‘Crushing and terrifying’ midterms result leaves media in fear of civilisation and capitalism crumbling

The front pages of Australia’s newspapers were dominated on Thursday by the spectacular midterm results in the United States.

“Capitol punishment,” the Age declared. “Donald lame duck,” said the Herald Sun. “Blue wave leaves Trump a lame president,” was the Daily Telegraph line, while the Australian Financial Review said the midterm blue wave “rips Trump mandate to shreds”.

The Australian, in a frenzy of alliteration, called it the “Donald deflation” and a “MAGA mauling”, brought on by “Trump the trasher”.

The national broadsheet also found room on the front for a piece on Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, headlined “Far out: far-left radical to be first Muslim senator”.

El-Sayed’s victory had some commentators proclaiming the end of western civilisation. Over at News24, Sharri Markson began her program with: “Far-left extremist Abdul El-Sayed wins in Michigan, in a shocking result.

“This is the most crushing and terrifying result of the evening,” she continued, going on to repeat a false claim that El-Sayed has links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“How can Americans vote for an anti-western, anti-American lunatic, as Trump describes him? What does this say about American values, and about the strength of western civilisation? You can’t help but worry that it’s crumbling, and capitalism with it.”

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The “extremist” platform of El-Sayed, a former county health official who describes himself as a “capitalist who understands how capitalism works”, includes backing universal healthcare and regulating monopolies, as well as ending US military aid to Israel, while calling its war in Gaza a genocide.

Others interpreted the massive repudiation of Donald Trump as bad news for Anthony Albanese. Steve Price, filling in for Peta Credlin on News24, claimed midterms should prompt “alarm bells” for every sitting government in Australia.

Meanwhile, it was all hands on deck at the ABC, which flew out the 7.30 host, Sarah Ferguson, to broadcast live from Washington from Monday through to Wednesday. The jury’s out on whether they got bang for their buck. Viewing figures on Wednesday were very strong, even though it was 3.30am local time when Ferguson presented the program, and Capitol Hill wasn’t exactly a hive of activity.

There were three interviews – the former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who appeared from London, the former Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey, who was also in London, and congressman Joe Courtney, who was beamed in from Connecticut. Americas editor John Lyons did appear in person with Ferguson, but he was quickly ushered backwards to stop blocking the Capitol building – presumably from a producer in his ear hissing: “It’s all we’ve got!”

Deaf to the critics

News24 has many complaints about federal government spending, and this week it found a new reason to get its feathers ruffled.

On Wednesday, Labor announced the recipients of its $31.5m News Innovation Fund, which backs “innovation, sustainability and diverse public interest journalism”. The 54 beneficiaries support regional, First Nations, culturally and linguistically diverse Australians, including people with disabilities. It included $1.4m to Deaf Connect to create Australia’s first national Auslan-first digital news service, $3.3m to the Community Broadcasting Association and $2.2m to Country Press Australia.

Pretty uncontroversial, right? Wrong.

“The Albanese government has awarded $31.5 million in taxpayer-funded grants to 54 media organisations across Australia, amid criticism that no conservative publications appeared on the successful recipients list,” News24 reported.

What was this criticism?

It appeared to consist of comments made by the shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, accusing the government of shutting News Corp publications out of a completely different fund. At Senate estimates last week, Henderson claimed there was a “deliberate decision” to bar News Corp from the Journalism Assistance Fund – which it is indeed excluded from, due to being foreign owned.

So we meet again

This masthead and the ABC will finally be able to question One Nation at an event chaired by the Melbourne Press Club (MPC) and Rural Press Club of Victoria.

Victoria’s One Nation leader, Warren Pickering, will appear at Crown on Thursday to “present his party’s pitch and answer questions in front of all media”. The event will be moderated by 9News Melbourne’s state political reporter, Heidi Murphy, and the ABC Goulburn Murray journalist Erin Somerville.

Guardian Australia and the ABC were booted from a Pickering press conference – also at Crown – earlier this year as part of a One Nation ban of select media outlets.

The chief executive of the MPC, Patrick Donovan, said “it is vital in a strong democracy that the media hold politicians to account”.

Criticism of One Nation’s ban seems to have extended to The Australian.

Its media reporter, Steve Jackson, came for One Nation’s political strategist James Ashby in his latest column after a spectacular fallout between Ashby and the News24 host Andrew Clennell. According to Jackson, Ashby is a “decidedly average bloke”.

“The infantile party director might like to consider himself a modern-day Niccolo Machiavelli but he’s little more than a child, having spent much of the year sooking and throwing his toys out of his cot – and journos out of press conferences – whenever they so much as whisper anything he doesn’t like … which is often,” Jackson wrote. Ouch.

No regrets

The Walkley award-winning cartoonist Cathy Wilcox has done her first interview since taking a voluntary redundancy from Nine, and she didn’t hold back. Wilcox told Antoinette Lattouf at Ette Media the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age were not as “courageous” as they had been, or as “honest or independent”.

Wilcox said over her career it was “extremely rare” for her cartoons to be pulled from publication, and she had enjoyed “incredible freedom” and trust from editors. But in the past year “several” cartoons had not made the papers, for which she blamed the “pro-Israel lobby”.

Wilcox said she did not regret a controversial cartoon, Grass Roots, which was published in the wake of the Bondi terror attack and depicted Australian politicians and royal commission lobbyists marching to a drum played by Benjamin Netanyahu.

After significant criticism, including in News Corp, the mastheads published an editorial on 11 January apologising for the offence it had caused, while noting Wilcox’s intention had been to scrutinise politicisation of the attack. In June, the Australian Press Council found the cartoon breached its standards and contained the “antisemitic trope that Jewish people secretly control or manipulate global events, governments, financial systems, or the media”.

“I absolutely don’t regret the cartoon because I absolutely also don’t think that the interpretation of it was a fair one,” Wilcox told Lattouf.

The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald were approached for comment.

Farewell to an honourable editor

The former Advertiser editor-in-chief Don Riddell – who famously left the Adelaide paper after clashing with a newly arrived Rupert Murdoch in 1987 – died this week.

Riddell’s former colleagues described him as an “even-tempered, good-natured and welcoming editor”, an honourable man and “great leader” who advocated fearlessly for the profession and his staff.

Riddell recounted his last days at the Tiser for Walter Marsh’s 2023 book Young Rupert, including his dismay that the Herald and Weekly Times’s board had welcomed Murdoch in.

“I admired his chutzpah, his dash, but I loathed his journalism – I wish he was on the side of the angels, because the bloke’s a genius,” Riddell recalled.