Sky News Australia’s unlikely standoff with clothing giant Zara over ‘Lefties Losing It’ brand | Weekly Beast

Australia Channel and Agenda among Sky’s other proposed trademarks as the network prepares to lose its naming rights. Plus: Aaron Patrick’s column on Sussan Ley provokes outrage

Ahead of a forced name change this year, Sky News Australia has lodged six brand names with IP Australia and is awaiting the regulator’s approval to register them as trademarks. The News Corp platform loses the rights to the name Sky in December after a 10-year deal with UK Sky News expires.

Is there a clue in the listing as to what Sky News Australia 2.0 will call itself, we wondered? Will they embrace the Murdoch family and go for Fox News Australia, or will they settle for the unflattering nickname Sky After Dark?

The six names awaiting approval by IP Australia are: Australian News Channel, Australian Agenda, Agenda, Australia Channel, Australian Election Channel, and our favourite, Lefties Losing It. Australia Channel seems likely because it already has a website, although it is currently for an international subscription service ($6 a month).

Lefties Losing It is a program hosted by Rita Panahi that has gained some popularity on YouTube with overseas viewers. The brand is facing some opposition to the registration, though – fashion retailer Zara has registered an objection because it has a well-established brand called LEFTIES.

According to the Spanish fast fashion giant, LEFTIES “brings fashion closer to everyone with an accessible approach that offers contemporary, essential, quality and timeless pieces for every stage of life”.

Aaron Patrick outrages again

As a writer at the Australian Financial Review, Aaron Patrick caused a stir for making controversial remarks about female journalists more than once. Now chief writer at Kerry Stokes’ the Nightly, Patrick has caused outrage once more after writing an opinion piece musing about why he wouldn’t marry the opposition leader, Sussan Ley.

“Imagine you are married to Sussan Ley and she arrives home from work after badly damaging the family car, a government-financed white BMW,” he began, before explaining that Ley failed to account for herself to her would-be-husband’s satisfaction. “Sussan doesn’t want to talk about the car crash.”

The New South Wales Liberal senator Maria Kovacic, former Liberal Nicolle Flint and creative director Dee Madigan all slammed the article on social media.

The headline was subsequently changed from “Why I wouldn’t marry Sussan Ley” to “Sussan Ley has some explaining to do”.

In 2022, the AFR had to remove references to two female journalists after complaints by the ABC and the Seven Network that Patrick had trivialised their work. He described Seven’s Sharnelle Vella (now an ABC Melbourne radio host) as having “her own talent agent” and ABC reporter Bridget Rollason as appearing on TikTok videos “going to a gym, eating breakfast and having makeup applied”.

But it was his hatchet job on the news.com.au political editor, Samantha Maiden, in 2021 that backfired when many prominent journalists came to her defence, saying his piece amounted to bullying of a top female journalist. He had described a pack of female reporters as “activist” and “angry” before writing a deeply personal examination of Maiden’s character, childhood and family circumstances.

Five years on, Maiden had her revenge of sorts, breaking the story on Thursday that Patrick’s latest article had “sparked outrage”.

“An online newspaper article by a senior male journalist that was headlined, ‘Why I wouldn’t marry Sussan Ley’ has sparked outrage among female MPs who have described it as sexist”, she wrote.

The article included references to Patrick’s run-in with the law in 2022. “No stranger to controversy, Mr Patrick was arrested three years ago on an animal cruelty charge after he was accused of kicking a female dog called Rosie.” He was acquitted.

The editor in chief of The Nightly, Christopher Dore, told Weekly Beast the headline “wasn’t right” and was changed.

However, the article was a legitimate criticism of Ley’s leadership, which “is routinely referred to as a political marriage, and is not intended to have any gendered overtones at all,” Dore said.

“As a distraction from the leadership crisis engulfing the Liberal party, the faux outrage seemed to have worked, for a couple of hours at least,” he said.

Latika Bourke remains at large

While Patrick enjoys the title of The Nightly’s chief writer, the equally impressive title of writer-at-large was given to Latika M Bourke when she joined the Seven West digital site last year.

The London-based journalist began working for ABC Radio National as a copresenter on Global Roaming last week. So we were somewhat surprised to see her writer-at-large byline also appearing at The Nightly.

Radio National tells Weekly Beast Bourke has the approval of management to continue both gigs, and they were aware of her employment by Seven West when she was hired.

Global Roaming was extended to four days a week and two new presenters – Bourke and Radio National Hour presenter Kylie Morris – have joined Hamish Macdonald and Geraldine Doogue on the show.

Four Corners returns with Bondi special

Four Corners and Media Watch return to ABC screens on Monday night, with the investigative program offering up the first of a two-part special on the Bondi terror attack.

Part one of Light Over Darkness will be reported by the investigative journalist Mark Willacy. The Gold Walkley-winning journalist and the Four Corners producers Lesley Robinson and Mary Fallon cancelled their vacation plans to begin work on pulling together a minute-by-minute account of how the tragedy unfolded at Bondi beach on the first day of Hanukah, using verified documentary evidence and first-hand accounts from victims’ families and witnesses.

Part two the following week will see the ABC’s terrorism specialist reporter, Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop, examine the country’s national security failures and what can be done to prevent it happening again.

Media Watch, with host Linton Besser and executive producer Mario Christodoulou, returns for a second year with a spring in their step after winning a Walkley award for commentary in November.

Markson produces Bondi program for Sky

Sky News Australia is also producing a documentary about the Bondi massacre – a 90-minute film by Sharri Markson, which will air on 24 February.

A promotional story for Bondi: A Timeline of Terror published on Thursday carried the headline “‘You betrayed Matilda’: Grieving parents of youngest Bondi terror victim deliver devastating message to Anthony Albanese”.

Markson reports that the grieving parents of 12-year-old victim Matilda Britvan said: “I personally feel that the government betrayed us. They betrayed Matilda.”