Spectator Australia takes a hit with big Grantham floods payout

Spectator Australia, the conservative magazine already struggling to survive with paid sales of about 8,000 copies, will be deeply wounded by a $572,674 payment to a Toowoomba family who say they were defamed by the publication. Editor Rowan Dean, who was Mark Latham’s co-host on the doomed Sky News show Outsiders, has maintained his silence about the eye-watering sum and how it will affect the Australian arm of the UK magazine.

Denis Wagner, one of four brothers to take legal action, told Weekly Beast the family just wanted justice after the magazine published an article, “Dam Busters! How Cater and Jones burst Grantham’s wall of lies”, which implied they were to blame for the Grantham flood. “We are pleased with the successful resolution of the claim, which vindicates the stance we have taken in this matter,” Wagner said. “We are now focusing on vindicating our reputations in our cases against Alan Jones and Channel Nine.”

The large out-of-court settlement was made ahead of a defamation trial that had been set down to start in Queensland this month. The Wagners took action against conservative commentator Nick Cater, as well as broadcaster Alan Jones, radio stations 2GB and 4BC and Channel Nine for a 60 Minutes story involving Cater. A commission of inquiry in 2015 cleared the Wagners of any responsibility and inquiry head Walter ­Sofronoff QC concluded the flood was “a natural disaster and that no human agency caused it or could ever have prevented it”.

Dean, who wrote an infamous “Poor Me List” for the Australian Financial Review last year in which he named Waleed Aly and Stan Grant as rich people who complain a lot, replaced Tom Switzer as editor three years ago.

Lamb ad silenced

The Advertising Standards Board has taken the unusual step of overturning an earlier decision – which cleared a spring lamb campaign featuring religious deities – and banned the ad for being offensive to Hindus. The Hindu Council of Australia had called for the ad to be banned, saying it was a “crude and deplorable attempt by Meat and Livestock Australia to use images of Ganesha to promote lamb consumption”, but its pleas were ignored.

Now an independent reviewer has found that the board made a “substantial flaw” in its determination, including finding that vegetarianism is not a central tenet of the Hindu faith. The board has accepted the reviewer’s findings and found the ad did breach the advertising standards code. “The board recognised that the advertiser is known for presenting laid-back advertisements with edgy Australian humour,” the board said. “However, the board considered that the advertiser had given inadequate consideration to how seriously some Australians take their religious views – and did not pay due attention to the level of offence about something important to those people.”

A comment in the ad about “the elephant in the room” amounted to discrimination against Hindus.

Throsby’s 50 not out as Wilkinson retires

Margaret Throsby has just clocked up 50 years at the ABC. It was 1967 when Throsby was hired as an announcer – alongside 28 male announcers – and then made the first female newsreader in 1978. Her appointment was reported thus: “Australia’s newest sex symbol is not a naughty nurse from The Young Doctors, a titillating teacher from Glenview High or a passionate policewoman from Cop Shop. Believe it or not, she’s an ABC newsreader and mother of a teenage son.”

Throsby says: “When I the joined ABC, I was the only woman on air and there were no women in management or executive positions at all ... You could rise only so far and that was it and it would have been shocking if a woman had been appointed to any senior role in management. Roll the film forward to 2017 and we have a lot of women on air – probably 50-50 women in my state, NSW. We also have women in senior roles and a female managing director.”

One of those senior women at the ABC is investigative reporter Marian Wilkinson, who is retiring after a stellar career to travel the world with her partner, Matthew Moore, a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist. Fresh from leading the Four Corners investigation of the Paradise Papers, Wilkinson announced her retirement from the program and was farewelled by her Four Corners colleagues on Thursday. The multi award-winning former executive producer of Four Corners has made her mark across print, radio and television and has covered politics, national security, terrorism, environment and refugee issues as well as writing several books, including Dark Victory with David Marr.

Rudd lets rip at News

Kevin Rudd didn’t hold back, labelling News Corp a “cancer” on democracy and calling for a royal commission into its relationship with the federal Coalition in an interview with the Saturday Paper. “They go after people who have the audacity to raise a question about their behaviour,” Rudd told the Saturday Paper’s Karen Middleton. “It’s one of the reasons I’m speaking out directly, so that people can have a normal national conversation rather than a continued national embarrassed silence about this.”

At Wednesday’s public hearing of the Senate inquiry into the future of public interest journalism, News Corp spokesman Campbell Reid was asked for his reaction to Rudd’s call. Reid downplayed the incendiary nature of the statement, calmly referring the senators to the company statement: “Mr Rudd is entitled to his opinions. It is a role of the media to scrutinise governments, it is what defines a democracy and we stand by our role in doing that.” In response to a question about whether News Corp was responsible for the decline in the public’s trust in journalism, Reid said, “People have always responded to ‘Do you trust journalists?’ in the negative. In my industry there are things that people always say like ‘There’s nothing in the Sunday papers or ‘You can’t trust anything you read’.”

‘Blood on the floor’ at Bauer

Months after the departure of editor Kim Doherty, the Australian Women’s Weekly has been hit by a major staff cull. Staffers told Weekly Beast there was “blood on the floor” on Wednesday as magazine staff across the organisation were given their marching orders. Six of Bauer’s department heads were fired – including a senior Women’s Weekly editor.

The Bauer Media chief executive, Paul Dykzeul, has wasted no time in slashing costs after arriving from New Zealand a few months ago. He told staff of his “strategic plans” to “position the business for growth and opportunity” in an email that said the German owner of the global media company, Yvonne Bauer, “endorsed” his strategy when she visited recently. “As we consider strategies to future-proof our business, it is necessary for us to continually review our product portfolio and consider ways to improve cost, efficiency and explore better ways of working across our business,” he said. “With this, we will see some titles leave our business over the coming weeks. They are Yours, Homes+ and Recipes+.” Bauer will also stop publishing custom magazines Myer Emporium and Weight Watchers, staff say. The cutbacks follow the loss of a major defamation case to Rebel Wilson, although the case is now under appeal.

Mearesy snapped up by Shorten

Last week Fairfax photographer Andrew Meares retired as Canberra press gallery snapper for the Sydney Morning Herald where he worked for 27 years. Meares played a prominent role as press gallery president, raising the status of photography in the house and he was given a proper send-off by senators.

But not so fast. This week he popped up as an official staff photographer for Labor leader Bill Shorten, with the official title of digital communications adviser.