There’s been a fair bit of Murdoch bashing recently: last week, Media Watch gave the Murdochs a whack for their self-serving moral panicking over social media; earlier in the week, Crikey posted an excerpt from Robert Manne’s just-published memoir, on when The Australian launched a personal crusade against Manne, as does The Australian routinely against people who call out its moral bankruptcy;1 a couple days ago, various people started walloping Murdoch for their pseudo-news shilling for gas companies; and I’ve been giving the Herald Sun my own little whacks for their disgraceful reporting on the – thanks to Murdoch – ousted VCAA CEO Kylie White. Given that this pleasing Murdoch-bashing is in season, I may as well share the story of the time a Murdoch reporter thugged me. My experience does not remotely compare to White’s or Manne’s, or to that of many other Murdoch victims, but being a low level academic attacked by a major newspaper and a Federal senator is not trivial. I’ll state at the outset that I handled it badly.
In 2001, I began giving public lectures under the auspices of the Mathematical Association of Victoria. Burkard joined in the next year and so began our long partnership, all shepherded by MAV’s CEO, the seemingly indefatigable Simon Pryor.2 The public lectures, most of which were hosted by Melbourne Museum, lasted until 2015, at which time Simon (and Burkard and Marty) was finally getting defatigabled.3 The very first lecture, delivered to three members of the public and a dozen mates, was The Joy of Gambling. The topic is close to my heart, and it is also a very good topic since gambling is so prevalent and because anti-gambling crusaders, whether badly or (often) well intentioned, typically explain the mathematics poorly or simply get it wrong. The shit-stirring title, as well as being a very good grabber, reflects this misalignment of sense and intent, suggesting that commonly accepted wisdoms on gambling need not be taken on faith. I gave versions of the gambling talk a number of times, including in schools.4 Then, in 2012, after a decade of “promoting” gambling, I decided to give The Joy of Sports Gambling as one of that year’s public lectures. That one caused a ruckus.
One Saturday, about a month before the lecture, the Museum received an inquiry from a Herald Sun reporter. The reporter indicated that he was going to write about the lecture, obviously in a negative manner. As the Museum put it to me and Burkard:
The journalist had been given a copy of a flyer promoting the talk and is pursuing the angle that the event promotes gambling and that it is not appropriate as an ‘event free for kids’. They’ve sourced comments from Tim Costello, head of the Anti-gambling taskforce.
This was thoroughly idiotic. In particular, the only kids who ever attended our lectures were there with their parents, and who sat patiently until the lecture was over and they could go upstairs to see the Museum’s most famous exhibit: the much-loved racehorse, Phar Lap.
The reporter had requested a statement from the Museum, and the Museum in turn had asked me and Burkard for our take on the Herald Sun‘s attack. My response to the Museum:
1) Again, i am sorry to both of you, and whoever else in the Museum, that you have to deal with this bullshit.
2) There is nothing to regret about the title. It is not misleading and does not require correction. Further, I believe it is a mistake to alter the title, particularly immediately after these clueless and thuggish threats.
3) Nonetheless, if the Museum and/or the MAV want [as had been suggested by the Museum] the question mark in the title I will concede (and that’s the word) to your titling it that way.
4) The purpose and the content of the presentation is perfectly clear: from the context of the lecture, from the obviously ironic title, and from the abstract. But, to spell it out:
a) People, including children, are bombarded with gambling offers (not least of all in the sports pages of the Herald Sun).
b) The talk will show people how to think intelligently and mathematically about these offers. They are then free to draw their own conclusions.
c) The obvious purpose of the presentation is to promote clear-thinking about a very topical issue in an entertaining manner.
I don’t think any more than that needs to be said, or should be said. The presentation will not be a sermon, and no one should pretend it will be.
5) The expression “losses are [far] more likely than wins” [suggested by the Museum as part of a statement to the reporter] doesn’t really make sense, and is at best poorly worded. It is a good example of how difficult it is to be clear and accurate on anything to do with probability and chance and gambling. You could say something like the presentation will make clear why, in the long run, most gamblers are much more likely to lose than to win.
6) It is not just the Museum being attacked here, and it would be kind of nice (and it would help the Museum’s defence of itself) if it defended the MAV and me as well. I will let Simon speak further for the obvious absurdity of the idea of the MAV promoting gambling, if he wishes. But in my own defence:
a) I am being paid nothing for the presentation, just as I haven’t been paid for the previous twenty-one presentations.
b) I am not employed by or paid by the gambling industry in any manner. (Unlike the Herald Sun).
c) I am not a professional gambler.
d) For the past 10+ years, I (together with Burkard) have worked my butt off promoting mathematics to the general public as something beautiful and accessible. Most of the time this has been for free or for token payment. If there is anyone in Australia working harder to publicly promote mathematics, and doing it for such trivial financial reward, I don’t know them.
In brief, any suggestion that I am some kind of shill for the gambling industry, that I’m giving this presentation for anything other than good and clear purpose, is outrageously false and offensive.
7) The Museum must of course determine the reply it is happy with. Of course, whatever that reply, if I feel that I have been attacked in print by the Herald Sun, I reserve the right to defend myself in the manner that I see fit.
The Museum replied to the reporter the next day, with a diplomatic but pretty good statement, indicating the lecture would go ahead as planned. Then, pretty much immediately, the reporter called me. He indicated that his report would appear the next day and was seeking a statement from me. The conversation began,
“Do you understand this is off the record?”
“Yes”
“Say ‘This is off the record’.”
“This is off the record.”
“Right …”
I then ripped into the reporter for ten minutes, making all the points above, very very loudly. I indicated I would be happy to take part in a proper and fair interview, but I wasn’t going to provide him the cheap quotes to cherry his sleazy attack.
The reporter was clearly not used to this response from a lamb about to be slaughtered. He was silent throughout, then thanked me and that was that. The Herald Sun report never appeared.
As Burkard noted, I had made a mistake. We had missed out on a great chance for lots of free publicity.
That wasn’t the end of it, however. A week before the lecture was to take place, the Federal senator Nick Xenophon appeared. Xenophon was an independent and a populist, an anti-gambling crusader and a shameless self-promoter. Xenophon was no idiot, and was right and good on a lot of issues, including often on gambling, but he was also full of himself and consistently over-estimated his knowledge and his wisdom.
Xenophon wrote a presumptuous and bullying letter to the Museum, essentially demanding the lecture be called off. How did Xenophon, in another State and far away, get wind of our little lecture? One way or another, it was the Herald Sun guy.
Xenophon’s diatribe was full of the half-baked nonsense one would expect from a populist crusader, replete with the “won’t someone think of the children” crap:
Alarmingly, the Mathematical Association of Victoria is promoting this event as “students, concessions and children free”.
With [Productivity commission twaddle] in mind, I am also very concerned by the association of this event with speakers who “appear at schools“, as purported on your website.
Thankfully, the Museum told Xenophon to bugger off,5 and Simon told Xenophon to bugger off. Xenophon replied to Simon, doubling down on his stupidity, but it didn’t matter. The lecture went ahead, substantially rewritten to allow time to lampoon Xenophon, and fun was had by all.
After the lecture, Burkard and I finally found the time to respond to Xenophon’s nasty letters, which we did at length:
Your letter to [Museum CEO] Dr. Greene was ignorant, unfair, sanctimonious, offensive, censorious and, yes, bullying. We are not precious but you most definitely owe us an apology, as you do Dr. Greene and his colleagues, and Mr. Pryor and his colleagues. …
After the above background, you set out to attack the Museum, the MAV and us. You begin by stating that you are “very concerned” that the lecture is associated with speakers who “appear at schools” as “purported” by the MAV website.
This is a nasty use of “purported”, and you should be ashamed of your snide insinuation. What are you really suggesting: given we offer a public lecture on the nature of sports gambling then we must also promote gambling to schoolchildren? Any such accusation is illogical, baseless and deeply offensive. It makes evident that you don’t know anything about us or what we do in schools. You owe us a clear explanation of that very nasty sentence. …
Finally, there is the matter of the title of our lecture which, as you note, the MAV website fails to mention is ironic. We acknowledge that this omission may have misled the 0.1% of the population so humourless as to be unable to discern the blatantly cheeky nature of the title.
To avoid further misunderstandings, we will now proactively point out that the same MAV webpage also states that Marty ran away at the age of 2 to join the circus, and that there was some trouble with an elephant. Are you aware that these are also jokes? Or, should we be expecting further correspondence from you, demanding that we cease our abuse of circus animals?
And so it finally ended. A whole bunch of bullshit because a Murdoch sleaze merchant mistakenly thought he had spotted an easy mark and a cheap moralising article.
There are two morals of this nonsense episode. First, if one is going to be a shit-stirrer then ill-considered and poorly intentioned pushback will come with the territory. Secondly, do not ever give in to bullies.
1) Ironically, the Manne excerpt contains a number of references to Guy Rundle’s real-time calling out of The Australian‘s bullying, Rundle being the guy that Crikey just fucked over in response to the ABC’s bullying. It’s a great excerpt and Crikey still sucks balls.
2) Simon is the source of my vodka problem.
3) Simon retired soon after and was replaced by Saffin the Censor. One of Saffin’s early acts, blithely overseen by Smiling Michaela, was to airbrush me and Burkard out of MAV’s history. Minor, but nasty.
4) A long time later the gambling talk was cannibalised for a Mathologer video, which has been embarrassingly popular.
5) But the damage was done. The following year, the Museum, which had always tolerated us rather than support or appreciate us, declined to host us again. It was a cheap way to end, but they were supportive when it counted.
Bravo, Marty. Sometimes the only response to the humourless crusading twits of all parts of the political spectrum is to give them hell, and you did it beautifully. The overarching point to be made (and this applies not only to gambling but to any enterprise that appeals to the pleasure and greed neurons) is that the guys are not in it “for the good of their health” (as my father would say), they want to make a profit, the bigger the better. So you can take it for granted that the situation is rigged so you are more likely to come out behind. What people need to understand is the mechanism that makes this possible.
Some things don’t change – https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00679b.htm
Well, it’s hardly on a par with that case, but the mindset is certainly the same.
(I read deeply into that case just a little while ago. Incredible story.)