Mitchell, Murdoch and me

When I answered the phone on 11 July 2007 it was Chris Mitchell's personal assistant on the line. It turned out to be a courtesy call from the Australian's editor-in-chief to inform me that I would be starring in the next day's editorial - and not pleasantly. It would consist of a demolition of online critics of the newspaper - mostly me, complete with photo - in retaliation for the horrid things I'd written on my website about how the paper reported its fortnightly opinion poll, Newspoll. This wasn't the first phone conversation I'd had with Mitchell. That had been the previous December, after I'd emailed him out of the blue about a Newspoll pitting a hypothetical Kevin Rudd-Julia Gillard Labor leadership team against the incumbents, Kim Beazley and Jenny Macklin (why were there no figures on voting intentions?). That email had resulted, to my surprise, in an hour-long chat, in which Mitchell schmoozed and flattered and tried to get me to see things his way. He obviously spent a lot of time reading online opinions about his newspaper. Any dividends from that December charm offensive were short-term, because here we were eight months later. Rudd was leading Labor and rampaging against the Howard government in the polls, and the Oz was still clutching at Newspoll straws. You can read the comments that sparked the call online; scroll up for subsequent developments.