The smoking booby-tassel
The ABC’s Media Watch does a good job (as usual) at debunking the bullshit surrounding Opposition Leader Mark Latham’s alleged raunchy alleged bucks night alleged video sprung onto a voracious press by Howard’s cadre of muckrakers. As expected, the pious drivel came thick and fast from a wide range of media sources (the Murdoch News Ltd. press was automatically a given, but the Sydney Morning Herald should know better (Miranda Devine’s continued employment notwithstanding)), yet it started to become strangely apparent that nobody could actually lay claim to having seen this video. All sources of information regarding the contents of the sleazy tool of political career destruction seemed oddly sketchy and ephemeral. David Marr succinctly outlines the rest.
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For a video no one has ever seen, Latham’s bucks night got terrific reviews from the press.
…potentially embarrassing…
Stephen Mayne
-crikey.com.au, 2 July 2004
…raunchy…
Louise Dodson
-Sydney Morning Herald, 3 July 2004
…the smoking gun…
Glenn Milne
-Sunday Mail (SA), 4 July 2004
2UE shock jock Steve Price hadn’t seen it either but he was able to give us this detailed report:
“Our informant says the video shows him sitting in a chair with a glass of beer in his hand, with a stripper topless, rubbing her breasts in his face.”
-Sunrise, Channel 7, 6 July 2004
It was deepest darkest winter in Canberra. The pollies had all gone home. The press gallery was killing time until Sunday - that’s Sunday a week ago - when the Prime Minister might call an election and a profile on Channel 9’s ?Sunday? show might destroy Mark Latham’s hopes of winning it. Suddenly old rumours about Latham’s bucks night flared into life.
Who first mentioned them? Barrie Cassidy on your ABC as he wondered what his rivals at the ?Sunday? show might have on Latham.
“As I understand it they?ve trawled back over ten or 15 years, they?ve had a look at his history at Liverpool council. They?ve even looked at his bucks party so there?s all this sort of material swirling around. Now what in the end they use I don?t know but because Mark Latham won?t play ball and has refused to give them an interview then I think he?s probably steeling himself for the worst.”
-Jon Faine Morning Program, 774 ABC Melbourne, 1 July 2004
By this time it was Thursday morning. The press gallery had three days to get the dirt on Latham and scoop the ?Sunday? show.
Barrie Cassidy says that he never believed there was a video.
I had no idea of the source of the video rumour, as opposed to the bucks night rumour, but in this case I suspect it was all the media?s own work.
-Barrie Cassidy statement to Media Watch
Even so Barrie’s report was like blood in the water: the press went into a frenzy.
Journalists who bothered to enquire, were told the video didn’t exist by Latham’s office, by Sunday reporter Ross Coulthart and by executive producer of the ?Sunday? show John Lyons:
“I was getting phone calls from journalists every day saying, tell us about this bucks party video. I kept saying, we don?t have one, we?ve never had it and even if we had it we wouldn?t run it.”
-Lateline, ABC TV 5 July 2004
Didn’t work. This was a rumour you couldn’t kill with a stick. But it took another 24 hours for someone to go public with the video claims. Why? Well when stories about politicians’ private lives are untested and intrusive, the mainstream media likes someone else to take the odium of breaking them first.
These days that ’someone else’ is usually Stephen Mayne. On the Friday afternoon of that wild week, Mayne’s email newsletter crikey.com.au reported:
It’s happened. Mark Latham’s dream run with the media has come to a screeching halt and Canberra is awash with feverish expectations about the next 48 hours. It began with the news of Ross Coulthart’s impending 40-minute Sunday profile on the opposition leader and now there are rumours of a potentially embarrassing videotape of Latham’s bucks? party ahead of his last wedding.
-crikey.com.au, 2 July 2004
And the source for Crikey’s revelation?
Stephen Mayne: “…that came from a email out of Sydney from someone sort of connected to a commercial radio station…”
-Sally Loane Morning Show, 702 ABC Sydney, 6 July 2004
Worthless. But the report leapt effortlessly from crikey to the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Love and other bruises: an ode to Latham… writes Louise Dodson.
Mark Latham admits he is no angel. Sure, he enjoyed an ?active? sex life before and between his marriages. And he has resorted to fisticuffs at times. But?the Labor leader is yet to respond to other revelations ? reports of a raunchy video taken at his bucks night before his second marriage.
-Sydney Morning Herald, 3-4 July 2004
Revelations? Reports? No Louise, rumours. And rumours not carried by the paper’s Melbourne stable mate The Age.
The Age columnist Michelle Grattan had checked and been assured by the Sunday show there was no video.
“In addition, The Age earlier this year had done a big profile which contained some of the allegations that were made on the Sunday program under a team led by Malcolm Schmidtke. They had investigated in depth Mark Latham?s background and there had been no sign of a video in that investigation. So there really didn?t seem to be any solid evidence for its existence.”
-Lateline, ABC TV, 5 July 2004
Political columnist Glenn Milne didn’t check with the Sunday show before pumping the video story out to News Ltd papers.
If any of the claims are provable Latham?s support could crumble. -Glenn Milne on how Mark Latham?s private past could harm his public future.
Allegations about Mark Latham?s treatment of his first wife, Gabrielle, threaten to derail the Labor Leader?s run for The Lodge… And over the past 48 hours, there?s been fevered speculation in Canberra about the existence of a raunchy ?bucks night? video involving Latham ? and whether that was the smoking gun about to be fired by Sunday.
-Sunday Mail (SA), 4 July 2004
Milne’s speculation was carried by Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph, Adelaide’s Sunday Mail, Brisbane’s Sunday Mail and Perth’s Sunday Times.
But the video rumour references were cut from his copy by the Sunday Tasmanian and Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun. Sunday Herald Sun editor Alan Howe told Media Watch:
Such a video may exist. If it does, I hope it turns up. But I did not feel that, at that stage, we were presenting enough evidence of it to speculate about it.
-Alan Howe letter to Media Watch, 9 July 2004
Alan Howe added -
We will always investigate an interesting rumour. If it is warranted, we will responsibly publish the results, or despatch them back to the pubs from which they came.
-Alan Howe letter to Media Watch, 9 July 2004
When Sunday’s Latham profile finally went to air, its failure to live up to all the rumours, was treated as news, even by Channel 9.
There was supposed to be hair raising details about his personal life much of it centring on a raunchy video of Mr Latham allegedly filmed at a bucks party… But when the program went to air this morning, no video, nothing about the Labor leader?s personal life and much that was favourable to him.
-Channel 9 News, 4 July 2004
Was News Ltd’s Glenn Milne at all contrite? Of course not.
He explained he had a right to report the rumours because they were really, really lurid.
“I can?t go into the details here, and I wouldn?t want to, but the type of stuff, John and Michelle will know, that was being said about the nature of the video, if it were true, would draw into question Mark Latham?s fitness and capacity to be Prime Minister of Australia.”
-Lateline, ABC TV, 5 July 2004
While we’re talking of “fitness and capacity” Glenn, you might help me with this one: If you haven’t got the video and can’t find witnesses to say what Latham is supposed to have done on his bucks night - where and what is the story?
The Sydney Morning Herald has expressed regret for its video review.
Editor Robert Whitehead told Media Watch.
We were wrong to use the phrase ?reports of a raunchy video? when this was a reference to a gossip website.
-Robert Whitehead letter to Media Watch
But that didn’t slow the Herald down. Last Monday Cynthia Banham and Louise Dodson had yet more rumours to spread.
Labor sources close to Mr Latham said yesterday there were more claims about his love life that were not raised in Nine?s Sunday program.
-Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 2004
Media Watch asked Louise Dodson the basis for that claim. We also asked:
What is the news value and/or public interest in your reports about a Buck’s night video and Latham?s ?love life??
-Media Watch letter to Louise Dodson, 9 July 2004
She has not replied. Seems all she knew for certain about the smears she published was that they hadn’t cropped up on the Sunday show.
Later that Monday morning Latham called the media to an emotional press conference where he made a number of emphatic denials including this:
“There is no video. There is no video. There is no video. It was a bucks night, which was tame enough. It was organised by other people. I turned up. I had a bucks night for the first marriage and, believe you me, I didn?t see the need for it the second time around. Okay? It was tame enough.”
-Mark Latham press conference, 5 July 2004
So there you go: there was a Bucks night, maybe even a stripper, but Latham’s given a categorical denial of the video. End of story? No way.
A few hours after Latham’s press conference 2UE’s Steve Price was on the air.
Steve Price: “Paul in Hawkesbury. Paul.”
Paul: “How you going Steve?” (Okay thanks) “Mate, this Mark Latham, I think it should be left out of the public. I have in fact seen the video so it is true. I know who’s got it. I?m not going to say it on the radio. It probably will come out eventually…”
Steve Price: “Would he have been aware that it was being filmed?”
Paul: “Oh absolutely. He was drunk so he probably…”
Steve Price: “I?ve done a few things when I?ve been drunk that I don?t remember the next day.”
Paul: “Exactly.”
Steve Price: “So you were there and you?ve got no doubt it happened.”
Paul: “I wasn?t there but I have seen the video.”
Steve Price: “So you?ve seen the video and you know who?s got it.”
Paul: “Yep.”
Steve Price: “Alright Paul. Hang on for me will you. Don?t hang up please. We?d just like to talk to you off air. Mark Latham says it doesn?t exist. That there is no such video and that he didn?t even have a bucks night between wedding one and wedding two. We’ve got to accept Mark Latham at his word. But there you go. A caller suggesting that indeed that video does exist.”
-Steve Price Drive Show, 2UE, 5 July 2004
So they had a bit of chat off air and the next morning, Steve made an idiot of himself on Channel Seven’s Sunrise giving Australia ?Hawkesbury Paul’s? steamy account of the video. Steve was absolutely sure of his facts.
Steve Price: “I took a call from a bloke last night who says “I’ve seen it.” There is no doubt that there was a video taken at Mark Latham?s first bucks night.”
Peter Fitzsimons: “Would you like one of your first bucks night to be out there?”
Steve Price: “No, but I?m not running for the office of Prime Minister.”
David Koch: “How do you know this bloke?s right though? It?s an anonymous call?”
Steve Price: “Correct David. So we talked to this man off air. We have his phone number. We have his contact number. He?s prepared to give us that. Anyone who?s prepared to say something like this wouldn?t do that.”
-Sunrise, Channel 7, 6 July 2004
Oh, yes he would! Later that day Steve Price had to admit he’d been conned.
“This program has been unable to contact Paul today. He tells us he is a shift worker, he?s got his phone turned off. However our colleagues at 3AW talked briefly this morning to Paul off-air. He told them that that call yesterday was a joke and that he had invented the story. Now I?m not sure where that leaves us.”
-Steve Price Drive Show, 2UE, 6 July 2004,
Up shit creek, I’d have thought Steve. But at least you had the grace to admit you were duped.
Back in Canberra, attention shifted to a supposed government dirt unit. But a dirt unit, even if it exists, is no excuse for what Fairfax and News Ltd have been doing for the past couple of weeks: peddling rumours without the facts to back them.
Looks like we’ve got a long and rocky road to polling day.
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What, you didn’t honestly think that this smear crap was a purely American phenomenon? Wait, unsubstantiated rumours being passed off as facts by a public who are being fed exactly what they want to hear? Where have I heard that before? Hmm, I wonder… But let’s, for the sake of argument, pretend that such a video does exist, and that the contents are ten times worse than what has previously been reported. Would that make the slightest bit of difference to my own personal voting preference? No, because I’m not a sanctimonious hypocrite. What if Howard had been the subject of a raunchy video, as disturbing as the mental picture is? Actually, to be brutally honest, it’d probably make me more likely to vote for him. But that’s not saying much, because I still wouldn’t with the presence of at least a semi-decent Opposition. Do I care that Jack Ryan took Jeri to sex clubs? Nope (besides, it’s fucking Jeri Ryan). Could I give a rat’s arse about Monica’s White House blowjobs? Nuh. Do I give a shit about Dubya paying for a girlfriend’s abortion in the 70’s? Could not give a fuck. What I do give a fuck about is hypocritical, holier-than-thou arseholes, and a media obsequiously eager to gobble up the crumbs in their lust for a scoop, and I lament the existence of any citizen for whom this soap opera-esque gossip-mongering constitutes serious political discourse. What a segue-way!
JohnHowardLies.com
