Murdoch mastheads at odds as sexual assault survivor speaks up about The Australian’s podcast |
A rare fight between Rupert Murdoch’s Australian mastheads has been playing out in plain sight since news.com.au published an exclusive interview with a sexual assault survivor last week which was critical of the Australian’s podcast, Shadow of Doubt. The TikTok video accompanying the article has been watched 9.5m times.
A series of stories by Walkley award-winning investigative reporter Nina Funnell for news.com.au has been generating clicks The Australian can only dream of: 860,000 unique page views in just over a week. No doubt this only increased The Australian’s ire about the popular news site’s criticism of its podcast Shadow of Doubt and host Richard Guilliatt.
We won’t go into the distressing details of the case here, but Guilliatt interviewed the convicted child sex offenders from jail, which devastated the survivor.
The Australian appeared to target news.com.au with a lengthy rebuttal from Guilliatt and an editorial claiming the “articles were riddled with so many errors, omissions and misrepresentations that news.com.au has already revised them online.”
But that wasn’t enough cross-fire. An eagle-eyed observer would have noticed one of Funnell’s news.com.au articles was amended after publication to add additional comment by the Australian – even though it already included a lengthy response from Guilliatt.
A new article published on news.com.au on Tuesday scrubbed all mention of Guilliatt, Shadow of Doubt and the Australian, referring instead to “a public podcast” and the “journalist........