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A joy to watch? Pauline Hanson gets a warm welcome in some parts of the media | Weekly Beast

As One Nation leader is hailed as ‘a politician ready to rule’, Greg Jericho is booted from the press gallery. Plus: a ‘WTF moment’ across the Tasman

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Pauline Hanson may have been vague on policy detail, costings and sources but according to a bunch of News Corp Australia commentators she gave a “tour de force performance” at the National Press Club on Wednesday. au and “a joy to watch” by the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt. au’s “head of growth”, said it was “clear we have a new unofficial opposition leader” who “looks and sounds sharp”.

“Some Aussies of all ages might struggle to trust a party that is having to expand so rapidly with the nation’s finances, let alone geopolitics,” Bendall wrote. “But One Nation doesn’t have to be perfect in these areas either. ” The Australian’s associate editor Jenna Clarke, hailed Hanson as a Thatcher from Queensland.

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“Critics and commentators were expecting a lecture from a Karen, instead she put on a show akin to late British PM Margaret Thatcher, if Marg ever spent any time in a Townsville pub,” Clarke wrote. ” Sandilands v Fordham Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce are “very inspirational”, according to shock jock Kyle Sandilands, who has claimed he’s helped the One Nation leaders with their “messaging” and introduced them to “upper society”. In his first interview since settling his $85m federal court case, Sandilands said a major driver in accepting the “miserable amount” of $12m from ARN Media was mounting legal fees, which have already reached $1m.

“I spent time with both of them, and they’re very inspirational,” Sandilands told radio Game Changers Radio podcast. “And they’re not what everyone thinks they are. ” Sandilands, who is launching his own independent podcast, Kyle Sandilands Live, also used the interview to say fellow shock jock Ben Fordham “deserves a slap”.

Read nextAustralia news live: KPMG searched laptop of whistleblower who warned of ‘culture of fear’

Sandilands alleged Fordham was critical of his $100m contract to host the Kyle and Jackie O Breakfast Show on Kiis FM, but then dared to ask him for an interview. ’ I said, ‘no, you’ve been a cunt about it’,” Sandilands told Game Changers. “Fuck you.

And he wrote, ‘oh, don’t be a sook’. And I was like, ‘you want a slap? ” Fordham responded on his 2GB show on Friday morning, disputing Sandilands’ version and saying his former breakfast radio rival never threatened to slap him.

“Oh, Kyle, you can slap me anytime, sweetheart,” he said. “And let me say this to Kyle ‘The Slapper’ Sandilands. I love it when you role-play as the tough guy and you’ve explained recently that’s what you do when you’re on the air.

You play a character. But be honest with yourself. Come on, Kyle, tell the truth.

“You didn’t threaten to slap me or say watch your mouth or F-you. ” Grogs told to jog on Some of the questions at Hanson’s press club appearance raised more than a few eyebrows. There was no more stringent critic than Greg Jericho, the Australia Institute’s chief economist and a regular Guardian Australia columnist.

Jericho was among those who thought questions from the Age and Sydney Morning Herald correspondent James Massola and the Canberra Times’ Dana Daniel were underwhelming. ” Daniel: “Canberra cops a lot of criticism from conservatives. You spent a lot of time here in your career.

” As a Walkley award-winning journalist, Jericho has been a member of the press gallery since 2015. But an hour after he posted the sharp criticism of his gallery colleagues, the committee president, Jane Norman, emailed to say he no longer qualified to hold the pass. “We’re doing another audit of Press Gallery passes and yours has been identified as one that no longer fits the criteria,” said Norman, the ABC’s national affairs correspondent.

” Jericho told Weekly Beast he had joined the institute in February 2022. On sitting days, he said, almost all his time was devoted to journalism. Norman told Beast: “It hasn’t been cancelled.

” An English editor in France We’ve established that the Daily Telegraph editor, Ben English, loves to post videos from his car or his desk and talk up his paper’s stories. But this week he changed tack and posted what looked very much like an ad for Qantas’s new Airbus A350-1000ULR on the Tele’s Instagram page. “Hello, everyone, from Toulouse in France,” English said, with the plane behind him.

The “longest haul flights ever for humanity” had just been announced by the airline’s chief executive, Vanessa Hudson. The nonstop service from Sydney to London was first announced in 2017 and was due to come into service in 2022, but has been repeatedly delayed. The flights are now set to start in October 2027.

“They’re specially designed as incredible innovations to enable people to minimise the impact of being on a flight for 20 hours, including wellness centres, special diet, special temperature control, a whole range of things,” English gushed. There was no indication on the post that he had travelled courtesy of Qantas. ” We tried to ask English if he had paid for his own ticket to the media event but received an out-of-office auto-reply from his email.

The Daily Telegraph has been contacted for comment. New line of work Matthew Hooton may be the “most experienced, exciting and intellectually engaged political and business commentator” in New Zealand, according one of the country’s biggest publishing companies, but he is not a journalist. That hasn’t stopped Stuff Group from appointing the former National party strategist as editor-in-chief of the Post and the Sunday Star-Times.

In the Post’s report on the controversial appointment it noted: “There’s one thing missing from his list of credentials: journalism. ” The Stuff Group owner and publisher, Sinead Boucher, explained that she had chosen the lobbyist for his understanding of power. “Few people understand power in New Zealand as well as Matthew does,” she said in the press announcement.

” Elsewhere in the media it was described as a “bombshell” and a “WTF moment”. Hooton, who was writing a column for the New Zealand Herald before he landed the gig, said he was a fast learner who would “delegate things pretty readily”. “The Post is not one person, The Post is not one generation of people, The Post is its whole history,” Hooton said.

” The head of journalism at Massey University, Associate Prof James Hollings, told Radio New Zealand that Hooton’s appointment was “one on the shock factor”. 76 million Australians and SBS says it is “delighted this global sporting event has been embraced by Australian audiences and media”. The enthusiasm is so high for World Cup content, Weekly Beast understands, the exclusive Australian rights holder has raised concerns with a number of media organisations over their use of footage, some of which comes close to a breach of rights.

Before the tournament began, SBS warned media organisations that any use of its footage or other copyright material from the World Cup would be considered a breach of its copyright, unless it was under fair dealing. We noticed both the Courier-Mail and the Daily Telegraph were running an eight-second gif of Lionel Messi’s long-range goal for Argentina against Algeria on their homepages this week. According to SBS rules, the use of animated gifs or looped MP4s is not ordinarily permitted by rights owners under fair dealing for major comparable sporting events.

An SBS spokesperson would not be drawn on which media organisations the broadcaster had contacted. “Non-rightsholders may only use FIFA World Cup 2026™ content in accordance with the requirements of fair dealing under the Copyright Act 1986, including for the genuine purpose of news reporting, criticism or review,” a spokesperson said. ” News Corp Australia was approached for comment.

Zero insight A familiar yellow Clive Palmer ad for the United Australia party has never looked so out of place as it did this week in the Advertiser. The anti-immigration ad, for Senator Ralph Babet, ran along the bottom of the page featuring stories about and photographs of Nestory Irankunda’s joyful family and Adelaide Socceroos fans celebrating his World Cup performance against Turkey. Just below a sea of smiling faces in Adelaide, including Irankunda’s mother, Dafroza Siyajali, was the jarring headline “Zero immigration”.

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