by Mary W Maxwell, LLB
Editor’s note: This article continues the series that I began yesterday as a counterattack on the proposed national effort scheduled for August 16, 2018 in the US. There, the mighty powers of the press will turn their guns on the president for having accused them of creating fake news.
In a Comment, yesterday, to Dee McLachlan’s article, I stated that the press really does NOT have an obligation to be neutral. It’s only when they pretend to be an ethical, altruistic mob that problems occur. For today’s article I shall peer into the habit by which stars and starlets of the media give themselves awards. This upgrades the prestige of particular individuals by letting them be mentioned as “award-winning journalists.”
Getting a Pulitzer
From Poynter.org: “Here are the winners of the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes” by Ren LaForme, April 16, 2018
Winners of the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes were announced at Columbia University in New York City on Monday. The Pulitzers are highly revered and mark the best in journalism in 14 categories.
Neil Brown … offered: “It’s clear that good reporting by one newsroom helps generate even more good journalism by others. We need more reporters working on stories to bring matters to light, and in doing so that puts more power in the hands of citizens. It’s great to recognize the courageous and smart work of so many diverse journalists and news organizations.”
The awards are:
Public Service
Awarded jointly to The New York Times and The New Yorker for their coverage of the sexual abuse of women in Hollywood and other industries around the world
Breaking News Reporting
Awarded to the staff of the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California, for its coverage of wildfires in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County
Investigative Reporting
Awarded to The Washington Post staff for revealing Senate candidate Roy Moore’s alleged history of sexual harassment of teenage girls
Upfront Disclosure: I ran in the US Senate race in Alabama in 2017, hoping to become the Republican candidate, but Judge Roy Moore won that primary election on August 17, 2017, and then he lost to the Democrat Doug Jones in the December election. This turn of events (a Dem wining in a red state) can be credited to The Washington Post’s outing of Moore’s alleged sexual proclivities. Had that out-ing occurred before August 17, I fancy I may be strutting around the Hill today….
Explanatory Reporting
Awarded to the staffs of the Arizona Republic and USA Today Network for their exhaustive series on President Donald Trump’s proposed southern border wall
National Reporting
Awarded jointly to the staff of The Washington Post and the staff of The New York Times for coverage of contacts between Russian officials and President Donald Trump’s teams.
International Reporting
Awarded to Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters for reporting on Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs
Feature Writing
Awarded to Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, a freelance reporter for GQ, for a portrait of Charleston murderer Dylann Roof
Commentary
Awarded to John Archibald of Alabama Media Group for commentary about corrupt politicians, women’s rights and hypocrisy in Alabama and across the country
Criticism
Awarded to Jerry Saltz of New York Magazine for a body of work about visual arts in America
Editorial Writing
Awarded to Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register for examining the consequences of Iowa’s privatization of Medicaid
Have You Had Enough?
It is staggering that the press of the United States could come up only with those persons as winners of journalism’s most famous award.
But at least it’s honest – those topics were the ones that almost totally occupied “the news” in 2017. By the way, as I am again here in the US I can report that TV still constantly pushes the theme of Trump’s vulnerability to indictment, impeachment, or whatever for the terrible sin of …um…. I’m not sure exactly, but it has to do with his communicating with persons in a foreign country about … um… I don’t really know.
The Walkley Judging Board
Now we should compare journalism awards given in Australia by the Walkley Foundation. I’ll list only a couple of them below. I’d mainly like to show that the board of judges contains only such persons as are bootlickers. Show me one of these who does not bootlick:
Angelos Frangopoulos AM, Chair, is the CEO and managing editor at Australian News Channel Pty Ltd (ANC), the operator of the Sky News services, a Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and) and is a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Charles Sturt University, where he is Pro-Vice Chancellor.
Lenore Taylor is the editor of Guardian Australia. Over almost three decades of political reporting, she has won two Walkley awards. She co-authored the book Shitstorm: Inside Labor’s Darkest Days, which examined the Rudd government’s response to the global economic crisis. [Oh.]
Natalie Ahmat is a proud Mudburra and Maluyligal First Nations woman, who is passionate about telling Australian stories through an Indigenous lens. She currently presents NITV News. [Anything about the NT Detention scandal, Ma’am?]
Dennis Atkins is national affairs editor for The Courier Mail. Atkins also appears regularly as a panelist on ABC’s Insiders and as a political commentator on ABC radio, and has a national weekly spot on PM Agenda on Sky News. He has been a journalist for more than four decades and has been a senior political writer since the early 1980s. [I have never heard of him.]
Michael Bachelard is the Gold Walkley Award-winning editor of The Ag investigations unit. [Swearda God, The Age has an investigations unit! I guess that’s why we know so much – not – about the Bourke St Rampage and the three silvery cars.]
Simon Crerar is BuzzFeed Australia’s editor-in-chief. He leads a growing editorial team publishing impactful news reporting, entertaining buzz content, viral videos and the most shared memes in Australia. Prior to BuzzFeed, he worked at The Times and Sunday Times in London, and at News Corp Australia. [Need we say more?]
Claire Harvey is deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph. She worked at The Australian for a decade, covering various rounds including politics and spending three years as New Zealand correspondent, from where she also covered the Pacific Islands. [Got anything on kuru?]
Patricia Karvelas began her professional career at the ABC and SBS 20 years ago. She currently presents ABC Radio National’s current affairs program RN Drive. Patricia also hosts National Wrap on Sunday evenings, featuring in-depth interviews with a range of influential Australians. [For example Tony Ryan, Dee McLachlan, Fiona Barnett – oh, maybe next year.]
Deborah Knight became co-anchor of Sydney’s Ten News in 2006, before moving to Nine, where she has hosted Financial Review Sunday, co-hosted Weekend Today, filled in as host of A Current Affair, and regularly hosts and reads the news on the Today Show and Today Extra. She is currently reading the Weekend News for 6pm News in Sydney. [Reading is a wonderful thing.]
Stella Lauri is the network news director of Australia’s largest regional news service – WIN News. Stella is responsible for 16 half-hour news bulletins weeknights and weekends in Tasmania. [Did she protest the Mike Willessee Port Arthur anniversary show? Did she hop up to Adelaide to cover my Moot Court Trial for Martin Bryant at the 2017 Adelaide Fringe?]
John Lehmann is the editor of The Australian. He has worked in senior roles on newspapers in Australia and the United States during his 25-year journalism career. He is a former editor-in-chief of Australia’s storied The Bulletin magazine, was editor at large of Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph and news editor of the Sunday New York Post. The Australian has been awarded the PANPA Newspaper of the Year award twice during his editorship.
Mark Mallabone is the deputy editor of The West Australian. In a career spanning more than 20 years at the newspaper, he has held a wide range of editorial executive positions including night editor, features editor and chief of staff. He has worked as a political reporter in Parliament House in Canberra. [I assume he worries about new legislation that chills journalism?]
Tory Shepherd is a senior columnist and The Advertiser’s state editor. She has appeared on a range of television shows including The Chaser, Insiders, Today, Sunrise, The Project and The Drum. Her radio gigs include ABC Adelaide, Radio National and News Radio. Tory is a multiple award winner and an APJC and Churchill Fellow. {Would she write up my 2018 Friunge play on False Memory Syndrome?]
Sandra Sully is a journalist and senior editor with TEN Eyewitness News, and is one of the most recognisable and respected faces on Australian television. She was the first Australian journalist to break the news of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. [Terrorist attacks in what sense?]
Silence Explained
My bracketed comments may sound like sour grapes, but it’s a serious matter. Just consider, from the above list, how impossible it is for an MSM journalist in the US to discuss any of those items I referred to. They seem to be solemnly devoted to avoiding any coverage of government criminality (which is Gumshoe’s principal subject and makes for really fun writing.)
I believe the MSM cannot tell the folks about those crimes as they are very much a partner in those crimes
Now let’s see how the Australian scene is almost identical. In Oz, Gumshoe editor Dee McLachlan has characterized the journalism award winners as ankle-biters. Sure, they do some investigation of social problems but never the ones that are in urgent need of attention.
Ankle-Biting Has Its Place
I shall show but three of the recent Walkley Foundation Award winners:
Gina McColl has been named the winner of the 2017 Gold Our Watch Award for her entry “Gendered violence at work” for The Age. McColl’s two-month investigation revealed sexual harassment in the workplace is a daily and damaging occurrence for women. Walkley judges said: “Gina’s in-depth investigations gave a voice to employees who had been expected to accept that harassment from customers was harmless and ‘part of the job’. …McColl’s work achieved real change, prompting a hospitality industry campaign to keep female staff safe.”
In the category “All Media: Best journalism campaign,” the Walkley prize of 2017 went to Nina Funnell and Eryk Bagshaw, of The Sydney Morning Herald, “Breaking the silence: sexual assault at Australian universities.”
Breaking the Silence? I might note that 2017 was the year I published both books, Inquest: Siege in Sydney, which criticizes the coronial hearings in the Lindt Café episode, and Deliverance! about Australia’s world-stunning Royal Commission on Child Sexual Abuse.
That is not to say that the Walkley Foundation should have given me an award – I did not self-nominate that year. Gumshoe editor Dee McLachlan and I had put down the $150 in previous years to self-nominate but what’s the point?
Foot-Shooting Rears Its Ugly Head
On June 9, 2016 I posted at Gumshoe an article about Dee’s naivete entitled “How To Shoot Oneself in the Foot While Hoping for a Walkley Award”
The self-nominator is asked to write 300 words. Dee whined as follows:
I never wanted to start being a journalist. [Well there you go.] I was compelled to solely by the lack of free, analytical and investigative journalism in Australia’s mainstream media. I originally started Gumshoe News to counter the nonsense being written about the September 11 attacks – “9/11” — but it has expanded, and now Gumshoe covers many subjects.
Why do so few people “believe” the mainstream press? (Recent reports put the figure as low as 7%!) It’s a propaganda vehicle for the corporates that own it.
The stories I am submitting cover Canberra’s handling of the MH17 crash, vaccination, Dick Cheney’s putting his feet up on his desk on 9-11, a piece of tampered evidence in the Boston Marathon case, Monsanto’s likely connection to a virus in Brazil, and media’s complicity in covering up crime.
Answer “How It Was Obtained?”
Many of my publications are generated by my reading the mainstream news and then researching the real story behind it. In two cases however, I was the original sleuth.
One has to do with the so-called Boston bomber, Jahar Tsarnaev. I observed in Court Exhibit #22 that a video of Jahar contained a still photo inserted into it. This photo had the telltale marks of cropping. I have declared the cropped-out part to be exculpatory evidence for Jahar who is now on Death Row.
The other scoop came when a Gumshoe reader, Christopher Brooks, managed to secure a letter from his MP which confirmed my guess of secret dealings with regard to the investigation of MH17.
Editor McLachlan then added—wait for it:
“I can imagine that however relevant my material may be, the Walkley Foundation will not profile it. My personal guess is that the Walkley awards, too, aid the suppression of evidence about such things as 9-11.”
Please stay tuned for more in the series that was inspired by Marjorie Pritchard’s call for a coordinated attack on something or other.
— Mary W Maxwell, LLB, hopes to see The Boston Globe in court in regard to the Marathon Bombing affair.
Again – a thoughtful item clarifying a mystery that is not a mystery any more! – and not claiming that miracles abound!
With all these “great” journalist, how is it that most ordinary Australians know nothing of the real events of what happened in Tasmania on the 28th April 1996? They are still convinced that Martin Bryant was the killer.
A little bit of investigative journalism would have been enough to tell the real situation, that Martin Bryant was not even at the Port Arthur Historic Site that day. A look at Police witness statements would have told the journalist(?) that Bryant was elsewhere when the shooting started at the Broad Arrow Café. But that was too easy!
This story was on our doorstep, not overseas, where the cost of travelling and accommodation could be blamed for the lack of scrutiny.
The so called journalists that covered the affair wrote ONLY what politicians told them to write. In other words it was transcription not journalism. Freedom of the press, why do we need it? If it exists, why do journalists not use it?
500 journos were at the specially arranged conference in Hobart. What! How could they NOT have joined a couple of dots… ?
2+2=4, not 5 or 3
Dee, I wondered about that myself. They were all assembled there at just the right time, then with all the specially arranged buses, central controlled media center and being directed around to each site in a bus with someone to explain the approved narrative – how could these ‘investigative journalists’ be so stupid not to notice what was going on.
Hell, you even have some of these fools claiming “I was at Port Arthur – I know what happened.”
It boggles the mind. Either these clowns didn’t care about the truth and just went along with the program to further their careers, OR, they were just too damn stupid to be an investigative journalist.
A old srory.
A politician’s accountant wanted to employ a staffer.
First interview, last question. What adds up to 2 and 2? 4 was the reply.
Second and third answered with the same response.
Fourth, when challenged with the same question, stood up closed the office door, approached the desk, lent over to the interviewer and whispered:
“What do you want it to be”?
Accountants! Not always, just a journalist wanting a income.
PS. Guess which was employed.
Dee, the ABC knocked you back with your idea for a series ending with 911 questions.
Learn; next time tell them the answer: 119.
LOL, the censorship of ‘Alex Jones’ has gone so far as to censor someone just talking about him – even when it was bad-mouthing Jones. Crikey, the MSM must be running scared.
https://www.real.video/5821671608001
This censorship issue is so bad that I’m having doubts that it is actual censorship. Perhaps someone is trying to draw attention to ‘conspiracy theories’. My Gawd, when what ever is going on turns your own troops against you, things just don’t add up.
But then again, the world has gone nuts…
Dear Dee, After I sent you the draft of this article, I thought I should change the word “bootlickers” to something less insulting such as “obedient types.” Tried emailing you, but no luck.
However, now that I have read Ned’s joke about the accountant — thank you, Nedski — I believe the word bootlickers was not harsh enough.
How about “liars”?
In a blog about the Pulitzers, a Commenter said “I’d rather get the Pullet Surprise. At least you’d know you are dealing with chickens.”
Come to think of it, this is probably all in the Great Plan. We are supposed to see all our old standards fall apart.
In times gone by, really good writers did get a Pulitzer. Really ballsy investigators could vie for a Pulitzer, too.
I guess “they” want us to think there is no longer such an ideal.
Poor old sods.
I would like to emphasize that I’m open to all sides of Trump story. Here is an ad for a book by Craig Unger (MSM person) which I imagine could contain valuable stuff about the mafia and US govt. But the two accolades listed (for Unger’s previous work) are:
Praise for House of Bush, House of Saud
“[An] explosive work of journalism.”—The New York Times
“Cautious and elemental…with great care [Unger] has synthesized these scattered reports into a narrative that is as chilling as it is gripping. This book builds a momentum and discovery ….”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I know for sure that NYT and AJC publish audacious lies and that they have no desire to reveal the Deep State. So right away before I would decide to order Unger’s new book about Trump, I am put off by the mention of those rags. Anyway, here is the book’s blurb:
“To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991—that it merely evolved, with Trump’s apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union.
“In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump’s sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world.
“Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential book is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today’s world.”
Any reader wanting to review it for GumshoeNews, please write to mclachlandee@gmail.com or mary.maxwell@alumni.adelaide.edu.au