"The Australian" newspaper has been running pretty heavily with the Alan Jones biography story over the past week, with no less that 5 items being printed. On July 4th came the news that the ABC's lawyers had given the go-ahead for the book to be published, "insisting the corporation could defend any defamation action launched by the radio broadcaster."
Two days later and David Salter (who used to be executive producer of the BC's "Media Watch" program) got stuck into the the ABC over its decision: "It's distressing to discover Aunty can now be so two-faced and craven. ABC Books is happy to trade on the huge market awareness and credibility of the ABC brand, but its courage apparently fails it when faced with the challenge of putting some real editorial gristle behind its own imprint." And then put the knife in where it deserved to go: "Anyone who still doubts the ABC is succumbing to a new order of top-down conservatism should ponder recent history. Previous boards and managements were made of sterner stuff. In 1993 the ABC Books logo appeared on Paul Barry's The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer, a robust biography that traversed material as contentious as anything we might expect to read in Jonestown."
Simon Kearney then revealed further details about the ABC Board discussions, along with the news that a print-run of 30,000 was being touted. On the same day, July 6th, came the report that five leading Australian publishers were vying to pick up the publication rights to the book - you'd couldn't buy this sort of publicity. Which was followed on the 7th July with the news that the publisher Allen & Unwin would be the publisher of Chris Masters's book. To be frank, I hope that's the end of it. Until publication day at any rate.
