The Australian throws 4,000-word tantrum at press council ruling as Drumgold waits for just one: sorry | Weekly Beast

When the press watchdog ruled that Murdoch’s broadsheet published three misleading, unfair and inaccurate articles about the former ACT prosecutor Shane Drumgold, The Australian responded by having a tantrum. We say tantrum because the newspaper published on Thursday an extraordinary 4,000-word riposte, including a front-page story, a timeline, two comment pieces and a thundering editorial questioning the Australian Press Council’s competence and integrity. This railing against the umpire is all the more bizarre, given News Corp effectively controls the APC as a majority member which pays up to 70% of its annual $1.7m budget. The columnist Janet Albrechtsen wrote all three pieces that were criticised, although the Sydney bureau chief, Stephen Rice, shares a byline on one. Of Albrechtsen’s role, the council said it was “a significant omission” not to disclose the writer’s role in the inquiry into the Bruce Lehrmann trial for which Drumgold was the prosecutor. In 2024, the ACT supreme court ruled Walter Sofronoff’s extensive communications with Albrechtsen gave rise to an impression of bias against him during the inquiry into the Lehrmann trial. The judge found Sofronoff’s 273 interactions with Albrechtsen gave the impression he “might have been influenced by the views held and publicly expressed” by her. Drumgold complained to the council that three pieces written by Albrechtsen after the ruling misrepresented the findings. The APC ruled in Drumgold’s favour despite a last-ditch attempt by the Oz to change its mind. When The Australian received the preliminary adverse finding it responded by commissioning two independent legal opinions. The council said the legal opinions were not relevant and it was only judging whether the publication had breached its editorial standards. Sign up to get Guardian Australia’s weekly media diary as a free newsletter Drumgold responded to The Australian’s dummy spit with a post on LinkedIn: “Who needs the truth, when you have a whole newspaper … Sorry seems to be the hardest word.” The press council responded to The Australian’s criticism by saying its findings “were not the result of a legal process, let alone a court, ‘kangaroo’ or otherwise”. “Our findings resulted from a thorough and careful examination of the stories complained about and the identification of clear areas where the Council’s principles had been breached,” the APC said. All parties had ample opportunity to put their case, and all views were carefully considered.” Rowland signs off After Michael Rowland announced this week that he was leaving the ABC after almost four decades, some of the ensuing headlines were lurid. The veteran newsman, 57, has spent his final year as 7.30’s national affairs reporter after quitting as ABC News Breakfast co-host at the end of 2024. “I’ve marked 39 years in the last couple of weeks or so, and when you know, you know,” Rowland said on News Breakfast. But a throwaway line about his wife, Nicki, being “unwell over the last year or so” inspired some inaccurate headlines, claiming Rowland had quit to care for his sick wife. Sky News: “Heartbreaking reason Michael Rowland to leave ABC after 39 years.” 7News: “ABC news presenter Michael Rowland reveals sad reason he’s quitting network after 39 years.” Rowland told Weekly Beast the headlines which suggested Nicki was at death’s door were wrong and none of the reporters called him to check. “She has been unwell but she’s bounced back,” he said. Breaking the spell A story in South Australia’s Sunday Mail exposed the educational divide between public and private schools, with public school students in the state learning “in stuffy or leaking transportable classrooms” while private school kids learn in multimillion-dollar sports and art centres. It was a good story, if only the headline hadn’t said “Bridge the eductional gulf, urge teachers”. Giant of News Corp passes The first indication that something was awry in the Murdoch family on Friday night was when Lachlan Murdoch didn’t turn up for the launch of what is very much his baby, the new Sky News Australia brand, News24. The answer came a few hours later when Murdoch tabloid the New York Post broke the story that Lachlan’s mother, Anna Murdoch-Mann, had died with her family around her in her Palm Beach home. She died on 17 February, but the news was kept under wraps until the 20th. The Australian Financial Review’s description of Anna as “the central domestic presence” in the global media empire run by her husband, Rupert, caused some to do a double-take. “Anna Murdoch Mann dePeyster, journalist, novelist and for more than three decades the central domestic presence in the rise of a global media empire, has died aged 81,” the AFR reported. It was certainly at odds with what Lachlan biographer Paddy Manning told Guardian Australia: “She played a foundational role in the history of the company. She had a huge influence on the success of the company as it went through its most spectacular growth phase in the 80s and 90s.” Anna also authored three novels – In Her Own Image (1985), Family Business (1988), and Coming to Terms (1992) – after beginning her career as a reporter on the Daily Telegraph. Contrarian column inches There is always someone who goes against the grain and defends what seems to many as indefensible. In the case of the global story of the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, it was left to the libertarian commentator Brendan O‘Neill, a former editor of the UK online journal Spiked. O’Neill jumped to the defence of the former prince in a piece headed “The pursuit of Andrew has become a medieval witch hunt”. “I am talking about the hounding of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor,” he wrote. “It has become a truly unedifying spectacle. Of all the cruel scalp-hunts we have witnessed in the era of cancel culture, this is surely the cruellest … “The media has derived an almost parasexual pleasure from that image of Andrew in anguish. “A Guardian hack writes of being ‘suck(ed) into the photo’s abyss’ and mesmerised by those ‘red eyes, like two little portals to hell’.” ABC’s doco drop When the incoming ABC managing director, Hugh Marks, axed Q+A last June, he said the money saved would be invested in part in a news documentary unit. The first project from the new unit will air on Monday 2 March at 8pm, and it’s topical. Diabolical: the Epstein Files, has reporter Grace Tobin on the ground in the US to interview rebel Republican politicians Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Epstein’s brother Mark who believes Epstein was murdered and Julie K Brown, the journalist whose investigation helped put Epstein behind bars. Marks says Diabolical is “comprehensive, meticulous journalism”. “I couldn’t be prouder of this debut and the signal it sends about our commitment to truth-driven storytelling, and the ABC’s focus on covering issues of global relevance,” he said. On 24 March the ABC Radio Sydney broadcaster Hamish Macdonald will present his first documentary for the ABC, a three-parter called The Matter of Facts. The series, which asks the question how do we function as a society if we can’t agree on facts, is produced by Northern Pictures and directed by Tosca Looby.