Last week in Sydney, I attended a conference on volunteering and gave a speech. When questions were invited from the audience, a woman raised her hand and was duly delivered the microphone.
A hooting, high-pitched laugh is heard, unmistakeable to anyone who has ever had a lively conversation with the former treasurer. And Costello keeps walking.. The former insists "No." The latter says it was definitely a push, and had the presence of mind to find some witnesses to back his account.Most Australians, in a disputed account between a politician and a journo, would of course unhesitatingly go with the most trustworthy witness: the bystander having a ciggie.
Across this industry, there are precious few female editors, chief executives, news directors, and executive producers at the biggest commercial companies. But those who do hold those jobs know instinctively that they need to keep their noses rigorously clean. Because members of the boys club will rarely extend to them the benefit of the doubt they will so readily, sometimes unthinkingly, give each other.
One wonders, indeed, at the shamelessness of a man so famous and surely aware of all this excruciating material, who nonetheless proceeds to sue for defamation. Spotlight slimed both women and ridiculed their journalistic practice, running extensive audio of Wilkinson and her producer drinking wine in a hotel room with Higgins and her partner David Sharaz as they wargamed the story.
The news item was billed as an "Exclusive!" by Robert McKnight, who included in his news story the following paragraph: What would happen to the staff and editors of the company's famed tabloids — the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, and so on — which once were fabulously profitable but now are flagging?
13 per cent of respondents to a workplace survey of the News division said they'd been sexually harassed