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The story of the week was Karl Stefanovic completing his warp-speed journey from cheeky, much-loved breakfast show host to rightwing podcaster bro.

The prevailing view in most of the media and political circles was that inviting the convicted criminal and far-right agitator Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) on to his podcast was incompatible with Stefanovic’s family-friendly morning gig on Today, despite the podcast being independent of the Nine network.

That was certainly where Nine executives ended up.

The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, said Robinson’s appearance on Stefanovic’s podcast made him “cringe”. ABC radio asked whether he would go on the podcast again, after an appearance in May.

“No, the Tommy Robinson thing, I think, crosses the line,” Malinauskas said.

Anthony Albanese, who has also appeared on Stefanovic’s show, warned of people going “further and further out on the edges of what is mainstream political debate”.

But others were more than happy with Stefanovic’s warm embrace of the man who has led anti-Islamic marches that have turned violent.

Pauline Hanson offered him a job with One Nation and said Nine would be “bloody stupid” to let him go.

James Packer said he “didn’t think it was that bad”.

On The Front, a podcast by The Australian, the paper’s editorial director, Claire Harvey, and media diary editor Steve Jackson agreed that interviewing Robinson was not a “bad thing” and that there is a “massive audience” for “provocative, right-wing content”.

Jackson said an interview was “fine” but the problem was that Stefanovic started advocating for Robinson, saying he was a “great bloke”.

“That’s not an interview, that’s publicity,” Jackson said.

Harvey said what was “missing” was Stefanovic saying to Robinson: “Well, actually, tell me, when you went to jail … was it really for just speaking up against the power or was it for [actual crimes]?”

They could have given him some production help to “make the podcast better, ask proper questions, be a real journalist”, she said.

Still, a Logie?

Stefanovic is up for a Logie with his co-host of Today, Sarah Abo, which infuriated the former host of Seven’s Sunrise, David Koch.

Koch railed against the absence of Sunrise from the most popular news or public affairs presenter category, even though it consistently pips Nine’s Today in the ratings.

(Kochie’s outrage came even before Stefanovic snuggled up to Robinson.)

The Nine newspapers hit back with an opinion piece, pointing out that ratings are not a large part of the nominations process, which now operates on “more of a vibe” around audience engagement. Stefanovic’s rightwards lurch might even be helping with that engagement, Louise Rugendyke wrote.

But the industry veteran Rob McKnight riposted that he has been a judge and ratings are a factor.

Maybe they’re both right. TV Tonight tried to get to the bottom of how nominees are picked and, well, it’s almost as messy as Stefanovic on the morning after the 2009 Logies.

Witchy mystery solved?

After Pauline Hanson suggested the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, should “suck it up, sweetheart” over a billboard depicting her as a witch, One Nation put out a release saying Hanson had “been forced to deal with much worse”.

“No less than former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer had called Pauline a witch who should be burned at the stake,” the statement said.

But had he?

The late National party leader denied it at the time, in the late 90s. Fischer’s widow, Judy Brewer, asked Hanson if she had any evidence to support the “offensive” allegation.

Michelle Grattan also asked Hanson at her National Press Club appearance last week if she had any proof, saying Fischer’s official biographer had not been able to find any record.

“I read it in the newspaper myself,” Hanson said.

The Adelaide author and researcher Daniel Best decided to do his own research, and the only quote he could find linking Hanson with witch burning was from the Age in 1998.

A “local activist” called Terry Andrews said Hanson was “a lady who is considered by some to be a modern day Joan of Arc, whose enemies I’m sure, would love to burn her at the stake”.

Guardian Australia tracked down Andrews – a longtime Hanson fan – in Victor Harbor, South Australia.

“Yes, most certainly that’s something I would have said … and I am happy to be quoted,” he said.

So how did Hanson end up blaming Fischer? Perhaps because he was heavily featured in that same day’s paper.

The splash quoted Fischer, then deputy PM, backing “calls for a review of federal government policies on immigration and Aboriginal affairs after One Nation’s success in the Queensland election”.

It noted he was a staunch critic of Hanson’s attacks on Asian immigration.

Page seven had the prime minister, John Howard, announcing he would put Hanson last on his how-to-vote card. So perhaps Hanson was beginning to feel a little under attack.

Then, in a feature on Hanson further back in the paper, the headline is “Pauline Hanson is colonising Tim Fischer’s National Party”. And, in a strip down the side, is that quote from Andrews, comparing her to a modern-day Joan of Arc.

So perhaps the spell of that particular grievance has been broken.

Fond farewell

It is always wholesome to hear media stars give due thanks to those who toil away behind the scenes to make them look good. And so it was this week as ABC Sydney said adieu to producer Yusuke Aso, who is leaving after 36 years with Auntie.

Hamish McDonald led the tributes.

“I reckon every presenter dreams of having a producer like Yusuke, an absolute rock star, passionate, thoughtful about his craft, a true gentleman, a trailblazer and an imparter of wisdom,” he said, before sharing snippets of Aso’s life from arriving in 1985 from Japan speaking minimal English to working with names such as Andrew Olle, Margaret Throsby, Philip Clark, Virginia Trioli, James Valentine and more.

And, to the envy of journalists everywhere, Aso’s phone contact list has grown too big for his iPhone at 25,000 – he needed a backup drive to handle the nearly 40,000 names.

Landing on her feet

Much of the media insists on calling political changes in directions “backflips”, even though technically a backflip leaves you facing the same way you started.

But we can accurately say the gun police reporter Hannah Foord, from Channel Seven in Adelaide, has executed quite the backflip.

Foord resigned a month ago to take up a position with South Australia’s opposition leader, Ashton Hurn, who is at the helm of a much-reduced party that almost lost its opposition status to One Nation.

(SA’s parliament house already has an enormous diaspora of former journalists, mostly in Malinauskas’s office.)

After the announcement of her departure, Foord’s next move was to score an interview with Josie Murray, the grandmother of missing boy Gus Lamont.

A cracking scoop, which was swiftly followed by the news she was going to abandon her plans to join the opposition in order to stay with Seven. Ta-da!

Media in the spotlight

The royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion will start its third block of public hearings on Monday.

The commission has already heard personal experiences of antisemitism, and looked at the circumstances around the Bondi terror attack. This block will look at the role of media and social media.

Public broadcasters ABC and SBS have made submissions, but it is unclear if they’ll appear.

Meta – which runs Instagram and Facebook – will reportedly give evidence.

A spokesperson for the commission said “a range of representatives from online platforms and public broadcasters will be called as witnesses” and the list would be published the evening before each hearing, but are subject to change.

One hallucination

Amid the frenzy of polling charting One Nation’s rise there have been a few blips.

A couple of weeks ago the Australian Financial Review somehow published a strange AI-created graphic with phantom political parties to illustrate preference flows to the anti-immigration party.

The much-missed ABC election guru Antony Green pointed out another blunder this week.

With the tag “Pauline’s orange crush”, Sunrise published a graph that had One Nation at 49% of the primary vote, according to a Roy Morgan poll.

It may have been a mashing together of the real One Nation primary vote – 31.5% – and the Coalition vote – 17.5%, perhaps a misread of the suggestion the two parties should work “hand in glove”.

Still, you’d think someone would work out that the primaries for all the parties added up to 117.5%.