The Daily Telegraph (Australia)

The Daily Telegraph

Front page of The Daily Telegraph on 12 December 2005, reporting on the 2005 Cronulla riots
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Tabloid
Owner	News Limited
Editor	Paul Whittaker
Founded	1879
Political alignment	conservative, populist
Official website	www.dailytelegraph.com.au

The Daily Telegraph is an Australian tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, by Nationwide News, part of News Corporation.

The Tele, as it is also known, was founded in 1879.^[1] From 1936 to 1972, it was owned by Frank Packer's Australian Consolidated Press. That year it was sold to News Limited. In 1990, it merged with its afternoon sister paper The Daily Mirror to form The Daily Telegraph-Mirror with morning and afternoon editions although the afternoon editions were later discontinued.

The new paper continued in this vein until January 1996 when reader pressure for a shorter title caused the name of the paper to revert to The Daily Telegraph, despite staff concerns that former Mirror readers would now feel disenfranchised. The circulation of the newspaper in the first half of 2004 was around 409,000 per day,^{[citation needed]} the largest of a Sydney newspaper.

The Daily Telegraph is available from retailers (newsagents, supermarkets, petrol stations, convenience stores, mixed business general stores, etc.) in Sydney, regional areas of New South Wales (excluding some towns near the state borders of Victoria, South Australia and Queensland), Canberra and South East Queensland (Brisbane, Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast).

On 19 November 2010, The Daily Telegraph released their iPad application enabling users to view a custom version of the website.^[2]

Counterparts

Its Melbourne counterparts are the Herald Sun and Sunday Herald Sun. In Brisbane, it is linked with the The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Mail, In Adelaide, The Advertiser and Sunday Mail, In Perth, The Sunday Times, In Hobart, The Mercury and The Sunday Tasmanian, In Darwin, The Northern Territory News and Sunday Territorian.

Politics

The Telegraph's most high-profile columnists, among them Piers Akerman, are politically conservative.

A Roy Morgan media credibility survey found that 40 per cent of journalists viewed News Limited newspapers as Australia's most partisan media outlet, ahead of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on 25 per cent. The survey found that readers took a generally dim view of journalists. In response to the question "Which newspapers do you believe do not accurately and fairly report the news?", the Daily Telegraph came third (9%) behind the Herald Sun (11%) and "All of them" (16%).^[3]

At the Australian federal election, 2007 the Daily Telegraph for only the second time endorsed the Australian Labor Party. At the Australian federal election, 2010 the Newspaper endorsed the Coalition and Tony Abbott.

Controversies

John Brogden allegations

The Telegraph was widely criticised for its coverage of former New South Wales Liberal leader John Brogden. After Brogden resigned in 2005, the newspaper ran a front-page headline, "Brogden's Sordid Past: Disgraced Liberal leader damned by secret shame file," detailing past allegations of misconduct by Brogden. The following day, Brogden attempted suicide at his electoral office.

Rodney Tiffen, an academic at the University of Sydney, described the newspaper's coverage as an example of "hyena journalism", judging Brogden's personal life to be off limits following his withdrawal from public life.^[4]

Editor David Penberthy claimed that his source was from inside the Liberal Party and that none of the events would have happened if no one leaked from inside the party.^[5]

Mount Druitt High School

On 8 January 1997, the Telegraph published the headline, "The class we failed" concerning was the Year 12 class at Mount Druitt High School in outer Western Sydney in which no student scored a Tertiary Entrance Rank (TER) above 50 (the maximum possible mark is 100). Although the article made clear that the newspaper believed that the state had failed the students, many accused the Telegraph of branding the students themselves as failures and showing a full year photo identifying students.

The story led to a renewed focus on the quality of public schools in Western Sydney and precipitated several reviews of schooling in the area.^[6] But for many, the headline highlighted problems with interpreting Higher School Certificate results and the accompanying TER.^[7]

The students successfully sued the newspaper in the Supreme Court for defamation. The Telegraph subsequently apologised and settled for damages out of court.^[8] The published apology stated:

“

In that story The Daily Telegraph suggested, among other things, that the students in the class of 1996 failed their HSC. This is wrong and The Daily Telegraph withdraws any such suggestion. The Daily Telegraph also withdraws any suggestion that those students acted without discipline or commitment in their HSC studies. The students in the HSC class of 1996 successfully completed their HSC and contrary to the suggestions in the original article many of those students performed very well scoring high marks in the HSC. The Daily Telegraph apologises to each student in the class of 1996 at Mt Druitt. It also apologises to their parents and friends for all the hurt, harm and suffering it has caused them.[8]

”

Later, criticising defamation laws, News Limited CEO John Hartigan said that

“

The words in the story pointed to deep-seated problems within the education system, but a barrister convinced the jury that, regardless of the words before him, what we really meant to say was that the entire class was too stupid to pass the HSC."[9]

”

Call centres in India

In October 2006, The Telegraph claimed in a front page article that ANZ were using call centres in Bangalore, India. The paper even sent a journalist to Bangalore, Luke McIlveen, and a photographer to verify this claim.^[10] ANZ strongly denied the claim, stating that they do not employ overseas call centre staff in India.^[11] Subsequently, ANZ pulled all of its advertising from News Limited, including Foxtel and News websites.

“

Our advertising with News Limited is worth $4 to 5 million and accounts for about 10 per cent of ANZ's advertising budget.[12]

”

In assuming blame, David Penberthy defended McIlveen.^[13]

Allegations of plagiarism

In 2002, former Telegraph journalist, Matt Sun, was accused of plagiarism by the TV program Media Watch.^[14][15] Editor at the time, Campbell Reid, responded by accusing Media Watch's host of having a conflict of interest that "destroyed the credibility of any judgement he could pass on the ethics and standards of others in the media".^[16]

Staff

The Telegraph is edited by Gary Linnell. Linnell's predecessors are David Penberthy,^[17] Campbell Reid,^[17] David Banks^[18] and Col Allan, who now serves as editor-in-chief at the Murdoch-owned New York Post.

Columnists include Piers Akerman, Tim Blair and education specialist Maralyn Parker. Journalists include Malcolm Farr, Joe Hildebrand and Luke McIlveen.

Past writers for the newspaper include Mark Day, the late Peter Frilingos, Miranda Devine, Mike Gibson, Peter Holder and David Luff.

Blogs

The Daily Telegraph website hosts the blogs of several columnists.

• Piers Akerman, right-wing conservative commentator since 1993
• Anita Quigley, TV, radio and newspaper journalist for 16 years
• Sydney Confidential, local and international gossip, glamour and celebrity news
• Maralyn Parker, award-winning education columnist's blog
• Tim Blair, blog
• Steve Mascord, Rugby League reporter
• Joe Hildebrand, journalist blog

See also

• List of newspapers in Australia

References

1. ^ Clancy, Laurie (2004). "The Media and Cinema". Culture and Customs of Australia. Greenwood Press. p. 126. ISBN 0313321698. 
2. ^ "Stop the presses and pass the iPad - news revolution continues ", The Daily Telegraph
3. ^ Why Australians Don’t Respect The Media
4. ^ The Daily Telegraph, John Brogden and hyena journalism
5. ^ Editor rejects attack over Brogden coverage. 31/08/2005. ABC News Online
6. ^ New South Wales Public Education Inquiry: Final Reports: Second Report: 22: Chapter 4: Impact of the Restructuring of Public Education in NSW since 1988
7. ^ Policy Spring (Sept–Nov) 1998
8. ^ ^{a b} NSW Teachers Federation: Education Online: November 2000: Telegraph apologises to Mt Druitt students
9. ^ Press freedom under attack
10. ^ Media Watch: Front Page — Bad Line For Bangalore (16 October 2006)
11. ^ http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/ep36anz2.pdf
12. ^ http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/ep36anz3.pdf
13. ^ "The Age of disbelief", The Australian
14. ^ Media Watch | Armed Holdup
15. ^ Media Watch | Campbell Reid's Standards
16. ^ Media Watch |
17. ^ ^{a b} AAP (1 April 2005). "New editor for Daily Telegraph". The Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/New-editor-for-Daily-Telegraph/2005/04/01/1112302228826.html. 
18. ^ Banksy's Blog: About David Banks