(Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)

AFR you sure? This morning The Australian Financial Review ran a story, nominally about the “crusade of women journos” making trouble for the Morrison government. But more specifically it’s about news.com.au’s Samantha Maiden — a journalist whose work has formed the spine of the current historical moment, shattering the cone of silence that has so long existed around harassment in Parliament House.

The profile has been characterised by some as a hit piece, though it seems to allude to more than it’s willing to explicitly state. As a result, the tone lands extremely strangely, typified by the fact it initially included deeply private details of Maiden’s life (since removed).

Certainly if a man were producing one blockbuster story after another, setting the national debate and having a big part in bringing about changes that have already seen ministers moved and a backbencher offer his (quite ridiculously elongated) resignation, it’s hard to imagine an AFR profile describing him as “difficult” or “spiky”, or referencing the “anger” or “activism” behind the stories.

We called AFR editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury, who denied it was a hit piece. “I think it was a very reasonable ‘both sides’, if you like, look at one part of what are extraordinary times,” he said.

When we asked about the public interest of publishing private details of Maiden’s life, he defended the inclusion and when we asked why then it had been removed he said “I’m not up with that”. We didn’t hear back from Maiden.

Who’s in command of that? On Monday, the official US Strategic Command Twitter account posted a string of seemingly unrelated letters and punctuation. Lest we thought it may have shared the launch codes or some such, an apologetic follow up “please disregard this post” swiftly followed.

Via a Freedom of Information application from The Daily Dot’s Mikael Thalen, we now know that their Twitter manager had left his computer unattended, allowing a “very young child” to take charge of the keyboard.

First, we hope the manager doesn’t have any older kids who think it might be funny to start talking smack online about Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities. Second, an FOI application answered in a day? What a country.

The Canavan rolls on Yesterday Senator Matt Canavan stepped out in defence of his constituents (by his own admission, coal companies) and took exception to an ABC story that provided evidence Adani was doing business with the military junta in Myanmar.

“More systemic racism from the ABC,” he tweeted. I mean, we’re not sure who this is supposed to be racist against — the giant multinational coalminer or the leadership of a military coup?

Then again, Canavan has never displayed a great deal of understanding or curiosity about systemic racism. Remember when he thought it would be funny to post a photo of a ute with the slogan “black coal matters” pasted on the side?