ABC lashes ‘trivialising’ article describing TV reporter making ‘TikTok videos of going to the gym’

The ABC has tweeted a frustrated complaint about a fellow news organisation and one of its reporters. 

On Thursday afternoon, the national broadcaster tweeted that it ‘has complained to the Australian Financial Review (newspaper) and (journalist) Aaron Patrick’.

It said the complaint is ‘over the irrelevant, incorrect and trivialising reference to award-winning journalist Bridget Rollason’ and it ‘asked for the story to be changed’.

What got the ABC so riled up was an article by Patrick referring to ‘the ABC’s television reporter Bridget Rollason, who has shot TikTok videos to catchy music of herself going to a gym, eating breakfast and having her makeup applied’.

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The ABC said an article in the Australian Financial Review ‘trivialised’ its journalist Bridget Rollason (pictured)

Rollason’s TikTok account has been set to private, so it is not possible to verify Patrick’s claims. 

In its tweet, ABC also huffily added that Rollason’s ‘correct title is Victorian state political reporter for the ABC’.

Commenters underneath the broadcaster’s tweet were supportive of Rollason and the ABC. 

‘A journalist doing to journalists like some in his organisation do to public figures.

‘Very revealing – about character; the ‘noble’ profession; indispensable role as defenders of public interest and all that,’ wrote one. 

Another wrote that it ‘seems like a desperate, nasty attempt by (the Financial Review) to get noticed. Pathetic.’

A third said ‘Why do they feel the need to denigrate the ABC?’

Pictured is the ABC’s frosty complaint about the Australian Financial Review and one of its reporters

Patrick’s description of Ms Rollason was included in an article he’d written about another journalist, Paul Sakkal from The Age, who revealed last week that Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews had been questioned by the state’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) about a $3.4 million grant to a union in 2018.

The description of Ms Rollason that has upset the ABC was in a paragraph about which members of Victoria’s political press gallery turned up to a press conference with Mr Andrews after the IBAC revelation.

It also mentioned ABC journalist Rafael Epstein as ‘one of the few journalists Andrews was friendly to’, Rachel Baxendale from the Australian ‘who had long been harassed by Andrews’ supporters on Twitter’, and Seven’s Sharnelle Vella ‘who has her own talent agent.

Ms Vella tweeted that her employer, Seven Network, had also filed a complaint with the Australian Financial Review.