ABC drops Marieke Hardy article
Screenwriter Marieke Hardy casts her thoughts on who the most hated Aussie is but ABC's website drops her published article.
- Published by David Knox
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Screenwriter Marieke Hardy, who appears regularly on ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club, has had an opinion piece dropped by ABC website The Drum after editor Jonathan Green says it failed to meet the standards for argument.
Entitled “The Christopher Pyne experiments” the article looked at the question of whom Australia despised the most: Kyle Sandilands, India, AFL star Brendan Fevola or musician Kanye West.
Of Liberal politician Christopher Pyne she wrote “It seems that nobody in the whole of Australia likes him,” Hardy wrote.
“Which leads me to presume that perhaps there is nobody in the entire world who is loathed by Australia more than Christopher Pyne.”
In her inimitable writing style, she began her piece by saying an appearance by Mr Pyne on Q & A had caused the nation to “silently pray for him to get attacked by a large and libidinous dog”.
She went on to claim that Australia “hates Christopher Pyne more than we hate Kyle Sandilands”, also comparing him unfavourably to India and Brendan Fevola.
The editor of The Drum, Jonathan Green, today wrote that he was wrong to publish the article.
“It was not up to her standards, and failed to meet the standards for argument and well-thought opinion we try to maintain on this site. As her editor I should have told her that and pulled the piece.
“We’ve dropped it from our site now, and we take this opportunity to apologise to Christopher Pyne for the both the attack and for its deeply personal nature. There is no formal pressure on us to do this, but we think it’s the right thing to do.
“Mistakes happen in daily publishing. Sometimes things see the light of day that on reflection ought more properly have been cut, re-written or dropped altogether. I take the view that while it’s regrettable to make the error in the first place, it’s never too late to both apologise and do what you can to correct the situation.”
It has also triggered considerable debate via Twitter
Hardy’s articles in print and online are notable for their cheeky but insightful writing style, regularly attracting fervent readers. In addition to appearing on Book Club, Hardy has been a writer of TV dramas including Packed to the Rafters, and her series LAID is coming to ABC1 next year.
Pyne did not make a complaint to the ABC.
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- Tagged with AFL, First Tuesday Book Club, LAID, Packed to the Rafters, Q&A, The Drum
29 Responses
@David – just to be clear – and my typos didn’t help make this clear – I blame my wireless keyboard batteries… I was saying it must be annoying having to appease the increasing numbers of comments like “what’s this got to do with TV” etc etc…
I’m a fan of Marieke’s, particularly on-screen (& in 140). Her former Green Guide ramblings were bothersome, yet often entertaining… somewhat. She is very much a TV-related topic, and well worth posting such threads on…
cheers
Don’t forget the criminally underrated “Last Man Standing”, for which she wrote the vast majority of episodes.
Obviously the ABC now stands for Always Been Cowed.
oh for god’s sake people – it is supposed to be a humerous article! its not worth the Right wing vs left wing argument! and shame on you ABC for taking it down!
“Try telling a crowded bar that Hamish and Andy suck. Those two are like the untouchable twin Jesus brothers.”
Marieke is a genius.
I read the article, the opinions were based on pure bias. I doubt Hardy would have conducted a survey. Public sentiment towards Pyne wouldn’t be as bad as Hardy is making it out to be.
The culture within the ABC seems to mimic the BBC’s culture of left-wing bias, while pretending to be balanced, the journalistic integrity is no better than Fox News. Q&A for example will often have far-left panelists, especially non-politicians, such as authors, but they never have any far-right panelists.
Whats with all the right wing hating? If a right wing writer, were to how say , How they hoped gillard or brown would get ripped apart by wild dogs. You people would be fine with this? Personally. She just displayed the biggest gripe i have with left wingers. And that’s assuming to be the mouth piece of all Australians. I don’t hate west, sandilands, India or pyne. The left is very communist orientated. The more power they get, the more domineering they become. Anyway. I await the time all you people come on here, Bemoaning the fact that a right winged writer article was scrubbed, for wishing death on some leftie.
@Dave – thanks for that perspective from inside. From out here it certainly looked like there was a slow swing from what was a left of centre “general position” to one that was more obviously, not just conservative, but anti-Labor. This seemed to occur at the time Howard was installing his cronies (and they theirs) at the top.
@FJ – that says more about you than Marieke.
No one is more irritating than Ma-Freak Hardy!
It must be really annoying having to pese all the “what does this have to do with television” types, but adding lines like ” who appears regularly on ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club” and what not…. I’ve noticed quite a bit of this of late.
On the Hardy article – it was offering roughly the same level of tripe as most of her other articles and write-up do – they talk about a lot of stuff, throw in a heap of popular references plus some obscure ones, she changes a few words around via the thesaurus, and at the the end of the article you feel slightly stupider for having wasted your 4 minutes.
I like Hardy – she can be very funny, but her written word, when longer than 140 characters, is too juvenile to read.
Mikeys: I view television as a lot more than just the faces that dot our screen. I’ve always logged info about or writers, directors, critics etc. As well as Marieke apeparing on First Tuesday Book Club, you can see above some of her writing credits and been a long-term critic in The Age Green Guide.
Hardy is a great writer, and Pyne is irritating, but what offends me most, is the mantra like drone that the ABC is left biased. Having worked there for 20 years, and among editorial processes, if anything, it has since 1996 been trigger happy from the wrath of conservatives, and ironically it seems is still nervous since the change of govt in 2007. People did handstands and cartwheels to achieve balance. I don’t know if this editorial backflip is part of that, maybe it wasn’t Hardy’s best work.
Aria picked it- this is how the dumbed down people think – like aria
Welcome to the new right-wing world we sadly live in.
This latest episode of censorship is symptomatic of the ABC’s self conscious endeavours to appear balanced in all that they do. Balanced coverage is in principle a desirable thing, benign and banal coverage less so.
The ABC is a very sterile, moribond suit filled place thesesdays. The ABC has lost its former edge and quality in its pursuit of being the centre of the bland boring multi-channel universe. The ABC has past its use by date as it is too focused on forcing commercial style corporate branding down peoples throats thesedays instead of focusing on actual program content production which used to inspire and fertilise the mind. I used to be a huge supporter of the ABC, but alas, am no more.
…currently 66% of the SMH poll say they can’t stand Christopher Pyne
The article can still be found at bit.ly/aez4pF (thanks to @domknight and @ChasLicc)
Yeah, I read it. Thought it was quite balanced and factual.
“also comparing him unfavourably to India and Brendan Fevola.”
If anything, she needs to be thanked for this! It is strangely appealing, if that is what was left on my gravestone, I’d leave a happy man.
@Aria. Have you ever heard Christopher Pyne talk in an interview? I hate Kylie Sandilands, but Christopher Pyne is just as bad!
Never heard of her.
Marieke looks very sweet & innocent in that picture. How did such nasty words come from her pen? Was Anthony Albanese standing over her, guiding it? 🙂
@ Aria
You may be claiming “Typical ABC leftie always bias”, but those on the left would claim that it has a right-wing bias as many of its new programmes tend to follow the agenda set by the newspapers (the vast majority owned by News Ltd) and in particular The Australian, which has been pretty consistently trying to discredit the government and destroy the Greens.
Personally, I think the ABC provides the most balanced coverage of all news organisations. If anything I think it tries too hard to be balanced – too often its reporting just goes along the lines of “the govenment said this and the opposition said that”. Usually one or both are talking absolute rubbish and the ABC should call them out for it, rather than always reporting both sides as if they are equally valid.
Typical ABC leftie always bias, bagging the liberals, most people wouldn’t even know who Christopher Pyne, nobody could be more hated than Kyle Sandilands. She should stick to her bookclub…..
The ABC self censoring itself