OpinionMay 15, 2026 — 5:00amIn this week’s On Background, the ABC goes quiet on One Nation’s decision to put it in the freezer, The Real Housewives of Melbourne to ride again under British stewardship, and Crikey loses three key people.Aunty’s silence speaks volumesThis week, the ABC was uncharacteristically silent after its journalists were barred from several One Nation events while on the campaign trail in the federal byelection for the rural NSW seat of Farrer.As we later found out, the spat is part of a wider feud between the ABC and Pauline Hanson’s party, which dates back to a mid-March investigation into one of the party’s South Australian state candidates, and the use and attribution of quotes from a party spokesperson.Pauline Hanson casts a long shadow in front of the press.Dominic LorrimerThat, at least, is the surface reason for the ABC’s exclusion. But it’s not the first time One Nation has locked out Aunty, which it also barred from the minor party’s West Australian state election night function in 2017.The difference? Nine years ago, the ABC called the move both an attack on the broadcaster, and on “the fundamental role of the media in a democracy”.“We will continue, as we always have, to report without fear or favour,” said Alan Sunderland, its then head of editorial policy.Back then, One Nation was polling at just 8 per cent. Now it’s polling at 21 per cent of first preferences, according to this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor. So it’s easy to see why the ABC might not want to risk further inflaming things, despite receiving no shortage of comment requests. But in an absence of any response, it also risks entrenching a selective approach to the media from political parties.It was left to the ABC’s Media Watch this week, which sits outside the ABC’s News division, to criticise the actions of the hard right party, with host Linton Besser saying “alarm bells should be ringing”.Former 7.30 host Quentin Dempster said if Hanson, Barnaby Joyce and One Nation want to be taken seriously, they need to front up to all accredited media. “Australia’s democracy is dependent on accountability.”Sources familiar with the dispute said One Nation was trying to reach a “compromise” with the national broadcaster. But what that means in practice is tricky. Is the ABC, bound by its charter impartiality rules, really going to give One Nation favourable coverage? Unlikely. So there’s a stalemate.One ABC executive accused Hanson’s party of hypocrisy. The party’s attitude is: “We’re the only straight-talking party but only with those who won’t challenge us,” the exec said.Interestingly, over the past decade, trust in the media has held steady in Australia, and according to the 2025 Reuters Institute for Journalism report, the ABC remains the most trusted outlet.In the United States, by comparison, conservative populist President Donald Trump presides over a nation where trust in the media sits at just 30 per cent, well below Australia’s 43 per cent. His frequent rhetorical and legal attacks on the media clearly haven’t helped.For some time, parties on the right of Australian politics have taken an adversarial approach to the ABC, but not shut it out altogether.With One Nation challenging the Coalition’s status quo, the party’s openly hostile approach to critical media coverage could be the first step down a slippery slope.Reality rebootNewly British-owned Foxtel is looking closer to its adopted home for its reboot of The Real Housewives of Melbourne, which has been given a green light.ITV, the studio behind the British smash hit Love Island, beat out an unusually heavy field featuring the BBC, Warner Bros, Endemol Shine and Eureka in a five-way pitch, On Background can reveal, to produce the new series with yet-to-be-confirmed stars.This all happened because Matchbox, the production house that last put the show together in 2021, was shuttered in February by its international owners, Universal Studios. The show was unusually popular before it was discontinued after its last season introduced a shake-up in its cast, which mostly fell flat with its fans.Foxtel’s Binge has been relatively short on new content since HBO Max launched locally a year ago. There are already suspicions in the industry it could shutter the entertainment platform when its current output deal with NBCUniversal ends in a few years.Foxtel’s owner, DAZN, meanwhile, has begun its external search for its next local leader, sources say. Chief executive Patrick Delany, On Background reported last week, is set to move to London to head up DAZN’s global operations, but will still have a hand in most of what happens on the ground in Australia.Foxtel declined to comment.News Corp manifestoWas it flattery, imitation or inspiration? Perhaps The Daily Telegraph’s attempt on Wednesday to replicate the now-iconic New York Post “Red Apple” front page from November, marking democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win, was all three. After all, the Post began selling $US75 ($103) metal prints of its front page. It was so popular even Mamdani supporters were buying them.Days earlier on Sunday, Sky News host James Morrow said that Treasurer Jim Chalmers, whose wife is a senior News Corp editor in Queensland, is “just Zohran Mamdani without a beard”.Beneath the Tele’s “Your Capital, His Gain” headline, the paper went all out with the hammer and sickle to drive home the point, saying the Labor government’s budget tax reforms were Chalmers’ “communist manifesto”.Despite the fact the headline didn’t make a lot of sense, Chalmers’ changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax were hardly policies straight out of Das Kapital. Labor’s pre-election pledges were the focus of much of the media’s immediate coverage, including ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson’s interview with the treasurer. But of course it isn’t the first budget to backflip on a pre-election promise.John Howard, too, once pledged to “never ever” implement a GST. Well, he and Peter Costello implemented it in 2000, albeit after changing their minds and taking it to the 1998 election for a voter mandate.In 2013, Tony Abbott promised the electorate “no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS”. Well, you know what happened next.The Tele, for its part, sold it the day after the 2014 budget as “Dr Joe’s [Hockey] Debt Cure”. Woke revolutionChanges are afoot at independent news outlet Crikey, with editor-in-chief Sophie Black heading off to become associate editor for features, lifestyle and culture at Guardian Australia. On Background hears Black left for what is a 12-month contract. Crikey won’t be replacing Black’s position, with current editor Alisha Rouse to continue as its most senior editor.That is Crikey’s second major loss in just a few weeks, with its main newsbreaker Cam Wilson joining the ABC as its first AI reporter recently. Some have been wondering if it is part of a larger revamp, which includes Private Media chief executive Will Hayward, who oversaw Crikey within that company’s stable of publications, also on his way out.Lucky for Crikey, it has enlisted another news veteran into its ranks: 6News anchor and Australia’s leading teenage journalist, Leo Puglisi. Puglisi, now 18, has filed for Crikey three times this month alone as a freelancer!Word filtered to On Background that there was an internal push to make Crikey “less woke”, something Private Media chair and owner Eric Beecher denied. But Beecher has taken a more hands-on role in recent weeks. Others say the question of “what is Crikey” is eternal with the higher-ups, and that it can essentially be boiled down to, more or less woke?Crikey has upped the frequency of its Tips & Murmurs column, which insiders say might be the direction the outlet continues to push itself in. Though with the aforementioned changes and a chair with plenty of his own ideas, nothing ever lasts long at Crikey.The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.From our partners