Nick Cater blames Probyn’s sacking on ‘poisonous’ equity – but didn’t get the News Corp memo

Everyone from the prime minister down had an opinion about the ABC’s decision to make political editor Andrew Probyn redundant but one take stands out. “Was Andrew Probyn let go from the ABC for being male and white?” asked Nick Cater in the Australian (without a single piece of evidence suggesting this was the case).

Probyn “faces an uphill task” getting another job, Cater says, because he is a member of an oppressed class that doesn’t tick any diversity boxes promoted by “radical ideology”.

“Discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, gender or sexuality is officially sanctioned at the ABC, as it is in every organisation that falls for the poisonous doctrine of social equity,” he said, again without any evidence.

Perhaps the former editor of the Weekend Australian is unaware News Corp has its own “poisonous doctrine” in the form of a diversity, equity and inclusion plan: “We believe that diversity, equity and inclusion help us generate better ideas, and that our business is stronger for integrating diversity into our content and operations.”

At Canberra’s mid-winter ball Anthony Albanese poked fun at Aunty too, musing in his traditional roast that the “funding arrangements seem to be working out well”.

“No money for a political editor,” Albo said. “No money for an arts division. But enough money for The Weekly to have multiple episodes running a segment called Albo’s Fucking Dog.” Peter Dutton went even further, saying he thought the treatment of Probyn “was a disgrace”.

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Toto’s frosty reception

Albanese provided more material for Charlie Pickering’s Albo’s Fucking Dog segment when he did a very Canberra thing this week: he sent a weather pic for inclusion in ABC Canberra’s 7pm bulletin.

Newsreader James Glenday announced the photo of the day came from “Anthony Albanese, Deakin”.

ABC hits back at anonymous critic

Cater’s line about Probyn being a victim of diversity gone mad followed the Australian’s reporting of multiple anonymous comments claiming Probyn was paying the price for “standing up to management over some of their more stupid editorial and staffing decisions”.

“These demands for 50/50 ­diversity targets on absolutely everything – let’s call it for what it is, it’s woke shit,” the source said. “But that is all ABC management seems to care about these days.”

The ABC was so incensed by the anonymous comments it published a statement on the weekend calling them “offensive”.

“To suggest that anyone on the ABC News team is a ‘diversity hire’ to ‘meet a target’ or to ‘tick a box’ is completely wrong and offensive,” news director Justin Stevens said.

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Sales into a storm

Leigh Sales may have received a gold Logie nomination this week but she didn’t win any popularity contests with her ABC colleagues, especially the 120 who received redundancy notices last week. At the Logies announcement, Sales was asked by Nine what she thought about the ABC restructure. The Australian Story host said it was “really sad” but “the reality is that I know the way I consume media has changed so drastically – I don’t watch anything now on a schedule”.

As one of the highest paid journalists at the ABC not in the firing line, publicly backing management’s plan to cut 41 journalists from the news division was perhaps not the best move.

Booked out

The Canberra Times has stopped commissioning arts and books reviews from critics, telling longtime reviewers that “sadly … our pages will be drastically cut and we won’t be commissioning book reviews any more”.             

One editor told a reviewer it was “purely a cost issue” and “we are still committed to covering Canberra and wider arts, as well as books and theatre, but we will be doing it mostly in-house”.

“It’s obviously in no way a reflection on your reviews over the years, which we have very much enjoyed.”

John-Paul Moloney, the managing editor of the Canberra Times, confirmed the move, telling Weekly Beast: “Our strong culture, politics and national affairs coverage, as well as commentary and analysis provided by staff and columnists, continues.”

What about meat?

When Shannon Noll was announced as the artist picked by the NRL to provide the pre-match entertainment at the State of Origin on Wednesday night, fans expected to hear the former Idol’s hits What About Me, Shine and Drive during the Channel 9 broadcast.

Nine promoted Noll’s performance on social media, but when the time came for him to sing the cameras turned away, focusing instead on pre-match commentary.

It may have had something to do with Noll’s choice of opening song, which was a KFC jingle called Fried Night Footy, but Nine would not comment.

“If I wasn’t seeing Shannon Noll open his pre-game set with a KFC jingle, I’d refuse to believe it happened,” one fan at the stadium wrote on Twitter.

Just not cricket

Media got a little confused this week when Senator Jacqui Lambie asked the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate senior Australian defence force commanders for alleged war crimes, with several newspapers and TV outlets referring to another ICC, the International Cricket Court (there is no such court).

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Ten’s testing times

We told you last week about the resignation of Ten’s senior political journalist, Stela Todorovic, who quit when she was told the ABC’s Ashleigh Raper had been appointed to replace Peter van Onselen as political editor and she would not be getting PVO’s old job. There’s been a development. Todorovic was working out her four weeks’ notice when she gave a quote to the Daily Mail for an article that was disparaging of Ten.

After the headline claiming the network is “a shambles”, Todorovic was put on gardening leave, Weekly Beast understands. A spokesperson for Ten said: “Stela is a dedicated and respected political reporter based in Network 10’s Canberra Bureau. During the last three years, Stela has reported on the big stories coming out of Canberra, joined the campaign trail for the 2022 Federal Election and fronted the Women of The House podcast series for Network 10. We wish Stela all the best.”

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Toddler triumph

The ABC is out-rated by every commercial station across all demographics bar one – children aged zero to four. The main reason, of course, is Bluey. But Bluey can’t go on forever, and one day the ABC will lose its dominance among the pre-schoolers, ABC execs have been warned.

“Bluey has had huge success on broadcast TV among kids,” an internal briefing seen by Weekly Beast said. “It is likely that ABC’s reach among 0 to 4s will commence declining, closer to the rate of the market in years to come in a post-Bluey era.”