The Fairfax press and its failure to tackle Anne Keating
Keith
Jackson, the executive chairman of spin outfit Jackson Wells Morris,
has offered up an interesting insight into his skirmishes with the
Fairfax press after acting for deposed NRMA Insurance Group chairman
Nick Whitlam.

But before getting to that, take a look at this extract from
Friday’s sealed section email to our 1200 subscribers on the AGM of
John Singleton’s Singleton Group Holdings AGM.

Singo AGM extract

The biggest news story that came out of the meeting was Singo’s
attack on governments of all persuasions for not giving the only big
Australian advertising agency any work.

“I have zero business from government…it is absolutely
appalling,” Singo moaned. “We are the most dominant Australian agency
ever, ever.”

“Can you imagine the media buying in Paris being given to a Japanese company.”

Singo had earlier gloated that his agency never lost clients which
sparked my question as to whether there was any chance of winning back
the ALP account which they lost a couple of years back partly because
Singo insulted John Della Bosca’s wife Belinda Neal about a decade
earlier.

“There was every chance but we have decided against it,” Singo
said. “Advertising won’t decide the next election so it is better to
stay out of it.”

“We have an ongoing very good relationship with the ALP and with the Prime Minister and his advisers in the Liberal Party.”

“If Hawkie or Paul decided to come back we might be tempted.”

Singo loves Hawkie and Paul who looked after him for all those
years. In fact, Singo has gifted Hawkie a stake in a couple of nags as
a thank you and has paid Paul’s sister Anne Keating a few hundred
thousand for sitting on his board and helping him land a couple of FM
radio licences in China.

Which brings us to the question of Anne’s massive conflict in trying to push as much NRMA business Singo’s way as possible.

When I asked the question of whether Nick Whitlam’s departure from
the NRMA board would clear the way for him to get some business, Singo
gave “Annie” a big hug and said “Do we want to? That depends on whether
Anne gets in as CEO!”

Then before saying it was all “water under the bridge”, Singo
added: “We have not actually been unappointed. We have a three year
contract but they (NRMA) have stopped paying us.”

ends.

(if you want to see the rest of the Singleton report, hailed by a
couple of subscribers as our best AGM effort yet, try subscribing by
clicking here.
)

Why does the Fairfax press go easy on Anne Keating?

I don’t know how many times we have to point Anne Keating’s
conflicts out but the likes of Anne Lampe and Kate Askew on the Sydney
Morning Herald remain blinkered in their pursuit of Nick Whitlam and
their defence of Anne Keating and her mate Richard Talbot.

John Singleton was openly joking that “Annie” was on the NRMA
board pursuing his interests. The three year contract he refers to is
the deal for the NRMA to sponsor the Salvos in a $3 million campaign.
This deal was pushed through by Anne Keating when Nick Whitlam was
travelling overseas. The question the Fairfax press should be asking St
Anne is whether she gets any extra commission from John Singleton on
such arrangements. The SMH’s Emiliya Mychasuk was at the Singleton AGM
but we picked up nothing on the website in Saturday’s paper. She
provided a couple of items for Kate Askew’s CBD column on Monday but
they failed to point out the conflict, prefering just to run the quotes
without any journalistic interpretation. Contrast that with the bile
that has been thrown at Nick Whitlam and you have an example of
side-taking journalism.

Here are the items from Monday’s CBD column:

Election ads won’t be necessary

Even super-salesman John Singleton didn’t sound totally convinced
when he told the Singleton Group annual meeting that the agency had
decided not to pitch for the Federal ALP campaign account this year
because it took the view that “advertising is not an issue in the next
election”.

Last time around, of course, the ALP account went to the bitter
rivals at Saatchi & Saatchi, thanks to party heavy John Della Bosca
– and that turned out to be just a warm-up to the ugly NRMA fight. That
little spat embroiled, in one corner, Saatchi, Della’s wife Belinda
O’Neal and Nick Whitlam and, in the other, the Singleton camp,
including director Anne Keating.

But back to Singo.

Singo launched into a general complaint about being the only major
Australian ad company (although with a major foreign investor) that
didn’t get a cent of government business (well, excluding the
government-funded Republican campaign), before quipping, in response to
a question about whether there was any chance of getting the NRMA
account back: “Do we want to? That depends on whether Anne gets in as
CEO!”

No doubt it would be nice to have the ALP and NRMA business in
what Singleton’s chairman Mark Carnegie predicted would be a year of
flat revenue – after last year lifting profit by an amazing 50 per cent
plus, thanks partly to the Olympics. But the agency can’t be accused of
not knowing how to find other ways of making money.

One of the secrets of success, Singo declared, was the in-house
bar, where the shareholder meeting has been held for the past couple of
years, that he said costs $130,000 a year to run.

“It means everyone thinks they’re getting a free drink. They’re
not. They’re working longer because while they are having a drink they
might discuss Qantas, ‘hey, did you see Patts took six days to do the
Ansett ad – what did they do for the other five and a half days?”‘

In spite of all the talk of bars and grog, the mid-morning meeting
was strictly a caffeine affair – was it the question about the
distinction between Singleton private versus Singleton public
investments that sent him to the bar fridge mid-meeting for a diet
Pepsi?

All good mates, chortle, chortle

Meanwhile, in the founder’s report, all credit for past
performance went to the man who has put up with Singo for longer than
most of his wives, Russell Tate, who last year had open-heart surgery.

Singo said there was “no-one who is less personally aware of their
higher intellectual superiority” than Russell. As opposed to chairman
Carnegie: “Unfortunately, no-one is more aware of his intellectual
superiority than Mark.”

Carnegie, son of Sir Rod, and Singo batted off the question at the
meeting as to whether Sir Martin Sorrell, for major shareholder UK ad
giant WPP, would be interested in a takeover of Singleton, invoking
patriotism in the process.

Carnegie said the Singleton team were “shareholders first,
patriots second – but close – but you’ve got to recognise the global
consolidation trend”.

The current shareholder structure allowed the group to still be “Australian” and have the benefit of a foreign investor.

Just in case that sounded like a “maybe”, Singo added that there
had never been any offers and he hadn’t been tempted to sell. “What
would I do all day? I’d be drinking every day.”

“And every night,” added Carnegie.

“It’d be Golden Slipper every week,” chipped in former managing director Bill Currie.

ends

Crikey reckons Whitlam was a destructive force who is better out
of the NRMA but the same goes for Anne Keating who Business Sunday and
the Fairfax press can’t say a bad thing about.

Anyway, enough of my ranting, let’s move on to what Whitlam’s hired flack has to say on the whole affair.

Keith’s Jackson’s flack insights

Dear Stephen –

A further report on some light skirmishing between the forces of
darkness and the shadow side. If you do not find it as boring as it
probably is, your reader may gain an insight into how the war between
journalism & PR is, from time to time, publicly waged.

ORIGINAL LETTER TO THE SMH EDITOR

From: Keith Jackson, Executive Chairman, Jackson Wells Morris, Neutral Bay

Date: 11/04/2001

John Kelly (Letters, 11/4/01) reflects on the ethical position of the Board of the NRMA Insurance Group (NIGL).

In recent months, the Board has had to work within a climate of
public controversy generated largely by a volatile mix of factual
inaccuracy, misguided speculation and baseless innuendo. This, for the
most part, has been directed in personal terms against the former
chairman, Nicholas Whitlam.

Most of the disinformation has been mediated through what presents
as an informal ‘campaign’ waged by a few Fairfax journalists,
presumably with the support of their editors. The propaganda continued
unabated, even when the record was corrected.

I make these remarks as a person whose company has worked with the
NIGL Board in dealing with some of the campaign’s consequential issues
over the last few months.

The Board, of course, has not been without its problems. This is
well known. But shareholders in NIGL should be aware that these have
not been the massive distraction we have been led to believe. Life has
gone on.

I would also observe that, despite the Fairfax ‘campaign’, the
Board has at all times behaved properly and ethically. I think that is
more than can be said for those journalists who have used their power
to publish without any sense of ethical responsibility.

All of us should be in favour of a robust and untrammelled media.
But that freedom implies some serious obligation to report factually,
speculate fairly and apply proper filtering and scrutiny to gossip,
especially that which has malign intent.

Your readers, including Mr Kelly, have been seriously let down in this respect.

GOT US, FAIR AND SQUARE

Sydney Morning Herald, CBD Column

Date: 12/04/2001

More disinformation from campaigning Kate Askew.

Well, who’s waging the campaign now?

The following letter arrived yesterday from public relations
executive Keith Jackson, a partner of public relations firm Jackson
Wells Morris.

The letter to the editor was in response to a published letter
from Elizabeth Bay resident John Kelly, who suggested that: “Instead of
scandalous pay-outs for retiring from the boards of NIGL and NRMA, the
ASIC should step in and insist board members attend an ethics course.”

In reply, Jackson writes: “In recent months, the board has had to
work within a climate of public controversy generated largely by a
volatile mix of factual inaccuracy, misguided speculation and baseless
innuendo. This, for the most part, has been directed in personal terms
against the former chairman, Nicholas Whitlam.

“Most of the disinformation has been mediated through what
presents as an informal ‘campaign’ waged by a few Fairfax journalists,
presumably with the support of their editors.

“The propaganda continued unabated, even when the record was corrected.

“I make these remarks as a person whose company has worked with
the NIGL board in dealing with some of the campaign’s consequential
issues over the last few months…

“All of us should be in favour of a robust and untrammelled media.
But that freedom implies some serious obligation to report factually,
speculate fairly and apply proper filtering and scrutiny to gossip,
especially that which has malign intent.

“Your readers, including Mr Kelly, have been seriously let down in this respect,” the letter concluded.

Not wishing to leave our readers out of the loop, we hasten to add
that Jackson’s firm, Jackson Wells Morris, is employed by the NRMA, as
he notes. Partner John Wells has been working for Nick Whitlam on his
public relations profile.

Now there’s a bit of untrammelled propaganda for you. At what rate
was the letter-writing exercise charged out (if it was) to NRMA
shareholders?

KEITH JACKSON’S REPLY (UNPUBLISHED TO DATE)

Date: 12/04/2001

Kate Askew (CBD, 12/4/01) must have been displeased that I
identified who I was and who I was working for in my letter to the
editor (passed to her, I note, without the usual agreement with the
writer) about the biased treatment of NRMA/NIGL affairs by a few
Fairfax journalists.

In fact, Kate inadvertently verifies my claim of “factual
inaccuracy, misguided speculation and baseless innuendo” (to which I
might have added “protracted sneering”) in her final line.

Which stated: “And at what rate was the letter-writing exercise charged out (if it was?) to NRMA shareholders”.

It wasn’t charged at any rate. It wasn’t charged at all. It wasn’t
commissioned. And it wasn’t checked with the NRMA. It was all my own
work!

But the comment in CBD opportunely vindicates my claims of inaccuracy, speculation, innuendo (and sneering).

Kate Askew “got (herself), fair and square”.

In the interests of NRMA shareholders (of which I am one), and
whom I would not want to think I was writing at their expense, I hope
you will see fit to publish this letter.

And to pre-empt Kate’s next column. This one isn’t being charged either.

WHAT KATIE DIDN’T DO

Stephen, your reader – observant as always – will have noticed
that Kate, while quoting extensively from the original letter, chose to
leave out four pars. The substantive three were:

“The Board, of course, has not been without its problems. This is
well known. But shareholders in NIGL should be aware that these have
not been the massive distraction we have been led to believe. Life has
gone on.

“I would also observe that, despite the Fairfax ‘campaign’, the Board has at all times behaved properly and ethically.

“I think that is more than can be said for those journalists who
have used their power to publish without any sense of ethical
responsibility.”

Now, I expect and seek no sympathy vote. Indeed, upon reflection,
I happen to find all this rather self-indulgent. But it provides a
glimpse that may allow your reader to deconstruct how the process
works. Another small insight: notice how the flack goes from being the
more congenial “Keith Jackson” to the more criminal “Jackson” in the
space of just a couple of pars? And how the flack tries to maintain an
insouciant air by using the hack’s first name at every opportunity?
Old’ns but still gold’ns.

Yours in shame, Keith Jackson