Please, just drop it.

Letters Blog | July 18, 2008 | 0 Comments

GERARD Henderson (Letters, 16/7) is confused about what I wrote about him in my article on Indonesia.

Letters Blog | The Australian.

And if only we all liked Gerard as much as it seems that Gerard loves himself. So full of a sense of his own importance. And he never sets a foot wrong – oh Saint Gerard, perhaps you could get the Pope to beatify you while he’s in town.

The rest of us are too anti-Catholic for any such honour.

If you can be bothered, here’s the link to his letter…

Letters Blog | The Australian.

I mean really, can’t these journalists just pick up the phone and talk to each other if there is a minor detail wrong in an article? Why do the rest of us have to be bored with it – it’s annoying enough reading the headlines to his articles in the SMH!

Adam Rope (Letters, April 4) asserts that I did not oppose the interventions in Australian domestic politics by Tom Schieffer, the former US ambassador to Australia. This statement is untrue. For example, in my Herald column on March 30, 2004, I wrote that Schieffer “should understand that it is not the role of the US ambassador to interfere in the domestic political debate”. Mr Rope should do some fact-checking. Gerard Henderson Sydney

Source: Nothing but a wave of apathy in the wake of tsunami warning – Letters – Opinion SMH 5 April 2007

Poor old Adam Rope. He probably doesn’t have time to gather every column that this man has ever written and check the collected wisdom of Gerard Henderson (what a frightening task) to find every little reference, and has to rely on his memory. Adam probably has a real job. But Henderson is onto the keyboard in a flash to write in to the newspaper (the very same one that provides him weekly column space) to point out the error. [more]

But in the great scheme of things, did Adam’s error really matter? Were we all standing around the water cooler talking about Henderson’s article. The answer is no. Do WEE have time to check every seeming misrepresentation that Henderson makes about certain facts in his columns? No. It’s just part of the general cut and thrust of debate. No, it only matters on planet Henderson.

What makes this miserable, ungenerous action even more disappointing is that the letters editor allows such unimportant drivel to be published in the letters page. If Henderson wants to correct the record let him do so in his weekly column but don’t take up precious letters space where the voices of the great unwashed should be heard.

Then again, he probably realises that not as many people will read his protestations if they are included in his column – WEE find the letters page far more interesting that his biased, one-eyed opinions about politics in Australia.

Well the story of the building of the longest water pipeline in the world was thankfully Gerard Henderson free this week. In fact there were no obvious blunders on the ‘balance’ front. This only makes last week episode even worse, because it is really obvious why Henderson was there. Because the story involved a Labor Premier.

The state of executives at the ABC is to be condemned, as they are clearly afraid of criticism from Howard and his ilk that they have compromised editorial independence and so now ruin programs with this inane solution to ‘balance’ to protect them from the next barrage of Coalition criticism.

WEE stand by our view that it really is a sad state of affairs and reflects poorly on the ABC and their Australian documentary programming. Perhaps the first episode is better described as “deconstructing Australia”… or at the very least, “deconstructing the ABC”.

Anyone watching the ABC’s homage to the Sydney Harbour Bridge last Sunday night would have been amazed at two moments of the program. Two moments that absolutely ruined the narrative and drive of the documentary. And it was clearly obvious that both of these moments had to do with Mark Scott’s ridiculous editorial policy about ‘balance’ or whatever right-wing commentators are calling it these days.

All of a sudden, directly after a comment by PJ Keating on Jack Lang, the NSW Premier at the time of the Bridge’s construction, there was Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute reminding us that some people didn’t like Jack Lang. What the hell was he doing on our screens? What the hell did he contribute to the story? It was pretty clear from many of the other historical clips and interviews that Jack Lang wasn’t universally loved.

WEE’ll tell you what he was doing there.

It’s this crap they call ‘editorial balance’. So kowtowed and scared is the ABC of the Coalition at the moment, they have to have a token ‘right-wing’ face in a documentary to demonstrate ‘balance’.

What a crock, and what a distasteful insert into an otherwise admirable documentary. “Oh no”, thought the gutless executives at the ABC, “they want to interview PJ Keating for the Harbour Bridge documentary. Shit, we better ask them to interview Henderson… for balance.”

That’s it. That’s the level of sophistication and independence that the ABC has after 10 years of being brow beaten by the paranoid army of Coalition foot soldiers (the former Senator Santo Santoro being among those who have led the charge – never had any trouble remembering the detail of ABC bias, by the way).

It’s a ridiculous look and will taint ABC documentaries if it continues. It was so obvious and blatant and sadly, is in the film forever. If this is what is has come to then they ABC can just forget making documentaries altogether. They will not be useful as interesting films, just reminders of the propaganda of the government of the day.

Let’s hope that we see the back of the Coalition at the next election and that a new government tries at least to restore some independence, good taste and common sense to the executives at the ABC. Oh, and a bit of funding wouldn’t hurt too.