Speaker 1: After two decades at nine It's post boy, Karl Stefanovic
Speaker 1: has left the building, and for the first time, people
Speaker 1: who worked with him are speaking out.
Speaker 2: I spoke to about twenty different people who had known
Speaker 2: and worked with Karl over twenty six years.
Speaker 1: Journalist Tina Quinn has been asking questions about Stefanovic's rise
Speaker 1: at the network and what really prompted his podcast pivot.
Speaker 2: I was really trying to work out, I guess how
Speaker 2: it had gotten to this, you know, what exactly had happened,
Speaker 2: This man that had once called Lori Oaks his great hero,
Speaker 2: how had it come to this?
Speaker 1: And what she found was a surprising number of people
Speaker 1: willing to be frank about their views on working with him.
Speaker 2: As I continued to go on, it felt like roadblocks
Speaker 2: of people that weren't really at first wanting to talk,
Speaker 2: but then completely opened up to me. And then by
Speaker 2: the end, Yeah, it was just this incredible snowball.
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM today,
Speaker 1: a host of Fourth Estate on tw SCR and Qriike
Speaker 1: contributor Tina Quinn on Karl Stefanovic's rise, what his former
Speaker 1: colleagues really think and what his future outside the network
Speaker 1: will look like.
Speaker 3: It's Monday, July.
Speaker 1: Twenty Tina, to begin with, in your conversations with all
Speaker 1: of these insiders at nine, what impression were you left
Speaker 1: with of Karl Stefanovic's place at the network before his exit?
Speaker 2: How much sway did he have and how was he
Speaker 2: seen well? Karl Stefanovic was the Today Show and was nine.
Speaker 2: That's how many people described him to me. The last
Speaker 2: thing that guests or visitors would see as they entered
Speaker 2: the soundstage of the Today Show at North Sydney was
Speaker 2: this large empot using portrait of Carl, which I thought
Speaker 2: was really interesting.
Speaker 3: It's of Carl.
Speaker 2: He's walking, He's sort of in silhouette and he's walking
Speaker 2: onto the sound stage, almost like walking into his domain,
Speaker 2: his kingdom. He'd been with the program for twenty one
Speaker 2: years and had outlived all eight of his female co hosts.
Speaker 2: He was someone that was seen as almost untouchable. It
Speaker 2: didn't matter how many scandals there had been, how many controversies,
Speaker 2: the network continued to back him no matter what, and
Speaker 2: I think people they're incredibly shocked that that era has
Speaker 2: come to an end. He was described as the network's
Speaker 2: Golden Boy, and.
Speaker 1: Before he kind of became the Karl Sevanovic of the
Speaker 1: Today Show, this sort of big protected figure at nine.
Speaker 1: What do people tell you about what he was like
Speaker 1: as a young reporter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that was quite interesting in itself, because,
Speaker 2: you know, I spoke to his first newsroom director at nine, Risbon.
Speaker 2: This is a guy named Lee Anderson. He said he
Speaker 2: was one of the most talented reporters I'd ever come across,
Speaker 2: you know, very charismatic. But I also spoke to other producers,
Speaker 2: more junior in that newsroom who were less than glowing,
Speaker 2: who said that he was quite lazy. That was a
Speaker 2: word that consistently came up across a lot of my reporting.
Speaker 2: He was very good at getting other people to do
Speaker 2: things for him. He arrived when he liked knowing that
Speaker 2: as quote, some Lackey producer would have you written his.
Speaker 3: Work for him.
Speaker 2: But he was very good even back then at sucking
Speaker 2: up to the right people. The exacts, although I thought
Speaker 2: it was really interesting. There was one particular news and
Speaker 2: Current Affairs director who was visiting Brisbane and there was
Speaker 2: an afterwork drinks you know, he said, I just heard
Speaker 2: this voice behind me, just really just talking himself up
Speaker 2: to the point of tedium, and I just you know,
Speaker 2: after about five minutes of listening to his dissertation on
Speaker 2: why he was so wonderful and excellent, I sort of
Speaker 2: turned around to Lee Anderson, the news director, and said,
Speaker 2: who the hell's this blow? And Li said, oh, this
Speaker 2: is our new boy Wonder, And that's when he said, well,
Speaker 2: he might be your boy Wonder, but he's a twenty
Speaker 2: four Carrent fuck wit. So you know there were people
Speaker 2: even back then that were less than impressed.
Speaker 1: So Carl his success becomes very entwined with the Today Show.
Speaker 1: And that is despite a number of scandals that might
Speaker 1: have affected the career of a different presenter, things like
Speaker 1: when he turned up seeming to still be drunk after
Speaker 1: the logis.
Speaker 3: That's one example.
Speaker 4: I didn't feel drunk when I work up the next morning,
Speaker 4: Otherwise I would not have gone on here. Now, I
Speaker 4: might like to think that I'm professional enough to have
Speaker 4: made that decision that clearly, from the vision that I've seen,
Speaker 4: I wasn't at my best.
Speaker 1: All of these things that happened, though they didn't damage him,
Speaker 1: they kind of seemed to just feed into his brand.
Speaker 3: It's going to ask Arctic.
Speaker 5: Who's going to be manning seven eleven's today. I'm not
Speaker 5: sure about who's going to be matting seven eleven, but
Speaker 5: you might have to look at you might have to
Speaker 5: look at Cena Link as well.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: Tell me about why that was and what the effect
Speaker 1: of that was.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you say it might have had
Speaker 2: a different effect on a different broadcaster, especially had it
Speaker 2: been a female one. I mean if Lisa Wilkinson was
Speaker 2: his co host at the time, and imagine if Lisa Wilkinson,
Speaker 2: married mother of three, turned up drunk to work on air,
Speaker 2: I think it would have been received very differently.
Speaker 3: Kyl had some very powerful backers.
Speaker 2: That is something I kept hearing time and time again,
Speaker 2: most notably David Ginjel who was at one time the
Speaker 2: CEO of Nine. You know, people like Paul Fenn, the
Speaker 2: Sydney News director, James Packer, the son of Kerry Packer
Speaker 2: who owned the network, Alan Jones, who wasn't at nine
Speaker 2: but was a very powerful Sydney media presence who loaned
Speaker 2: him it basically gave him the deposit.
Speaker 3: For his first house.
Speaker 2: So very powerful people in his corner who continued to
Speaker 2: back him. I think what was really noticeable to me.
Speaker 2: You know, he was brought on to replace Steve Liebman,
Speaker 2: and when he started at the Today Show, he received
Speaker 2: reviews that his on air performance was quite wooden, and
Speaker 2: someone wrote that he was he seemed incapable of sort
Speaker 2: of lighthearted banter on air, and you know, he was
Speaker 2: not well received, but he was continually given leniency over
Speaker 2: years and years of on air controversies and as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: would have ended another broadcaster's career, certain comments about migrants
Speaker 2: really inappropriate, in sensitive comments, all sorts of things that
Speaker 2: took place.
Speaker 5: Well, as we all know, I can be a complete tool, right, Well,
Speaker 5: yesterday I was worse. I was an ignorant tool. When
Speaker 5: I say ignorant, I truly meant.
Speaker 1: And I kind of Okay. So you've got this seemingly
Speaker 1: fairly untouchable presenter, with this lackable lark persona who after
Speaker 1: a few years at least, is doing well with audiences.
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, perhaps a more complex picture of power
Speaker 1: and ego. Were there any signs, though, of where Karl
Speaker 1: Stefanovic was heading, any kind of early signs of what
Speaker 1: we are now seeing and in his current reinvention.
Speaker 2: Most of the people that I spoke to all agreed
Speaker 2: that this was not an ideological pursuit of Karl's what
Speaker 2: we're seeing with this podcast. In fact, when I asked
Speaker 2: one source, someone who is still at nine and who
Speaker 2: worked with Karl on and off for a number of years,
Speaker 2: I said, the views that Carla's platforming on his podcast,
Speaker 2: do you think they're his owner? They used that he
Speaker 2: has and shares and this person just laughed and just
Speaker 2: won't know. I don't it's exactly what you think. This
Speaker 2: is for clicks and the power, and he is very
Speaker 2: much a product of the industry that made him, and
Speaker 2: that industry is shape shifting and it is transforming in
Speaker 2: front of him, and he can see the writing on
Speaker 2: the wall, and he is trying to remake himself.
Speaker 3: And this isn't really driven by ideology.
Speaker 2: It's driven more by something that he sees will could
Speaker 2: possibly work in this market, something that we've seen very
Speaker 2: successfully done over in the United States, in the UK.
Speaker 2: It's something that he's trying to bring here to Australia.
Speaker 3: Coming up.
Speaker 1: Can car survive without the production support that comes with
Speaker 1: Breakfast TV.
Speaker 5: I think it's important that I keep campaigning and I
Speaker 5: keep driving forward with freedom of speech. If you don't
Speaker 5: like the way I do an interview, then don't watch it.
Speaker 5: It's my style, it's my show, and I.
Speaker 1: Want to teote. Right from the very outset of his
Speaker 1: podcast launch, there were things that Karl Stefanovick was doing
Speaker 1: that were quite clearly putting him.
Speaker 3: At odds with his colleagues.
Speaker 1: So he had that friendly interview with Charlie TiO, for example,
Speaker 1: who Kate McClymont did the series of investigations into. He
Speaker 1: also waded into the Ben Robert Smith charges defending him
Speaker 1: after his arrest. So how much tension do you think
Speaker 1: all of that caused within Nine Huge?
Speaker 2: You know, Nine spent millions and millions upon dollars defending
Speaker 2: those investigations. The doggared committed investigative reporting that Nick McKenzie
Speaker 2: and Chris Masters conducted over years upon years was extraordinary,
Speaker 2: and the amount of money that Nine spent defending that.
Speaker 3: Was not insignificant.
Speaker 2: The same with Kate mcclimont, with Charlie Teo to have
Speaker 2: one of its own stars.
Speaker 3: And look, there's a conflict in there.
Speaker 2: There's a real conflict in the fact that Nine and
Speaker 2: Fairfax merged a number of years ago. Right, and there's
Speaker 2: journalistic sensibilities that are conflicting there as well. It was
Speaker 2: a huge conflict within nine because to have one of
Speaker 2: its own big stars denigrading the work of people like
Speaker 2: Kate mcclemont and Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters, it definitely
Speaker 2: stoked conflicts and also nine's own reporters, like Channel nine,
Speaker 2: the TV network itself, I think there were a lot
Speaker 2: of reporters that felt they were sharing a lot of
Speaker 2: concerns about the way people would perceive them because of
Speaker 2: the views of one Carl, because I think they were
Speaker 2: very concerned that it somehow took away the credibility from
Speaker 2: their own reporting to have again this big network star
Speaker 2: being able to go and platform people like anti vaxer
Speaker 2: Pede Evans, Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce. Then of course afar
Speaker 2: right fascist who is on Australia's Terra Watchlan is not
Speaker 2: allowed into this country. I'm talking about Tommy Robinson here.
Speaker 2: I think that was something that was proving very anxiety
Speaker 2: driving within nine's own stable.
Speaker 5: I see on sky News UK Sky News important difference
Speaker 5: that he's a threat to society.
Speaker 1: Musk anyone who believes in free speech is affected their society,
Speaker 1: because their society is about control. They want to control speech,
Speaker 1: They want to control everything, every element of your life.
Speaker 3: They want to control. That's their future, that's the Left future.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's all led to him leaving the network.
Speaker 1: How do you think it's going to go for him
Speaker 1: from here? Because he's obviously you know, he's good at TV,
Speaker 1: He's a gifted broadcaster. But while at nine and while
Speaker 1: on Breakfast, he's got this huge production machine around him.
Speaker 1: There's all these people who are paid to make him
Speaker 1: sound good. So how do you think he will work
Speaker 1: without all of that?
Speaker 2: I think it will be well. Look, it will be
Speaker 2: interesting to say something that a number of produce even
Speaker 2: who were working up with him up until the present day,
Speaker 2: consistently said they called him hard to produce for at
Speaker 2: times because they were often doing the brunt of the
Speaker 2: research and the work. He was often not across his breeze.
Speaker 2: He was hard to get a hold of. They compared.
Speaker 2: Some compared him to Lixa Wilkinson, who liked to be
Speaker 2: She was seen as much more meticulous, She really liked
Speaker 2: to be involved with stories. She was much more generous
Speaker 2: with her time. Karl was not sometimes, as I said,
Speaker 2: difficult to get a hold of, wouldn't respond to the
Speaker 2: research that was provided for him, and he'd sort of
Speaker 2: go on air and.
Speaker 3: He'd wring it.
Speaker 2: But that's easy to do when you've got a huge
Speaker 2: production team. I mean, the Today Show is a huge production.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of money behind it. I think people
Speaker 2: would be surprised to know the number of producers that
Speaker 2: they would have working on one particular show at any
Speaker 2: given time. He doesn't have that on this podcast, and
Speaker 2: I think he got into such strife interviewing someone like
Speaker 2: Tommy Robinson because in some ways he didn't interview him.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of backslapping and yeah mate, this
Speaker 2: made and the sort of stuff that Carl has kind
Speaker 2: of been able to get away with over his career
Speaker 2: because those interviews were still peppered with what we were
Speaker 2: seen as hard hitting questions that were written for him
Speaker 2: by producers. There was a lot less of that in
Speaker 2: that interview. I mean, there was no accountability at any
Speaker 2: given point during that interview. Very strange from someone who
Speaker 2: once named the great political journalist Laurry Oaks as his
Speaker 2: great hero and inspiration in his LOGI speech in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: and so I think we're already seeing the result of
Speaker 2: him having less support around him. If you watch any
Speaker 2: of those interviews, they're not particularly enlightening and they're in
Speaker 2: no way hard hitting. They're not the work of a
Speaker 2: journalist that you would expect of someone like Carl who
Speaker 2: fronted a leading breakfast show for over two decades. Story
Speaker 2: telling about the level of talent he really does possess
Speaker 2: in that area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. It's like his kind of grappling with
Speaker 1: the tension between casting himself as this outsider and then
Speaker 1: the reality of what that actually might mean for him
Speaker 1: to be on the outside of the mainstream.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's always interesting hearing from these guys who
Speaker 2: always claim that they've been silenced and they've been canceled.
Speaker 2: You know, they still seem to have these very loud
Speaker 2: microphones and podiums to talk about that from Tina, thank
Speaker 2: you for your time, Ruby, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, the United States has launched fresh
Speaker 1: strikes against Iran after at least two American troops were
Speaker 1: killed by an Iranian attack on an air base in Jordan.
Speaker 1: Since the war began, sixteen Secon service members have been
Speaker 1: killed and more than four hundred and thirty wounded. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump says the deaths are very sad, but came in
Speaker 1: service to their country, and Shadow Housing Minister Andrew Bragg
Speaker 1: says he does not agree with comments made by Liberal
Speaker 1: Party president Tony Abbott. In a video posted to social media,
Speaker 1: Tony Abbott claims that multiculturalism has failed and diversity is
Speaker 1: not a strength.
Speaker 3: Bragg also hit.
Speaker 1: Out at comments from One Nation lead NA Pauline Hanson
Speaker 1: at a conference in London that authorities are stupid for
Speaker 1: giving rights to transgender Australians, calling the comments insane.
Speaker 3: I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1: This is seven am. Thanks for listening.