Feb 2013: Published The vast differences between the NBN and the Coalition's alternative

Feb/March 2013: Article starts going epic viral. Two weeks later The Project uses it to grill Turnbull on air. For once he seems very uncomfortable in a media interview about the NBN.

A few days later: The Australian suddenly publishes two articles about me. One erroneously saying I'd been disciplined by the ABC. Another from an "expert" saying why my article was wrong (laughably bullshit).

Next day: Stephen Conroy slamming Mark Scott for "gagging me" on Jon Faine radio show

Later that day: I meet with senior ABC manager who tells me to keep quiet, go home, and that ABC is preparing for Liberal government etc. Also some questions from Media Watch about content of site.

Following Monday: Media Watch beat-up appears. It's all about me. I'd been told it was about NBN coverage in the media in general.

April: Write article on how Liberal/Turnbull claims about how price of internet under Libs will be cheaper is factually incorrect. Told not to publish it because of the political environment. Article is never published.

May: Complete my Copper Network article (it was actually done in an earlier version in March). Told there's "nothing wrong with it per se" but that "the NBN is dead and there's no point in causing a fuss"

July 2013: Diagnosed with stress and getting ill from it.

Election: Emma Alberici finally publishes her NBN article. I publish mine on Copper and Telehealth

Following months: Almost all requests for other media (TV radio) have vanished. Daily news conference calls involve me telling News team about NBN stuff but that I can't cover it and perhaps someone else might like to. Only Science Editor and Environment Editor ask why.

2014: Vertigan and Ergas "reviews" appear. Can't cover them.

2015: Waiting to be absorbed into main News Online team.

Around July: Told ABC Tech site is closing and I'd need to build a tech audience with the Business Section to keep working.

I contact unions, legal people and Comcare. I also blow the whistle on what happened to me. Internal investigation occurs. Eventually says nothing wrong.

Christmas 2015: My time to build an audience with is over. I've been let down by Whistle Blowing people, my councillor, boss, Heda of HR and job is basically untenable. Get offered almost a year's salary to leave (I thought they had no money for a tech editor). Tried not to snap their arm off.

That's Extremely basic. It also should probably have Senate Estimates in there but ultimately while I was talked about I had no input.

In early March 2013 I was told by a senior ABC manager that ABC Management was expecting the Liberals to win the next election and that Malcolm Turnbull would be in charge of the ABC and that they didn't want to upset him. From this point on I documented everything.

After that I had articles held back (one wasn't published at all) and heavily pressured not to write anything on the matter.

On one occasion, four months before the election, with regards to this article which raised huge questions about the viability of the copper network I was told that "there was nothing wrong with the article per se" but that 'The NBN was dead and so there's no point in causing a fuss.'

I published it when I saw Emma Alberici had published hers right after the election. But it got buried and I only got social media traffic.

I've only ever dealt with one senior manager directly. Other names were mentioned by them but I'm not outing them on this forum without legal advice first - they could well have done nothing wrong.

Beyond that you've got what's in the public forum: specifically what Mark Scott told Senate Estimates in 2014 and 2015. I wasn't sure if Scott knew what I'd been told in 2014. I can tell you that when he told Estimates, in 2015, that they were looking at maybe closing the Technology and Games portal that I'd already been told it absolutely WAS closing. That was a few days beforehand.

That fucking program has been the bane of my life for years. It could be used by Journalism Professors as an example of almost every dirty trick in the book for shitjournos to do a take down on someone.

What follows is my response to Media Watch taken from a dossier created a while ago. I've more info but this is the gist:

A senior ABC journalist said, “They send Media Watch after people they want silenced.” There’s no evidence of that here, but in the context of everything else, this needs to be addressed.

At a time where NBN coverage in the mainstream media and press had been absolutely toxic and wrought with lies for years, Media Watch finally addressed the NBN issue in just one episode. The entire episode focused on the ABC Technology Editor, one of very few journalists who was trying to inform the public of the facts. The episode was a total beat-up and exhibited some of the worst journalism to come from the ABC probably ever. But that’s not all:

According to MANAGER in a conversation with Nick Ross, Media Watch contacted MANAGER and told him something along the lines that Media Watch was doing a general episode on NBN coverage and that included looking at coverage on the ABC Technology site.

At the time, the site – which aggregates Technology content from all over the ABC network – was rife with media where Malcolm Turnbull had appeared and given his views almost unchallenged about the NBN. There were a few articles, however, from the ABC Technology site itself which went into the facts about the NBN. Belsham noted that there was no way that the site’s homepage looked biased one way or the other. Most of the “partisan” articles from other ABC programs heavily-pushed Turnbull’s point of view if anything.

However, on Monday 22 March 2013, Renai Le May phoned Nick Ross and told him that a Media Watch journalist, XXXXXXX, had called him and it had become clear that they were ‘out to get Nick.’ He had tried to talk her out of it but felt he needed to warn Nick. Here is the subsequent email exchange between the two that came from Renai:

-----Original Message----- From: Renai LeMay [mailto:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, 11 March 2013 9:56 AM To: Nick Ross Subject: Fwd: Nick's details + context etc

This is what I sent them. XXXXXX's mobile is xxxxxxxxxx, her email is xxxxxxxxxxxx.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Renai LeMay <xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 9:46 AM Subject: Nick's details + context etc To: XXXXXXXX <xxxxxxxxxxx>

hey XXXXXXXX,

great to speak with you this morning! Good to know Media Watch has some good people working for it :) I've been a fan of the show for a long time!

Nick's details are as follows:

xxxxxxxxxx

He also has a personal email, xxxxxxx

In terms of background to the story, the broad view of my readers and others that I have spoken to in the technology industry is that the Opposition and segments of the media are waging a constant campaign of misinformation against the NBN in order to discredit it. The situation is not dissimilar to the climate change debate, where segments of politics and the media are constantly repeating inaccurate 'facts' despite evidence being against them.

In this context, Nick's articles represent an attempt to directly serve the community by 'correcting the record' and going back to basics to examine the real technical, financial and societal underpinnings of the NBN technology.

As with the climate change debate, however, unfortunately there is no evidence that some elements of the community will accept. This comparison has actually already popped up in the NBN debate -- see here:

http://delimiter.com.au/2012/11/06/nbn-critics-like-climate-deniers-says-budde/

Some examples of the Coalition's misstatements in this area:

http://delimiter.com.au/2012/08/22/turnbull-factually-inaccurate-on-nbn-costs/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/03/01/turnbull-again-misleads-the-public-on-nbn/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/10/25/hockey-repeats-inaccurate-nbn-claim/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/10/31/nobody-has-connected-to-nbn-at-100mbps-claims-christopher-pyne/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/07/16/nationals-leader-grossly-inaccurate-on-nbn/

I would encourage you to check out the following examples of articles in the mainstream media which have taken a strongly misleading approach to the NBN:

http://delimiter.com.au/2013/02/20/afr-leaves-crucial-info-out-of-nbn-cost-story/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/06/28/wireless-could-beat-nbns-fibre-claims-afr/ http://delimiter.com.au/2011/12/24/daily-telegraph-repeatedly-wrong-in-nbn-reports/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/06/27/youre-flat-out-wrong-nbn-co-tells-afr/

I strongly believe that Media Watch would be better served by investigating the other side of the story: Those criticising the NBN. Investigating Nick's articles is a bit like investigating scientists rather than climate change deniers ;)

I would also point out that the mass readership of sites such as Delimiter is strongly behind Nick and his approach. I've seen many examples where readers have debated the merits of trying to get Media Watch to cover the NBN criticism issue.

Please don't hesitate to drop me a line if you need further context etc.

Kind regards,

Renai

Part 2.

However, Media Watch never contacted Nick to talk to him despite doing almost an entire episode about him.

After Renai’s call, Nick phoned XXXXXX who didn’t want to speak to him because, “She was going into a script meeting about tonight’s show.”

Nick pointed out that if they were doing a whole episode about him, that it would be sensible to talk to him first. Eventually she agreed, albeit unwillingly.

After half an hour of XXXX acting vague and difficult and Nick explaining that all he did was show the facts and draw a balanced conclusion while challenging people to contribute to either side, XXXX told Nick, “Oh yeah, you’re right, but it’s too late to change anything as we’re about to start filming tonight’s episode.”

And so it was that Media Watch went to air knowing that they were wrong – one of the worst things any journalist can ever do.

Full Episode link - http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3713148.htm

In the program, Media Watch:

• Set the tech editor up as a mindless fanboy without providing any context for what he was doing. The entire episode was aimed at presenting him as someone who had done something wrong. They even showed a stupid picture of him with every quote.

• Cherry picked social media quotes and article quotes going back two years (without telling the audience) trying to find dirt.

• Cited a near-completely erroneous, Liberal-affiliated blog (Commsday), that slammed him, as actual evidence of wrongdoing without doing any fact checking or stating of the context whatsoever. Media Watch cited its existence as evidence that he’d done something wrong without quoting any of it beyond the headline.

• They didn't point out that Nick's article had taken two years to research and had been professionally proofread by an expert (amongst others) and that the Commsday "article" had been bashed out in a matter of hours and virtually every point was already countered in Nick's original article.

• They then lectured about the dangers of He Said She Said journalism having blatantly done just that. Holmes even acknowledged this when called on it while it aired on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/jonaholmesAge/status/311077077203951616 “Fair point. Tweet follows RT @joshgnosis: #mediawatch resorted to he-said she-said reporting to determine whether the article was accurate.”

Joshgnosis – who is ZDNet reporter Joshua Taylor went on:

https://twitter.com/joshgnosis/status/311083488239570944 “@jamesteajourno It didn’t assess the claims made in the article at all. Just used LeMay and Lynch’s views on the article.”

• Having used every dirty underhanded tactic in the book and come up empty, they moved to their “smoking gun” quote. However, they didn’t tell the audience that it came from a different article altogether (buried in a caption).

The main article in question was:

The vast differences between the NBN and the Coalition's alternative http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2013/02/21/3695094.htm

The article the quote from was:

The great NBN fail http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2012/02/21/3435975.htm

It also was published 14 MONTHS earlier in a completely different context (without telling the audience). At the time the Coalition’s policy ran along the lines of ‘We don’t need an NBN because wireless is the future” – a policy so untenable and against the laws of physics that the Coalition themselves soon abandoned it.

But worst of all, Media Watch took the quote and removed the last part of it so that it meant the OPPOSITE of what was intended.

Here’s the quote as Media Watch displayed it [9mins 9secs]:

“If the public knew the truth about the NBN, and believed that the Coalition wanted to destroy it, then Labor would have an unassailable lead in the polls right now... I'm deadly serious.”

Here’s what it actually said:

“If the public knew the truth about the NBN, and believed that the Coalition wanted to destroy it, then Labor would have an unassailable lead in the polls right now and the National party would have ditched any association with the Liberals. I'm deadly serious. However, if the public and the Coalition knew all the facts, then the Coalition could not, in good conscience, oppose it.”

Nick's quote is a totally fair and balanced conclusion at the end of that article – one that, incidentally, despite drawing overwhelmingly-positive feedback, produced two notable criticisms from one Liberal supporter and one Labor supporter who accused it of being biased against the other because of the criticism doled out to both parties.

All of this was ignored and Holmes had his Gotcha. This is likely one of the worst cases of subjective (conclusion chasing) journalism on the entire ABC network.

Even then, Media Watch still couldn’t say that he’d done anything wrong, just broken an arbitrary internal policy but they made it sound like he was a biased journalist. At the end of the day Journalists are supposed to be advocates... for the balanced truth!

The seemingly mild criticism of someone who let his enthusiasm and passion get the best of him - was utterly damning to Nick.

Nick was essentially ostracized by his ABC colleagues after this. After getting requests for several radio and TV interviews per week this dropped to less than five per year.

The consequences to Nick were significant. He was told not to complain or even put forward his side of the story. He was consistently denied his right of reply by key ABC entities. Nick lost friends and even family members and peers thought he was too controversial to take seriously. It contributed to severe stress for Nick which even saw him hospitalised. He’s still on blood pressure medication.

He kept seeing comments on other articles on other sites like this but was unable to say anything in his own defence:

“Always worth bearing in mind http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3713148.htm when dealing with Nick Ross.” http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/09/can-the-australian-copper-network-really-deliver-the-nbn/#comment-924679

But Josh Taylor’s comment in the previous Twitter stream is illustrative:

https://twitter.com/joshgnosis/status/311084041921261569 “@jamesteajourno but, like I said to @jonaholmesMW, full points for assessing the article against ABC guidelines.”

Taylor and others have been on frosty terms with Ross ever since for, quite understandably, believing Media Watch’s lie.

After that episode, virtually all considered NBN coverage across the whole mainstream media stopped. The overwhelming media coverage left of the NBN continues to resemble Malcolm Turnbull media releases.

---

Indeed, all ABC employees are subject to an ABC policy that Media Watch can do what it likes with no oversight or right of reply and no obligation to even talk to their victim - just their manager.

In a later episode of Media Watch it was pointed out that Media Watch shouldn't be taken too seriously as it was just lighthearted fun.

I haven't been laughing I can promise you that.

Media Watch was also used by managers as a threat to not write anything to close to the bone. I had that done to me in an earlier expose a few years before.

I've had other friends who were lied about on Media Watch too and most journos have stories. I know many in the public likes it but they can be hypocritical, lying bullies at times. And its use as a tool to cow ABC journalists into not sticking their neck out does more harm to good journalism than good, in my humble opinion.

Also, I later saw a follow-up to the above in a response to my Comcare claim. The MW "journalist" who did the piece doesn't even think it was negative. They counter a few other points (badly) too but as Holmes did with me originally - they never address the fact they took a quote and shortened it to mean something else.