Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, May thirty one. Missing mum Bronwyn Winfield told
Speaker 1: a male friend she was being stalked and harassed by
Speaker 1: her estranged husband before she vanished. That's a revelation in
Speaker 1: the newest episode of The Australian's latest investigative podcast, It's
Speaker 1: called Bronwen and subscribers can hear episode three right now
Speaker 1: at Bronwen podcast dot com. Hi drama in the Australian
Speaker 1: media with allegations of misconduct at Channel nine and a
Speaker 1: senior ABC journalist rebuked by the boss in today's episode,
Speaker 1: The Real Life Soapy inside Australia's mainstream media. In the
Speaker 1: Folklore of Australian Media, the glory days of Channel nine
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties to the early two thousands were unrivaled.
Speaker 1: When you want news, nine hasn't covered booze, partying, office romance,
Speaker 1: boardroom machinations and newsroom stouchers. It was blokey and beery
Speaker 1: and famous for big executive pay packets and lots of
Speaker 1: great journalism. They spent millions on ads and they even
Speaker 1: had a theme song performed by John Simon. Nobody's having
Speaker 1: fun at nine, just at the moment, and it started
Speaker 1: with a story broken in Me Australian by media editor
Speaker 1: James Madden and reporter Sophie Ellsworth about allegations of sexual
Speaker 1: harassment against former News and Current Affairs boss Darren Wick.
Speaker 1: Now it's important to note Wick, who's always had a
Speaker 1: good reputation as a newsman, hasn't commented on the allegations
Speaker 1: and nothing has been proven against him. But there are
Speaker 1: claims of a toxic newsroom culture where speaking out just
Speaker 1: wasn't an option, a culture that hadn't changed since those
Speaker 1: so called glory days. I caught up with our media
Speaker 1: editor James Madden. It feels like what we're seeing now
Speaker 1: is the modern age looking back on a real throwback
Speaker 1: to that time, doesn't it James?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does, in an era which most workplaces in
Speaker 2: Australia have left behind long ago. I suppose one of
Speaker 2: the saddest elements for me and pursuing this story was
Speaker 2: hearing from so many women who felt they had no
Speaker 2: recourse at nine, no one to trust, no one to
Speaker 2: lodge a complain with. They didn't have faith in the
Speaker 2: HR department, which is pretty damning in itself. You could
Speaker 2: probably argue that the test for any workplace in terms
Speaker 2: of staff management is the degree of support available to staff.
Speaker 2: The people I've spoken to have said there was no
Speaker 2: support available.
Speaker 1: It's emerged now that he left Nine with a million
Speaker 1: dollar payout. Now television's very famous for enormous salaries, that
Speaker 1: is still a huge amount of money to give someone
Speaker 1: who was pretty close to retirement age, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yes, And it's infuriated Nine employees on the floor. It's
Speaker 2: certainly the case that nine has long celebrated its robust culture,
Speaker 2: but it seems the network and the wider media company
Speaker 2: perhaps has been slow to evolve, whereas the rest of
Speaker 2: corporate Australia has long moved past the era where harassment
Speaker 2: of women can be swept under the carpet.
Speaker 1: As I said, you broke this story. It was then
Speaker 1: widely covered in other media outlets, but it took several
Speaker 1: days Fort nine's own print publications, The Sydney Morning Herald,
Speaker 1: The Age and the Financial Review to get involved in
Speaker 1: that coverage. When they did, they went pretty hard, didn't they, James,
Speaker 1: Given that the person who's alleged to have overseen that
Speaker 1: one million dollar payout is still in charge of Nine.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was certainly noticeable how strident the criticism was
Speaker 2: coming out of Nine's publishing division. Investigative reporter Cape mcclemont
Speaker 2: certainly wrote a fierce piece that was on the page
Speaker 2: one of the weekend edition on Saturday. But it's also
Speaker 2: interesting to note how unusual it was as the coverage developed,
Speaker 2: how critical they were of Mike sneeze Bee, and how
Speaker 2: open those master heads were just speculating about his likely demise.
Speaker 1: Nine's overall board met on Thursday. How does eruptive? Do
Speaker 1: you think this issue has been for the functioning of
Speaker 1: the business.
Speaker 2: Hugely disruptive and in fact Nine is admitting how damaging
Speaker 2: the past fortnight's revelations have been on the business. There's
Speaker 2: certainly been strong indications from inside nine that the CEO,
Speaker 2: Mike Sneezebe and the chair Peter Costello appear to be
Speaker 2: at cross purposes in how to handle the crisis, and
Speaker 2: perhaps more importantly, the five other members of the board
Speaker 2: are understood to be deeply upset and shocked in fact,
Speaker 2: at the way the matter has been handled.
Speaker 1: Do you think Mike Sneezebey can keep his job and
Speaker 1: Peter Costello can keep his job.
Speaker 2: I think mister Sneezeby faces an uphill battle to save
Speaker 2: his job. Not only is there talk that he's lost
Speaker 2: support of the board, it seems quite clear that journalists
Speaker 2: on the editorial flaws across nine are furious at the
Speaker 2: way nine's leadership have pursued this issue. One thing that
Speaker 2: might save mister Sneezby in the short term is his
Speaker 2: announcement earlier this week of a wide ranging internal investigation
Speaker 2: into the culture at nine. He argued that until that
Speaker 2: investigation has been completed, mister Sneezeby is safe at the top.
Speaker 1: And what about Peter Costello.
Speaker 2: Well, Peter Costllo has been nine chair men for close
Speaker 2: to thirteen years now, and he's been noticeably silent over
Speaker 2: the past ten days. His silence hasn't gone down too
Speaker 2: well inside nine either. Plenty of people I've spoken to
Speaker 2: have said, you would think at a moment like this,
Speaker 2: mister Costello would stand up and express regret at the
Speaker 2: toxic culture that has flourished under his leadership, and perhaps
Speaker 2: be more forthright about where nine will go in the future.
Speaker 2: To date, he hasn't spoken publicly following the revelation of
Speaker 2: the allegations against Darrenwick. Of course, the other major headache
Speaker 2: for nine at the moment is its share price. It's
Speaker 2: full of three point seven percent in the last five days,
Speaker 2: down to dollar forty two, which means in the three
Speaker 2: years since mister Sneezebe has been CEO, the share price
Speaker 2: has high coming up.
Speaker 1: Over at the ABC, there's a different kind of drama
Speaker 1: with a superstar journalist reprimanded by her bosses. All the
Speaker 1: big media stories including news corps restructure, Network ten's legal
Speaker 1: adventures and Channel seven's leadership eruptions are in The Australian,
Speaker 1: with our media team breaking all the big yarns each
Speaker 1: Monday and throughout the week. You can subscribe for a
Speaker 1: lot less than a CEO salary to get all our
Speaker 1: journalism twenty four to seven. We'll be back after this break.
Speaker 1: I know that.
Speaker 3: On the night of Paduttance address and replying to the budget,
Speaker 3: I was sitting there with this terrible chill running through me, thinking, okay,
Speaker 3: we're back into this territory.
Speaker 1: This is the ABC's Laura Tingle, who's previously worked at
Speaker 1: a number of other outlets, including The Australian. She was
Speaker 1: speaking at the Sydney Writers Festival last weekend. If you
Speaker 1: didn't catch it, Tingle said she felt a terrible chill
Speaker 1: when listening to Peter Dutton, the Opposition leader, making this speech.
Speaker 4: Amidst this housing crisis. Labor is bringing in one point
Speaker 4: sixty seven million migrants over five years, more than the
Speaker 4: population of Adelaide. We celebrate the contributions of migrants over
Speaker 4: many decades or a great country because of what they
Speaker 4: have helped to build, and the great Australian achievement of
Speaker 4: modern Australia is something that we celebrate every day. But
Speaker 4: by getting the migration policy settings right, the Coalition can
Speaker 4: free up more houses for Australians. The other impact Australians
Speaker 4: are feeling from the Albanesi government's poor management of the
Speaker 4: migration program is from congestion on our roads and pressure
Speaker 4: on our existing services which are stretched, like trying to
Speaker 4: get into see a GP.
Speaker 1: Tingle went on saying she had a sudden flash of
Speaker 1: people turning up to try to rent property or at
Speaker 1: auction and being abused for being different as.
Speaker 3: That basically he has given them license to be abused.
Speaker 1: Tingle said, I mean we are a racist country and
Speaker 1: it's very depressing.
Speaker 3: I mean, we are a racist capulet's face it. We
Speaker 3: always have been, and it's very depressing. But to give
Speaker 3: license like that I find profoundly depressing and a terrible
Speaker 3: prospect for the next election.
Speaker 1: Here's Coalition Senator Sarah Henderson at Senate Estimates on Thursday night,
Speaker 1: grilling ABC Managing director David Anderson.
Speaker 3: I'm mister Anderson, will you apologize to mister Dutton for
Speaker 3: the comments of Laura Tingle.
Speaker 1: Green's Senator Sarah Hanson Young chimes in, you don't want racism,
Speaker 1: don't peddle it or order, and Anderson replies.
Speaker 5: The Senator, I am. I am quite regretful that these
Speaker 5: statements were made without the usual qualification they would normally have,
Speaker 5: and therefore that actually hurt hurt the ABC. I think
Speaker 5: Mistingles suffered for it, and I think that it allowed
Speaker 5: that when these comments are put together sometimes it allows
Speaker 5: for other people to take a debate into a different direction.
Speaker 5: I am generally sorry that that happened. I wish it
Speaker 5: hadn't have happened.
Speaker 1: Jingle's remarks were broken by the Australians Media reporter Sophie Ellsworth.
Speaker 1: She's media editor James Madden.
Speaker 2: I was shocked, to be honest, Claire. It basically exposed
Speaker 2: the ABC to severe criticism given her obvious lack of impartiality. Firstly,
Speaker 2: she said unequivocally that Australia is a racist country. Secondly,
Speaker 2: she took aim at Peter Dutton specifically over his migration
Speaker 2: and housing policies, and suggested that his policies were so
Speaker 2: divisive that ordinary Australians would now have an understandable license
Speaker 2: to abuse migrants at events such as home inspections and auctions.
Speaker 1: The Australian has a lot of senior journalists who write
Speaker 1: news and they also make commentary. Why is it different
Speaker 1: for someone who works at the ABC.
Speaker 2: Well, put simply, journalists who work at the ABC are
Speaker 2: bound by the ABC Charter. The ABC Charter demands balance,
Speaker 2: fair mindedness and impartiality. That's a non negotiable. A lot
Speaker 2: of ABC journalists appear not necessarily to like those guidelines,
Speaker 2: but they're there in black and white, and they're there
Speaker 2: for a reason. The ABC is the public broadcaster, and
Speaker 2: without impartiality, it's reason for existence is no longer.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a vicious circle, isn't it. James
Speaker 1: because every time a coalition government comes in, people at
Speaker 1: the ABC fear that there's going to be retribution that
Speaker 1: their budget will become Does the coalition punish the ABC
Speaker 1: when it has the opportunity.
Speaker 2: That's certainly opened for debate, And that's certainly a perception
Speaker 2: that has existed in the past, most recently under Tony
Speaker 2: Abbott when there was an argument or indeed a debate
Speaker 2: over the indexing of the ABC funding. But Peter Dutton,
Speaker 2: in comments on Ray Hadley's program, made it very clear
Speaker 2: that the ABC had nailed its political colors to the mast.
Speaker 2: Tingles comments on the Weekend were in no way balanced
Speaker 2: or fair minded. She has expressed regret that she only
Speaker 2: had a limited time frame in which to explain the
Speaker 2: nuance of her argument, but the bottom line is she
Speaker 2: said what she said, she didn't display any nuance and
Speaker 2: effectively said that Peter Dutton was fanning racism within Australia.
Speaker 1: Dingle has been formally reprimanded by News boss Justin Stevens,
Speaker 1: who released a statement saying Tingle's remarks would not have
Speaker 1: met babc's standards for on air balance. Babc's new chair
Speaker 1: Kim Williams, who used to run News Corps Australia has
Speaker 1: said anyone who doesn't want to be impartial shouldn't work
Speaker 1: at the ABC.
Speaker 2: It is a test for Williams. He made clear that
Speaker 2: he wasn't going to stand for any breach of the
Speaker 2: editorial guidelines and you can be assured that William's fingerprints
Speaker 2: were all over that statement released by Justin Stephens.
Speaker 1: James Madden is The Australian's Media editor and you can
Speaker 1: check out all his journalism by subscribing at The Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot au. Thanks for joining us on the
Speaker 1: front this week. Our team is Christian Amyot, Joshua Burton, Leotsammaglue,
Speaker 1: Matthew Condon, Jasper League, Tiffany Dim Back and make Clare
Speaker 1: hobby