are you going to make her skin a little lighter?”

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Facebook now lets users and pages turn off comments on their posts

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The new feature to limit comments comes after an Australian court ruling that found news outlets are liable for comments on their pages

Facebook will allow every user including celebrities, politicians, brands and news outlets to determine who can and can’t comment on their posts.

The social media giant announced on Wednesday that when people post on Facebook, they will be able to control who comments on the post, ranging from everyone who can see the post, to only those who have been tagged by the profile or page in the post. It is similar to a change recently introduced by Twitter to limit who can reply to tweets.

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ABC checking on presenter’s wellbeing after expletives shouted during Adelaide news bulletin

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Radio presenter shouted multiple expletives and appeared to be ad-libbing bulletin before being taken off air

An ABC radio presenter shouted an expletive twice during a late-night news broadcast in Adelaide before being abruptly taken off the air.

The national broadcaster has said it is investigating the incident and making sure the staff member is OK.

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Australia news live: Scott Morrison apologises over ‘insensitive’ harassment claim; rain eases

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PM issues Facebook statement saying he ‘deeply regrets’ raising a sexual harassment claim in response to question from journalist; forecast improves on east coast but flood waters still pose risk. Follow all the latest news and updates, live

The bells have rung for the House sitting - but day three of estimates is upon us as well.

The Treasury secretary is up from nowish, if you want to tune in

The two News Corp major city tabloids have made their displeasure with Scott Morrison for attacking a Sky News journalist during his press conference yesterday abundantly clear this morning.

Despite the mea culpa from the PM late yesterday the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph carry very negative front pages and unflattering mocking headlines: “Sco-woe” and “Sco-D’oh”

FRONT PAGE
Read today's paper: https://t.co/H9DzehmZVI#sydney #NSW #newspaper #frontpage #news pic.twitter.com/yvYOq7zDdA

TODAY'S FRONT PAGE.
Wednesday March 24
Read the digital edition in our app or online > https://t.co/qEcoijKR39
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.#Melbourne #Victoria #FrontPage #newspaper #news pic.twitter.com/QnX389rBM0

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Facebook and Twitter say Australia wants to give regulator too much power in bid to combat online bullying

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The social media giants raise concerns about the eSafety commissioner’s investigative powers and lack of oversight

Facebook and Twitter have raised concern controversial new legislation aimed at curbing bullying and governing online activity will give Australia’s eSafety commissioner too much power over speech online with little oversight.

The online safety bill, introduced into parliament last week, is aimed at giving a broad range of powers to the eSafety commissioner to target bullying and harassment online, extending existing powers protecting children from online bullying to adults, as well as powers over abhorrent violent and terrorist material and adult content online and on social media in Australia.

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Facebook over-enforced Australia news ban, admits Nick Clegg

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Communications chief defends reversed ban, saying it is unfair to force tech firms to pay for news content

Facebook “erred on the side of over-enforcement” in removing links to hundreds of non-media organisations in Australia, Nick Clegg has admitted, in a blogpost defending the social media company’s short-lived news ban there.

The former UK deputy prime minister, now Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs and communications, said the tech firm had been “forced into [the] position” of blocking content designated as news after the Australian government refused to back down over plans to require it to negotiate with news publishers for payment for content.

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Facebook reverses Australia news ban after government makes media code amendments

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Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announces a compromise has been reached at the 11th hour as the legislation is debated in the Senate

Facebook will restore news to Australian pages in the next few days after the government agreed to change its landmark media bargaining code that would force the social network and Google to pay for displaying news content.

Last week, Facebook blocked all news on its platform in Australia, and inadvertently blocked information and government pages, including health and emergency services.

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Misinformation runs rampant as Facebook says it may take a week before it unblocks some pages

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News remains blocked as satirical websites are reinstated and Qanon and anti-vaxxers continue to be unaffected

Facebook may wait up to a week before unblocking some of the pages of hundreds of non-media organisations hit by its news ban, while anti-vaccination content and misinformation continues to run rampant on the social media platform.

News was blocked on Facebook in Australia on Thursday morning in response to the federal government’s news media code, which would require Facebook to negotiate with news publishers for the payment for content.

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