Speaker 1: Vince, It's the Media Show with Jack houting.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Media Show. I'm Jack Houghton,
Speaker 2: and tonight we'll take a look at the ABC campaigning
Speaker 2: against Peter Duddon and much more. But first to the
Speaker 2: biggest media story of the week.
Speaker 3: Good Evening, one of Channel nine's on air stars, has
Speaker 3: revealed her former boss Darren Wick allegedly sexually harassed her
Speaker 3: in public, groping her and breathing heavily down her neck.
Speaker 2: The revelations have sent shockwaves through the media industry, with
Speaker 2: sources entering the Frey to allege that nine not only
Speaker 2: knew about wicks alleged behavior but covered it up. Now
Speaker 2: The Australian Sophie Elsworth and James Madden reported that while
Speaker 2: Nine you of these allegations, it still gave Wick a
Speaker 2: near million dollar golden handshake on his departure. One star
Speaker 2: for at Wednesday's meeting asked whether there was a cover
Speaker 2: up relating to Wick's behavior and was told there was not.
Speaker 2: According to the senior managers conducting the meeting, the network
Speaker 2: was duty bound to protect the confidentiality of any workplace
Speaker 2: issues lodged by staff. Well duty bound in theory perhaps,
Speaker 2: but then this news.
Speaker 3: Broke tonight the scandal surrounding Channel nine deepens with shocking
Speaker 3: allegations that the company betrayed the confidence of a high
Speaker 3: profile female presenter when she raised concerns about sacked newsboss
Speaker 3: Darren Wick. The on air star was horrified to discover
Speaker 3: that soon after discussing her concerns through the appropriate channels
Speaker 3: at nine, her confidence was breached almost immediately when the
Speaker 3: top news exec was told about the complaint against him.
Speaker 2: Well, joining me this week on the panel as the
Speaker 2: Australians media writer Sophie Elsworth and columnist at the Daily
Speaker 2: Telegraph Tim Blair. Now, Sophie, I want to start with you.
Speaker 2: You've been doing some fantastic reporting on this well done.
Speaker 1: What a story.
Speaker 2: What do you make of how nine has has I
Speaker 2: guess tried to pivot this story and the allegations of
Speaker 2: a cover up.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks for your kind words, Jack. Look, my colleague
Speaker 4: James Madden and I were asking Nine questions about the
Speaker 4: whereabouts of Darren Wick way back in March before he
Speaker 4: departed the company and were told that he was returning
Speaker 4: and basically there was nothing to see here. And then
Speaker 4: suddenly on a Friday, night on March fifteen, an email
Speaker 4: went around to staff saying he had resigned about six
Speaker 4: point thirty that evening, and a lot of questions were
Speaker 4: being raised why he was on extended leave and then
Speaker 4: suddenly departed in the middle of rating season. This is
Speaker 4: nine Channel nine's most senior news boss.
Speaker 1: And then we.
Speaker 4: Exposed at the start of the week that there was
Speaker 4: a complaint by a female staff member about his alleged conduct,
Speaker 4: and this has resulted in a whole series of stories
Speaker 4: and allegations coming out since then Jack, But they have
Speaker 4: tried to pivot away from this story. Yesterday they announced
Speaker 4: his replacement for your Own a Dear, but they have
Speaker 4: had to deal with the fallout. They held an emergency
Speaker 4: meeting on Wednesday. They had an email sent out by
Speaker 4: Mike Sneezeby saying if anyone has concerns about inappropriate conduct,
Speaker 4: to report it. So this Jack is a network, I
Speaker 4: would say in massive damage control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, and Tim Blair putting the allegations and the
Speaker 2: substance of them to one side. The thing that I
Speaker 2: found extraordinary about this is Sophie just mentioned briefly these
Speaker 2: emails going out by the CEO reassuring staff that there'll
Speaker 2: be confidential complaints. I haven't seen that kind of discourse
Speaker 2: from a seat in a very long time over something
Speaker 2: like this.
Speaker 5: At the very least Jack, it's been and clumsily handled.
Speaker 5: It shows perhaps a culture that is maybe not evolved
Speaker 5: as rapidly as some of the areas of society. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's long been known in the media that commercial television
Speaker 5: it's a bit of an eighties hangover in a lot
Speaker 5: of ways. The wages, the attitudes, the Christmas party scandals,
Speaker 5: the allegations involved here sound very eighties. But the rest
Speaker 5: of the organization, the rest of the culture around all
Speaker 5: of that stuff, Jack doesn't seem to have sort of
Speaker 5: caught up with things, does it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very interesting and obviously seven has had its
Speaker 2: own issues as well. But for many in the media,
Speaker 2: the news of Wick's behavior came as no surprise, mainly
Speaker 2: because the official announcement from nine claimed that Vic had
Speaker 2: had a sudden moment of realization while walking along a
Speaker 2: beach that media was no longer in his heart. Nine
Speaker 2: pushed out the bizarre explanation for Wicks to departure in March,
Speaker 2: and its printer dutifully carried the narrative nationally. Some of
Speaker 2: you are aware that I have taken a few weeks
Speaker 2: off to think about my future, and after many long
Speaker 2: beach walks and even longer conversations, I know in my
Speaker 2: heart that this is the right time for me to
Speaker 2: step down and leave nine. I don't want to use
Speaker 2: the word retiring because I don't know how to sit idle,
Speaker 2: but I am going to take a very long break
Speaker 2: from what has been four decades of working as a journalist.
Speaker 1: I'm tired and need arrest.
Speaker 2: Now let's bring the panel back into discuss now, Sophie,
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier that in March when this statement came out,
Speaker 2: it raised a lot.
Speaker 1: Of red flags.
Speaker 2: Privately, a lot of us in newsrooms were saying that
Speaker 2: is strange, there is more to this, And you were
Speaker 2: going to Channel nine who obviously knew about this. They
Speaker 2: obviously knew a lot of the allegations. The complaints had
Speaker 2: been made and been investigated. That engaged private law firm
Speaker 2: to investigate it. What did they tell you in March?
Speaker 4: Well, I was told a given information that Wick was
Speaker 4: returning Jack. He was missing from the Sydney newsroom from
Speaker 4: about February. This is the middle of rating season, and
Speaker 4: this is critical time for a news boss to be
Speaker 4: on the ground, not to be on holidays. It's a
Speaker 4: very odd time. And what did raise a lot of
Speaker 4: questions was that my colleague and I were repeatedly told
Speaker 4: Wick was coming back, there was nothing to see here.
Speaker 4: And then the real alarm bells started ringing even louder
Speaker 4: when an email went out by Nine at six point
Speaker 4: thirty or thereabouts on Friday, March fifteen, which has that
Speaker 4: statement that Darren Wick just said saying it had long
Speaker 4: beach walks and he was going on off to take
Speaker 4: a serious amount of time off. Now, this email went
Speaker 4: around when I was at the Victorian Media Awards, all
Speaker 4: the media congregated at Crown Casino. This is a time
Speaker 4: you put a story out when you're trying to hide
Speaker 4: something or you don't want coverage, and that again raised
Speaker 4: lam bells. So this has been a pretty badly handled situation,
Speaker 4: especially with the reporting that we know this week, and
Speaker 4: I think Nine could have done a better job of
Speaker 4: handling this, and that has been said very much so internally.
Speaker 2: Yeah and Tim the entire nine apparatus as well. And
Speaker 2: one thing I want to bring up as well is
Speaker 2: that the Fairfax former Fairfax papers, the nine papers, they
Speaker 2: carry this very arrogant slogan of independent always, but they
Speaker 2: have run dead on this story.
Speaker 1: They're covering the top line.
Speaker 2: They don't seem to have done too much about the
Speaker 2: victim who has spoken to Shari Markson my opinion, they
Speaker 2: could be doing.
Speaker 1: A lot more reporting and if it was any.
Speaker 2: Other network that they were independent from, there would be
Speaker 2: ferocious reporting from the Sydney Morning Herald.
Speaker 5: Oh you're very much, way too cynical there, Jack, because
Speaker 5: as we saw, as we saw yesterday, I think the
Speaker 5: Fairfax nine paper in Melbourne, the age. I think it's
Speaker 5: Leeds story was the great split in the Australian Republican movement.
Speaker 5: Now that's news, mate, that's really a big story. But
Speaker 5: just on nine and especially Darren Wicks talking about his
Speaker 5: long walks on the beach during nine heyday in the
Speaker 5: eighties when it was massively more influential politically and through everything, socially,
Speaker 5: everything everywhere. George Nigas the sixty minute start, was in
Speaker 5: an interview with Margaret Thatcher and he used that old
Speaker 5: journalistic construction of you know, some people say that you're
Speaker 5: a terrible evil tyrant or whatever, and Thatcher pinned him
Speaker 5: on it and said name them, who are these people?
Speaker 5: And the left all took this as a great victory
Speaker 5: for Nigas somehow or has he actually looked like a fool?
Speaker 5: I would say, in regard to Darren Wisony's beach walks,
Speaker 5: name the beach. If he's actually working on beaches, where
Speaker 5: the hell were they and how long were these walks?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very good point.
Speaker 2: And it was a false narrative that a company whose
Speaker 2: reputation with trust with an audience I think has been
Speaker 2: impacted by this. It turns out it was a lie.
Speaker 2: They knew he wasn't coming back, and they allowed that
Speaker 2: lie to permeate through their print arm as well. And
Speaker 2: that's the broader problem here. But look, moving on now
Speaker 2: to the UK where British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has
Speaker 2: announced a general election for July.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: It was weird, to say the least. The media strategy
Speaker 2: appeared to be let's put Sunac out in the rain
Speaker 2: for some reason, while activists trolled him with the labor
Speaker 2: winning campaign song from the nineteen ninety seven election.
Speaker 6: Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future,
Speaker 6: to decide whether we want to build on the progress
Speaker 6: we have made or risk going back to square one
Speaker 6: with no plan and no certainty.
Speaker 2: So what were the medium minders thinking? And it wasn't
Speaker 2: the only bizarre decision. At Sunax's campaign launch, a Sky
Speaker 2: UK journalist was thrown out by bouncers.
Speaker 6: This is where the Prime Minister is going to speak
Speaker 6: in the next few minutes and I'm being forcibly removed.
Speaker 6: We just simply wanted to have access tonight as Sky News,
Speaker 6: but unfortunately we're at all that because there are pool
Speaker 6: arrangements in place, we're not allowed it to be here.
Speaker 6: This is, by the way, what we're trying to film
Speaker 6: is the campaign event where the Prime Minister is due
Speaker 6: to speak in the next couple of minutes in the
Speaker 6: front of conservative activists, is eventually trying to get across
Speaker 6: the message that we had in Dining Street today.
Speaker 2: Well, Sophie, nothing says open and transparent governance like a
Speaker 2: pair of bouncers hauling journalists onto the street.
Speaker 1: Very strange scenes. What do you make of it all?
Speaker 4: Well, it doesn't look good does it when you've got
Speaker 4: a journalist being carted out. I security guards and they've
Speaker 4: got footage of it, rolling footage of it, a pr nightmare.
Speaker 4: Looks extremely bad for the government, whatever the circumstances, whether
Speaker 4: or not the journalists should have been there or not,
Speaker 4: this is a very bad look.
Speaker 1: But it's for a.
Speaker 4: Government that is already under siege and I think they've
Speaker 4: got pretty much zero chance at the upcoming election.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tim, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: Every poll, every single poll in the last couple of months,
Speaker 2: shows that they are on track to be completely wiped out.
Speaker 2: It almost looks like they've given up. It looks like
Speaker 2: maybe the top media minders have gone and look for
Speaker 2: another job. They don't want to be associated with it.
Speaker 2: But that, to me did not look like a man
Speaker 2: who thinks that he can genuinely win an election.
Speaker 5: Now it looks like one of the wealthiest politicians in
Speaker 5: UK history can't afford an umbrella or can't hire someone
Speaker 5: to hold one. It's always a risky game, I guess
Speaker 5: in British politics to make that big decision, let's go
Speaker 5: out when you're in London, not five times out of
Speaker 5: ten it's going to back for you. It's a real
Speaker 5: coin toss. I would say about the Bouncary issue the
Speaker 5: highed goon. All credit to the reporter for just keeping talking.
Speaker 5: As you and Sophie know. First rule of media when
Speaker 5: it camera's on, don't shut up, don't betray any panic,
Speaker 5: just keep and there were no arms or ours. He
Speaker 5: just kept going on. He told his story even as
Speaker 5: the goon advanced him down the hallway.
Speaker 1: Was impressive work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was cool, calm and collected. We're going to
Speaker 2: take a quick break. But when we're back, how an
Speaker 2: ABC star has decided to campaign against Peter Dutton. Welcome
Speaker 2: back now to the US, where some progressive presenters are
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how to cover Joe Biden without
Speaker 2: being critical.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: In this clip, Joey Behar explains to legendary hosts Bill
Speaker 2: Maher why she is hesitant to criticize her beloved leader.
Speaker 7: I'm nervous about saying anything against Biden because I feel
Speaker 7: that you know, not that I have so much power,
Speaker 7: and you have some with them than I do, obviously,
Speaker 7: but are you afraid that you might, you know, influence
Speaker 7: the people who are on the fence.
Speaker 8: I think you lose all credibility I do. I mean,
Speaker 8: my bond with my audience has always been I don't
Speaker 8: pull a punch. My bond with my orience is you're
Speaker 8: not going to like everything I say. But you know
Speaker 8: I'm saying what I really think is true. Right, that's
Speaker 8: and that's.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: The fact that the View is just blatantly admitting this
Speaker 2: on air is extraordinary. But it actually gets worse when
Speaker 2: Bill Maher tries to explain why we should be critical
Speaker 2: of Biden. It goes in one ear and out the other.
Speaker 8: Biden just presents as old. It's not really fair, no,
Speaker 8: because he's almost the same age. Trump is almost the
Speaker 8: same age as him, but Trump doesn't present that way.
Speaker 8: You know, you look at somebody right away, you can
Speaker 8: kind of just sum them up. I mean, we are
Speaker 8: not young, but we don't present as old. Yeah, Biden does.
Speaker 8: I saw him yesterday making that speech. I mean, I'm sorry,
Speaker 8: he's cadaver like, but his brain is good.
Speaker 7: He's still great.
Speaker 1: Tim Blair, he's kadaver like, but his brain's still good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's dead, but he's living. The view is an
Speaker 5: extraordinary thing if we can get it on cable TV,
Speaker 5: I guess, and various other means to look at it.
Speaker 5: But from an Australian perspective, it makes the ABC look balanced,
Speaker 5: It makes the Old Drum Show look as though it
Speaker 5: was an accurate reflection of public opinion. But yeah, to
Speaker 5: actually say that they're reluctant to say anything bad about
Speaker 5: Joe Biden because it might convince people to vote the
Speaker 5: other way. I mean the delusion involved in that sentence.
Speaker 5: Want to present yourself as any type of journalist and
Speaker 5: say that you're going to conceal bad news because it
Speaker 5: might might influence the things the way you don't intend.
Speaker 5: But also to imagine that you're audience of that show
Speaker 5: contains anyone who's on the fence. Everyone in the crowd
Speaker 5: is cheering for Biden. It's a unified force. And no,
Speaker 5: they're not being realistic about this at all, really are they?
Speaker 2: Jack Well, Sophie, I love it because it's what we
Speaker 2: all expected. You're looking at the view and you could
Speaker 2: not genuinely possibly hold that opinion. That opinion clearly isn't
Speaker 2: your actual opinion. There's no way. And now she's admitting it.
Speaker 2: She's watering down her views to not be critical because
Speaker 2: she doesn't want to influence the election.
Speaker 4: Jack, this is incredible and I expect we will see
Speaker 4: more of this type of commentary leading up to the
Speaker 4: US election, and by goodness, it's going to be delicious.
Speaker 4: I mean, seriously, they're sitting there conflicted that they can't
Speaker 4: criticize Biden for fear that someone might vote against him.
Speaker 4: This is absolutely absurd, but it makes for great stuff
Speaker 4: for us to talk about Jack, So.
Speaker 2: I say, bring, yeah, it's great content. I particularly like
Speaker 2: where she says that she's powerful and Bill Marsley don't
Speaker 2: do that. But look, let's move on now to the ABC,
Speaker 2: which has been actively campaigning against the coalition's immigration policy.
Speaker 2: Now here's Laura Tingle slandering Peter Dutton as dangerous for
Speaker 2: daring to suggest a reasonable cut to immigration.
Speaker 9: But I think what was concerning is for a political
Speaker 9: leader to come out and say, not only is housing
Speaker 9: the fault of migrants, but you can't get a childcare space,
Speaker 9: you can't get through the traffic on the roads, you
Speaker 9: can't get in to see the doctor because of migration.
Speaker 9: That is lighting this thing up in a really disturbing way,
Speaker 9: regardless of the arguments about whether there's you know, there
Speaker 9: should be more or less migration, regardless of whether his
Speaker 9: policies make sense. And I would say that they don't
Speaker 9: make coherent sense in what he's put out in his
Speaker 9: budget reply. You know the hot buttons he's pressing there,
Speaker 9: I think are very dangerous for our community.
Speaker 2: First of all, no one is suggesting that migrants are
Speaker 2: personally responsible for those issues. The argument is that labor
Speaker 2: is responsible for failing to properly manage the numbers. It
Speaker 2: has absolutely nothing to do with the morality of the individual.
Speaker 2: It is about what we as a country, inclusive of migrants,
Speaker 2: can cope with.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: If Tingle is seriously advocating for some sort of open
Speaker 2: border policy, then all of those issues that she flags, housing, childcare,
Speaker 2: traffic will get significantly worse. It will get worse for
Speaker 2: the migrants who are here now. She is attempting to
Speaker 2: turn a maths equation into a cultural war issue. And
Speaker 2: this isn't even the biggest problem with what Tingle did.
Speaker 2: The main issue is that she is on a taxpayer
Speaker 2: funded broadcaster calling a mainstream reasonable policy dangerous. She's effectively
Speaker 2: campaigning against the opposition leader, I mean, Tim Blair. We
Speaker 2: spoke about this a little bit from the comparisons to
Speaker 2: the view before about the ABC's problem with bias. But
Speaker 2: this here is somebody who is supposed to be a
Speaker 2: down the line hardened political journalist, and she is taking
Speaker 2: such an ardent side to the point where she is
Speaker 2: describing the policy as being immoral and dangerous. How can
Speaker 2: the ABC justify that under its charter?
Speaker 5: Under its charter, it can't justify it. But the ABC's
Speaker 5: charter is a you know, it's an ancient scroll locked
Speaker 5: under a pyramid bury, beneath ten thousand layers of sand.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a a not a living document, as
Speaker 5: they say. But this is an old technic of the left.
Speaker 5: Whenever there a subject comes up which they're uncomfortable with
Speaker 5: or they feel that they're losing, they then go to
Speaker 5: the moral level. As you pointed out, they've turned a
Speaker 5: mathematics question into a moral equation. And what they do
Speaker 5: is they indicate that it's dangerous to speak of this
Speaker 5: subject at all, just totally shut it down. We can't
Speaker 5: speak of it in any And we heard this about
Speaker 5: the gay marriage debate, we heard it about the voice debate.
Speaker 5: We never thinking about immigration like they would prefer to
Speaker 5: have the subject taken off the table because they know
Speaker 5: in a lot of ways they can't win this one
Speaker 5: at all. And people know how the numbers stack up,
Speaker 5: and apparently the way maths work these days is, as
Speaker 5: you pointed out, ughly immoral.
Speaker 1: Jack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an aneptitude towards as well, Sophie, politically, because
Speaker 2: Labor wants to cut immigration as well, But the negative
Speaker 2: connotations are only towards one party, and the differences in
Speaker 2: their endgame policy aren't that different really on a broader
Speaker 2: macro level, a lot of people, Sophie that would argue
Speaker 2: Peter Dutton should cut it further.
Speaker 1: In some areas as well.
Speaker 2: So how can the ABC look at two parties, both
Speaker 2: of whom want to cut immigration, but then slander one
Speaker 2: party is being dangerous?
Speaker 4: Well really it's comment but it's dressed up as analysis
Speaker 4: and that's how they really try and get away with this.
Speaker 4: But I think the viewers know that it often falls
Speaker 4: in one direction. It's pro left, anti right, So you
Speaker 4: don't really see this type of commentary for the Labor
Speaker 4: or the Greens, I would argue, however, it's very commonplace
Speaker 4: for the Coalition. So this is the problem the ABC has.
Speaker 4: They have a new chair, Kim Williams. Perhaps he's going
Speaker 4: to do something about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I won't hold my breath. But let's move
Speaker 2: on to stories of the week. Tim Blair, what do
Speaker 2: you have for us?
Speaker 5: During the week we had, back to the US, we
Speaker 5: had Donald Trump being accused of using Nazi style language.
Speaker 5: A fan of the president or someone campaigning on his behalf,
Speaker 5: pulled together a little online ad and eagle eyed readers
Speaker 5: discovered the word riich in there. What they didn't discover
Speaker 5: or didn't care to reveal, was it Wright was buried
Speaker 5: as part of a You know, it was a template
Speaker 5: of old newspaper headlines available to anybody, but the fact
Speaker 5: that it had been used as the background of a
Speaker 5: Trump ad, and we can see it there had the
Speaker 5: word right buried in there for I think three seconds
Speaker 5: of airtime. Everyone from the President down absolutely condemned this
Speaker 5: use of Hitler style speak, and including all the way
Speaker 5: to Australia, our beloved colleague in media criticism, Paul Barrett
Speaker 5: the Oversea he apparently fell for it. Look at this,
Speaker 5: even by Trump's standards, that is crazy. Well, let's see
Speaker 5: if you run something about this on Monday night on
Speaker 5: Media Watch. Because it's been totally debunked. I think even
Speaker 5: the template now as removed or referenced to Reich's and
Speaker 5: by the way, the Reich referred to in that ancient
Speaker 5: clipping was from the First World War, not the Second,
Speaker 5: so Hitler's off the table as well. Good luck working
Speaker 5: with that, Paul.
Speaker 2: Barry, great topic, Tim, Sophie, what do you have for us?
Speaker 4: So The Australian Today is just released a new podcast,
Speaker 4: an investigation by reporter Headley Thomas into the disappearance of
Speaker 4: a lady called Bronwyn Winfield who disappeared in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 4: Grab a copy of the paper tune into this podcast.
Speaker 4: This is going to be absolutely gripping to find out
Speaker 4: what has happened to this woman who disappeared nearly thirty
Speaker 4: or thirty odd years ago.
Speaker 2: While worth listening to, Yeah, and Hedley obviously did The
Speaker 2: Teacher's Pet, which became one of the most downloaded podcasts
Speaker 2: in the world actually, so it's probably going to be
Speaker 2: really good. Listen well, Tim, Sophie, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining me. That's all the time we have for tonight.
Speaker 2: Up next is Lefties Losing It