Quarterly Essay 43 Bad News by Robert Manne

Author:Robert Manne [Manne, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, International, Politics, Social Science
ISBN: 9781921870385
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.
Published: 2011-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

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On 27 September 2010, James Massola, a young member of the Australian’s Canberra press gallery, published an article called “Controversial political blogger unmasked as a federal public servant.” The public servant “unmasked” was Dr Greg Jericho, an employee in the film section of the Department of Environment, Heritage, Water and the Arts, who wrote a left-of-centre blog about politics and sport under the pseudonym of “Grog’s Gamut.” In a recent speech to the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, the chair of the ABC, Mark Scott, had spoken of bringing to the attention of the ABC executive a Grog’s Gamut post criticising the mediocre, policy-light performance of the Canberra press gallery in the 2010 election campaign. In his exposé Massola had obviously absorbed the house style of the Australian. What appeared to be a straight report was in fact an accusation, mounted by false inference and innuendo. During the home-insulation debacle Jericho had defended his minister, Peter Garrett, in one posting. He had ridiculed Garrett’s Shadow, Greg Hunt, and the Opposition leader, Tony Abbott. As he was obviously a partisan ALP supporter, his pseudonymous blogging might well be in breach of “the Public Service code of conduct.” In his imposture, Jericho was likened to Helen Demidenko, the Anglo-Australian novelist who had masqueraded as the daughter of a Ukrainian war criminal. In response to the Massola article, Jericho wrote a lucid blog entry defending convincingly both his decision to write pseudonymously and his public-service impartiality. The blog then fell silent while a public-service inquiry into Jericho’s behaviour took place. After an uncomfortable fortnight, Jericho’s blog resumed, under his real name.

Massola’s unmasking of Jericho inspired a flood of tweets. A few people defended Massola. Many criticised him, some fiercely and intemperately. A selection was printed in an article in the Australian. One came from Catherine Deveny, who had been sacked as a columnist for the Age on the basis of an injudicious tweet. Her contribution to the unmasking question – “You f**kwit” – was reproduced. Once bitten, twice bold. Massola was defended in an Australian editorial: “[L]et’s not elevate the right to pursue what amounts to vanity publishing on the net to an issue of freedom of speech.” Massola wrote a follow-up article. He argued that Jericho had political influence and that with influence came “political responsibility.” As a public servant, especially one expressing partisan views, he had no right to pseudonymity. New accusations were made. According to Massola, Jericho had tweeted as Grog’s Gamut during office hours. When he recently attended a “new media” conference, it was unclear whether he was on leave or had cleared his absence from work with his supervisor.

The conference Massola referred to, which both he and Jericho had attended, had been organised by a former ABC journalist and now university lecturer, Julie Posetti. She had invited Jericho to the conference. Posetti was one of Massola’s fiercest critics. In one of her tweets, in defending the idea of pseudonymity, she referred to the case of the anti-apartheid hero Steve Biko.

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