silverguide.site –

When the Daily Telegraph apologised in March for “causing distress” by sending a pro-Israel activist and a reporter to a popular Sydney Middle Eastern restaurant, News Corp may have believed it could draw a line under the ugly incident.

But a judgment in the federal court this week reopened the wound and revealed that another arm of News Corp, Sky News Australia, was one of the outlets that published what Justice Robert Bromwich found were “highly misleading and even deceptive” statements about the settlement between the publisher, the activist and the restaurant.

The Tele apology was part of a confidential agreed joint statement to resolve the legal dispute between the Newtown restaurant Cairo Takeaway and the pro-Israel activist Ofir Birenbaum. All the parties agreed to publish the statement in full and not to reveal the terms of the settlement. The settlement resolved out of court a defamation suit brought by Birenbaum against the cafe for statements made on social media.

But the case was reopened after the restaurant alleged Birenbaum had breached the settlement by claiming in a separate statement he had been “completely vindicated”.

Bromwich found Birenbaum breached parts of the legal settlement, including in a Sky News segment hosted by Sharri Markson which reported that compensation had been paid to Birenbaum.

Bromwich found on Tuesday that the information about compensation was conveyed by Birenbaum’s lawyer, Rebecca Giles, to Markson or another employee of Sky News on behalf of Birenbaum.

Bromwich said Markson referred in three places “to compensation being paid to Mr Birenbaum from the respondents”.

At a hearing in May, Matthew Richardson, acting on behalf of Cairo Takeaway, read to the court a portion of an affidavit from Giles in which she denied contact with anyone from Sky News.

“I did not at any time prior to the publication of Sky, communicate with Ms Markson or any other person at Sky News or any related entity concerning the applicant, this proceeding or the resolution of the applicant’s legal dispute with the respondents,” she said in the affidavit, which was submitted but not entered into evidence, after it was revealed on the morning of the hearing that Giles would not appear for cross-examination.

This week Bromwich found “that the information about compensation being paid to Mr Birenbaum was conveyed by Ms Giles to Ms Markson on behalf of Mr Birenbaum”.

Documents tendered in the case also revealed the contents of a briefing paper which Bromwich found was sent to the Daily Mail and Crikey by Giles, or someone on the lawyer’s behalf, backgrounding journalists ahead of the confidential settlement.

Giles has been contacted for comment.

What has Neighbour seen?

There is growing trepidation among executives on the seventh floor of the ABC’s Ultimo headquarters in Sydney over an upcoming investigation by Sally Neighbour, the former executive producer of Four Corners. Neighbour, who retired from the ABC in 2022, has turned her considerable investigative skills to examining the tenure of the ABC managing director, Hugh Marks, for a piece in the August edition of The Monthly.

In the job for one year and four months, the former Nine Entertainment boss took the unusual step of recruiting a news director while the old one, Justin Stevens, was still in place.

The shock departure of Stevens in May, the day before Senate estimates, and the questions it raised about who leaked the news the 19-year veteran was leaving, are part of the investigation.

As Weekly Beast previously reported, the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald published a detailed story one minute after the managing director’s office sent out a note to staff about Stevens’s departure.

This week The Australian published another story about Stevens based on a leak that appeared to come from high up in the ABC: the amount of his payout.

Surprise winner

James Massola may have asked the most underwhelming question of Pauline Hanson at her National Press Club event last month, but that didn’t stop the chief political commentator for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age being named federal press gallery journalist of year at this week’s Midwinter Ball for his “insightful analysis”.

The $5,000 award is handed out by the National Press Club each year and the winner has their name inscribed on the honour board.

A reminder of what Massola asked Hanson: “A simple question for you, reflecting on your speech, your comments about migration and multiculturalism, and what have you, is Australia in danger of being swamped by Muslim migration?”

Hanson: “Not if I’ve got anything to do with it.”

On Wednesday at the ball, some press gallery journos anticipated the award would go to The Australian’s economics correspondent, Matthew Cranston, for his amazing budget scoop about the working Australian tax offset.

But Massola was the surprise winner for what the judges said was his foreshadowing “last year the pressure on Liberals to move sharply to the right”.

Exactly how big a deal is this?

The budget was handed down in May but News Corp continues to do its best to put a negative spin on Labor’s changes to negative gearing rules.

“Jim the Home Wrecker” was the front page headline on a Daily Telegraph report that claimed real estate agents had warned “no one will be turning up’’ at auctions and “panicked homebuyers” were abandoning Sydney’s property market.

The government’s changes target those making future investments, who will no longer be able to negatively gear established properties and will be taxed at the new inflation-adjusted rate for their capital gains.

The Tele featured eastern suburbs renter Tayla Rachel, 29, on page one and depicted her as “the face of the market crunch”.

But inside the paper, on page seven, Rachel revealed the changes were “not as big a deal to me”.

Asked how the budget affected her, Rachel told the Tele: “It’s not great. But it is a long-term investment property so it’s not as big a deal to me – hopefully in many years time prices do go up”.

Similarly, a story in The Australian headline “First home negative equity alarm” in the print edition, didn’t quite live up to its promise.

“A brutal property downturn is trapping first-home buyers in a negative equity minefield, with fresh data showing values have plummeted across nearly all of the government’s top loan guarantor hotspots,” the Oz said.

But it quoted the research director of the property data firm Cotality, Tim Lawless, as ssaying for most people the prospect of going into negative equity “isn’t that big a deal”.

Lawless said that based on the figures, “we will probably see a short-term level of negative equity for some of these buyers” and while this in itself “isn’t that big a deal … it becomes “much more important if those individuals or those households need to sell, of course, because they will be selling at a value that won’t be clearing their debt on the home”.

McKenzie and Truss on socialism

If someone from the UK told any reasonable Australian they were living under “socialist control” they might balk at the suggestion.

Not so the Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie who nodded in furious agreement when the former British prime minister Liz Truss asked her: “You are under socialist control in Australia. How is Anthony Albanese damaging the country?”

Truss, who was UK prime minister for 49 days, hosts The Liz Truss Show on YouTube, on which McKenzie was a guest this week.

McKenzie answered: “In every possible way, culturally and economically, Liz.”

She told Truss Australia was following Britain into disaster, citing the incorrect claim that “Western civilization has disappeared from the school curriculums”.