Andrew Bolt says Alan Jones’ poetic departure not cancel culture as Sky finds ‘room for Piers Morgan’

When News Corp unveiled plans for Piers Morgan to headline an international prime time talk show we flippantly said “Move over Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and Peta Credlin – there is a new conservative loudmouth in town”.

Sadly, for one of these Australian conservative loudmouths at least, our prediction appears to have come true.

The 80-year-old Jones revealed in a fiery post on Facebook on Thursday he had not been offered another contract by Sky News Australia – and hours later he was saying his final goodbye after a 17-month TV stint which never matched up to the heights of his radio career.

Ahead of Jones’ swan song, Bolt told his listeners Jones had not been sacked and he had been offered other roles at the company. Jones, Bolt suggested, had been moved aside to make way for the biggest loudmouth of them all in the Sky After Dark schedule.

“Thing is we’ve also signed up Piers Morgan,” Bolt said while eulogising Jones. “There’s an international deal; we’re part of that. And we have to find room for Piers Morgan – and also pay for him.

“We’re not giving into cancel culture. How can you say that when we’ve just hired Piers Morgan for goodness sake?”

We asked Sky News boss Paul Whittaker if Bolt is on the money. “We’ll be announcing our 2022 programming lineup in due course,” a spokesperson said.

Poetic farewell and Facebook plea

The signs were there in August that Jones was on the nose at Sky when the channel rolled out its 25th anniversary celebration with full-page ads in the Daily Telegraph and Jones was conspicuous by his absence. He was the only Sky After Dark figure not to be featured. The ad appeared a month after the Daily Telegraph dropped his weekly column for no longer “resonating” with readers.

His central role in the week-long YouTube ban for violating its medical misinformation policies, did not help Jones’ standing at Sky.

The former shock jock spent his final hour on air railing against his favourite targets: climate change activists, Greta Thunberg and Prince Harry and Meghan. He also devoted a large segment to reciting poetry with Sky News presenter Catherine McGregor. “So Catherine, I suppose as Vera Lynn would say, ‘we’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but we’ll meet again some sunny day’.”

With Nine Entertainment, the Daily Telegraph and Sky News all cutting him adrift Jones told his fans they could reach him on Facebook: “Remember, you can still find me on my Facebook page. I ain’t going away. You search ‘Alan Jones Australia’. So stay with me. And I’ll still be with you. Just search ‘Alan Jones Australia’. So good night and good health.”

7News’s costly blunder

The media interest in the disappearance and extraordinary rescue of Cleo Smith has been intense, and there is already pressure for the media to back off and leave the family to recover away from the spotlight.

One outlet, Seven, has apologised for making what may prove to be a costly mistake.

“Earlier on Wednesday 7News wrongly showed images of a man that were incorrectly labelled as the person under arrest over the disappearance of Cleo Smith,” Seven said in a statement.

“These were removed promptly, but 7News apologises for the error.”

Seven published several images of a man who lived in the same town of Carnarvon, Terry Flowers, who also goes by his mother’s name Kelly.

According to NITV, Flowers said when he saw his photo on a social media post he went to the local police station for assistance.

“What [Seven] did was go straight on Facebook,” he said. “I’m gonna end up suing them anyways, cause it’s not the right thing for them to be doing.”

Limited ‘lashes’ of ‘turncoat Turnbull’

The Australian’s Greg Brown had a scoop of sorts on page one of the paper on Thursday headlined “Libs lash ‘turncoat Turnbull’ over attack”.

Only, in the copy there was not a single Liberal quoted “lashing” the former prime minister for calling Scott Morrison a liar.

Former defence minister Christopher Pyne, Brown reported, “said he
had never found Mr Morrison to be dishonest” but direct criticism of Turnbull was nowhere to be seen.

The only person quoted in the article criticising Turnbull was the acting prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who as we all know is the leader of the Nationals.

Joyce said Turnbull needed to “reflect on what he is doing to his legacy”, among other fairly mild comments.

At the Daily Telegraph, James Morrow loved the non-story so much he repeated it on Friday, in a story headlined “Liberals turn on Turnbull over ‘lies’”.

Morrow claimed that one of Turnbull’s biggest backers had “sensationally refuted the former prime minister’s claims about Scott Morrison’s truthfulness”.

For the record, all Pyne said was “in my experience, Scott Morrison never lied to me”. He was not quoted as lashing or turning on Turnbull.

AFR seeing visions

Australian Financial Review columnist Joe Aston is no fan of Mike Cannon-Brookes and has poked fun at the billionaire many times over the years.

This week the famously acerbic journalist targeted the “supreme Tech Dude Bro” for a “typically vomitous interview with Peter FitzSimons. There are two people who belong together”.

Aston ridiculed Cannon-Brookes for saying he drove an electric vehicle and lived on a farm that runs almost entirely on sunlight. Aston claimed Cannon-Brookes was a hypocrite because he also drove a Range Rover.

“And with my own eyes, I saw MCB on Monday driving down Ocean Avenue, Double Bay, behind the wheel of his black Range Rover,” Aston wrote triumphantly having been on an eyewitness to the travesty. “He might have many Teslas in his 58 garages, but he’s also plenty familiar with the family guzzler.”

Only Aston’s “own eyes” had deceived him. The sledge had to be removed from the AFR website and a correction added.

“The original version of this article contained a reference to Mike Cannon-Brookes driving a Range Rover,” the AFR said. “Mr Cannon-Brookes says he has never driven a Range Rover.”

Holmes v the IPA

It was great to see Jonathan Holmes back in front of the camera excoriating the Institute of Public Affairs in his own inimitable style, honed over more than five years at the helm of ABC TV’s Media Watch.

In a video entitled Your ABC vs Their IPA, Holmes took the right-wing thinktank to task over its podcast series Their ABC, which argues the ABC is “a bloated, out-of-touch, biased broadcaster”.

But wait, what happened to Paul Barry?

Barry is still in the Media Watch chair but Holmes lent his expertise to the ABC Alumni, a pro-ABC lobby group of former staff which he now chairs, for a video funded by ABC Friends.

Holmes neatly demolishes the IPA’s so-called research, which allegedly proved the ABC is biased, and challenges the IPA’s claim Tony Abbott and Chris Kenny, represent “mainstream Australians”.

“The mainstream”, says Holmes, “thinks that the ABC is the most trustworthy source of news in Australia”.

The ghost of ABC management past

It was the 20th anniversary this week of the end of the tumultuous 19-month reign of Jonathan Shier as ABC managing director.

Then ABC news and current affairs chief Max Uechtritz played a key role in convincing the ABC board that Shier had to go. Uechtritz, now a freelance TV producer, shared a letter he wrote to then ABC chair Donald McDonald which provides a little more detail about what happened leading up to his resignation.

As Kerry O’Brien confirmed in his 2018 memoir, Shier wanted him removed and a new 7.30 host installed.

“When Shier spoke to staff for the first time three months into his tenure, he flagged that everything was up for grabs across the program schedule but singled out 7.30 for special criticism,” O’Brien writes.

“I didn’t need much imagination to conclude I was in the crosshairs – helped along by headlines such as ‘ABC’s dead man talking’ next to a large photo of me.”

What we didn’t know until now is who Shier apparently suggested as a replacement: according to Uechtritz, none other than the singer Olivia Newton-John.

Uechtritz wrote to McDonald to say that among other things Shier said: “You could get Olivia Newton-John, put her in the chair, put the word out and you could get more viewers”.