Speaker 1: From Shorts Media. I'm Rick Morton. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: If you pick up a copy of The Age or
Speaker 1: the Sydney Morning Herald, you'll see the tagline independent always
Speaker 1: under the masthead. Now, as journalists of those papers real
Speaker 1: from a recent announcement that two hundred jobs would be
Speaker 1: cut across the company, some are wondering if they've been
Speaker 1: targeted for being two independent.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have been asking whether this disproportionate
Speaker 2: cut is payback because of the coverage of the papers
Speaker 2: ran On, Sneezeby and Costello. Sneezebee, of course, being the
Speaker 2: CEO of the Nine Empire, and Costello being the chairman.
Speaker 1: Of the board. The cuts come at a terrible time
Speaker 1: for Australian media, with jobs going at Channel seven News
Speaker 1: Corps and others as well. It seems almost nowhere is immune.
Speaker 1: Today National correspondent for the Saturday Paper, Mike Sekham and
Speaker 1: why the Australian media is struggling and what it means
Speaker 1: for the future of independent news. It's Tuesday, ninth of July. Mike,
Speaker 1: You've been talking to journalists at what used to be
Speaker 1: the Fairfax Papers, now the Nine Newspapers. Take me to
Speaker 1: the moment that they found out that there would be
Speaker 1: these significant mass job losses.
Speaker 2: Well, it was just before ten thirty in the morning Friday,
Speaker 2: the twenty eighth of June, same day as the big
Speaker 2: debate between Trump and Biden. So you know, a normal
Speaker 2: not particularly busy newsday in the office, and then a
Speaker 2: message just popped up, first of all, a Slack message
Speaker 2: saying please, you know, go to your email and have
Speaker 2: a look at this email from Mike Sneezebe. And there's
Speaker 2: the email announcing job cuts. And according to all the
Speaker 2: sources I spoke to, things got very intense, very fast
Speaker 2: from that moment, because somewhere between seventy and ninety jobs
Speaker 2: were to go from publishing that is, the old Fairfax papers,
Speaker 2: only thirty eight from TV news and current affairs, and
Speaker 2: the rest to be made up from sort of head
Speaker 2: office and digital and stuff, but falling very heavily on
Speaker 2: publishing on the old newspapers. Suddenly, nobody who wasn't tasked
Speaker 2: to do it was watching the debate, and journalists were
Speaker 2: gathering in little knots all around the newsroom discussing the email,
Speaker 2: calling around their colleagues, emailing them, you know, all that
Speaker 2: sort of thing and trying to work out why this
Speaker 2: was suddenly happening to them because there hadn't been a
Speaker 2: redundancy round it at the old Fairfax papers for something
Speaker 2: like seven years, So you know why now was the question.
Speaker 1: And of course news in a newsroom travels faster than
Speaker 1: even in the ordinary world. What did it take for
Speaker 1: people to make sense of what was actually happening and
Speaker 1: what were they started to say when they made those calls.
Speaker 2: Well, you're right, news does travel faster than in the
Speaker 2: ordinary world. The other good thing is if you're reporting
Speaker 2: on it. Journalists are compulsive communicators, so you know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't very hard for me to find a whole lot
Speaker 2: of sources to talk about this. Let me quote directly
Speaker 2: from one senior reporter. A lot of people have been
Speaker 2: asking whether this disproportionate cut is payback because of the
Speaker 2: coverage the papers ran on Sneezeby and Costello. Sneezebey, of
Speaker 2: course being the CEO of the Nine Empire, and Costello
Speaker 2: being the chairman of the board. So this reporter was
Speaker 2: referring to the revelations of a few weeks ago.
Speaker 3: Nine has been accused of covering up allegations that it's
Speaker 3: legendary news guru, former director of News and Current Affairs
Speaker 3: Darren Wick, behaved inappropriately towards women.
Speaker 2: Multiple women came forward with allegations that Darren Wick, the
Speaker 2: former head of nine's Television and Current Affairs news division,
Speaker 2: had drunkenly groped them and made unwanted sexual advances.
Speaker 4: The revelations have sent shockwaves through the media industry, with
Speaker 4: sources entering the Frey to allege that Nine not only
Speaker 4: knew about Wick's alleged behavior but covered it up.
Speaker 2: Wick resign on March fifteen with a reported million dollar payout.
Speaker 2: The claim of the sexual harassment, et cetera were first
Speaker 2: reported in the Murdoch Media, and the Nine papers immediately
Speaker 2: weighed in, painting a very unflattering picture, of course, of
Speaker 2: the culture at the other nine division, Television and News
Speaker 2: and Current Affairs, and also the apparent failure of senior
Speaker 2: executives and the Nine board to do anything about it.
Speaker 2: So it was reported that there had been non disclosure
Speaker 2: agreements used to silence the complainants, that the board and
Speaker 2: sneezeby the Chief Executive had been aware of complaints against
Speaker 2: Wick before they agreed to this large payout. So here
Speaker 2: was one part of the Nine Empire, reporting on another
Speaker 2: part of the Nine Empire and reporting pretty grim stuff.
Speaker 5: Frankly, why won't you support mister sneezebe publicly goods? Well,
Speaker 5: you've got to answer the questions, mister Castilla, you've just
Speaker 5: assaulted me.
Speaker 2: And you'll remember, of course that it had ended up
Speaker 2: with Peter Costello the chairman of the board resigning a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Former Treasurer Peter Costello has stepped down as chairman of
Speaker 1: Nine Entertainments just days after an altercation with a journalist
Speaker 1: at Canberra Airport.
Speaker 2: You might know, anyway, Costello didn't survive. Sneezebee survives for now.
Speaker 2: Then he announces all these job cuts. So you know,
Speaker 2: given all the recent history, it's not really surprising that
Speaker 2: quite a few people suspected retribution in the latest job cuts.
Speaker 1: I can't pass up the idea that Sneezebee falters over
Speaker 1: in television and publishing catches a could. Now they're dealing
Speaker 1: with the fallout. How's the company handling the suspicion in
Speaker 1: the anger that's risen up through the ranks.
Speaker 2: Well, there were hastily arranged town hall meetings so called
Speaker 2: involving various editors and staff on the floor, and I've
Speaker 2: got to say these appeared only to make things worse.
Speaker 1: The way it was.
Speaker 2: Put to me was that it became immediately obvious to
Speaker 2: everyone that the editors themselves hadn't found out what was
Speaker 2: coming much before the rest of the staff had, and
Speaker 2: they weren't really able to give any further details. So
Speaker 2: early afternoon there's a union meeting held on Zoom and
Speaker 2: it was very angry. Some people were saying let's walk,
Speaker 2: but that didn't happen. Instead, a resolution was passed expressing
Speaker 2: the fury. That was the word they used of the
Speaker 2: staff at the age the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review,
Speaker 2: WA Today and The Brisbane Times. And I might quote
Speaker 2: for him it because it's sort of alluded to the
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory that this was payback. It said. We note
Speaker 2: the recent poor behavior and cultural issues in other parts
Speaker 2: of the company, which has been widely reported, and the
Speaker 2: role that the independent reporting of the publishing division has
Speaker 2: played in upholding the reputation of the company's news division.
Speaker 2: We demand an explanation from the company about why the
Speaker 2: publishing division appears to have been disproportionately targeted for job losses.
Speaker 2: They went on in the resolution to question whether they
Speaker 2: were being targeted because of the fact that it was
Speaker 2: a unionized shop, and the resolution also moved no confidence
Speaker 2: in Nine chief executive Mike Sneezbe and the Nine Entertainment
Speaker 2: Company board. It passed unanimously.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, how social media giants are
Speaker 1: discipanding news in Australia. Mike, We've been hearing that journalist
Speaker 1: at the Nine newspapers suspected they've been targeted for their
Speaker 1: reporting on their own company, certainly other divisions of it.
Speaker 1: But it's been a bad time for the media across
Speaker 1: the board. Really, can you tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about where that's happening elsewhere?
Speaker 2: Well, you're entirely right, of course. Underlying all of this
Speaker 2: is the fact that it's just hard times in media.
Speaker 2: Last month, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp announced its biggest restructuring
Speaker 2: in a decade. There's already been a bit of a
Speaker 2: reshuffling at the top at the sort of editorial level,
Speaker 2: but it's yet to be revealed how many jobs will go.
Speaker 2: But they're arely to cut custs by sixty five million dollars,
Speaker 2: so you can expect that there will be quite a
Speaker 2: lot of jobs disappearing very shortly. The Murdock Media, of course,
Speaker 2: is a bit of a black box. You never hear
Speaker 2: as much about what's going on as you do out
Speaker 2: of the more democratic institution of Fairfax. Then two weeks
Speaker 2: ago Seven West Media, which is controlled by the Western
Speaker 2: Australian billionaire Kerry Stokes, he announced that staff there would
Speaker 2: be cut by one hundred and fifty in pursuit of
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars in savings. And a similar story
Speaker 2: is happening all across the country in media large and small.
Speaker 2: Revenue is declining, budgets are stressed, and ultimately, of course
Speaker 2: that has impacts on staffing.
Speaker 1: It has been tough for legacy media for some time.
Speaker 1: I'm told that it's one of the worst advertising markets
Speaker 1: ever in newspapers. Is that why we're seeing all of
Speaker 1: these cuts all at once right now or is there
Speaker 1: more to it?
Speaker 2: You're right, it has been tough for a while. When
Speaker 2: I spoke to THEMBA, that's you know, the Journalist Union,
Speaker 2: the media acting director Michelle Ray described this week of
Speaker 2: cuts quote one of the most harrowing weeks she'd seen
Speaker 2: in journalism and who can deny it as to why.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago, a deal was struck between
Speaker 2: the big social media company Meta you know, which runs Facebook,
Speaker 2: and the search engine Google, which runs YouTube, among other things,
Speaker 2: to pay Australian media companies for the news that they
Speaker 2: picked up from those companies. This was under something called
Speaker 2: the News Media Bargaining Code and that allowed nine to
Speaker 2: seven News Corp all the other players in the industry
Speaker 2: to reinvest some money in journalism and collectively this amounted
Speaker 2: to several hundred million dollars between the two big tech
Speaker 2: companies spread across the various media large and small. Back
Speaker 2: in February, Meta announced that it would not renew its deals,
Speaker 2: so Bengo's maybe one hundred and fifty million dollars. We
Speaker 2: don't know exactly because these things are commercial in confidence,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless this was a big deal. This was funding
Speaker 2: a lot of journalism. Since then, the MEAA has been
Speaker 2: calling on the Federal government to designate as they call it,
Speaker 2: Meta under the code and forced to continue paying. The
Speaker 2: government hasn't acted, and frankly there's real doubt about what
Speaker 2: it can do.
Speaker 1: And nine, I mean nine quite apart from other Australian
Speaker 1: media companies seem to have been doing quite you know,
Speaker 1: quite okay in the last few years.
Speaker 2: They were, and you know, when you speak to the
Speaker 2: analysts about this, Nine was actually pretty well run compared
Speaker 2: with the other big companies seven West Media. Its share
Speaker 2: price at the moment, I think it's something like eighteen cents, right.
Speaker 2: It's lost ninety five percent or something of its value
Speaker 2: over the past couple of decades, so it's enormous. It
Speaker 2: has not been nearly as bad at nine. Back in February,
Speaker 2: Nine reported revenue for the six months to December of
Speaker 2: one point four one one billion, which was up five percent.
Speaker 2: Net profit after tax was one hundred and ninety million dollars.
Speaker 2: Now that was down a bit, It was down about
Speaker 2: sixteen percent due to increased costs, but you know, that's
Speaker 2: still a pretty healthy return. And interestingly enough, the one
Speaker 2: section of the business in which revenue growth exceeded costs
Speaker 2: was publishing, which is another reason that it seems odd
Speaker 2: that the cuts have fallen disproportionate are publishing so compared
Speaker 2: with the other legacy media, Nine's done pretty well and
Speaker 2: part of the reason for that was because they had
Speaker 2: this suite of complementary units. They had the quality of
Speaker 2: the Fairfax papers amplified by the reach of the electronic media.
Speaker 2: Plus they had right wing shouters on talkback radio. They
Speaker 2: had the specialist publication of the finn Review. They had
Speaker 2: the gamut pretty well covered and as a result they
Speaker 2: were a bit more resilient. On Monday, the managing director
Speaker 2: of Nine Publishing, Tory Maguire, held another big town hall meeting,
Speaker 2: and I've got to say it didn't go well. For
Speaker 2: some of the reasons the earlier ones didn't go well.
Speaker 2: She didn't add much to the sum total of knowledge. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: staff were already pissed off. As one attendee put it,
Speaker 2: that Sneezebey wasn't there because he'd left to go on
Speaker 2: holidays to Greece shortly after sending out the email telling
Speaker 2: them all that two hundred of their jobs would be
Speaker 2: gone soon. So that didn't help the mood of the
Speaker 2: troops and it didn't improve anywhere. And when Tory Maguire
Speaker 2: sort of preemptively told them that she too was about
Speaker 2: to go on leave and she was going to Fiji.
Speaker 2: So everyone at the old Fairfax Media is in a
Speaker 2: state of sort of hiatus I was speaking to some
Speaker 2: of them on the weekend. They're all frantically doing their
Speaker 2: numbers and trying to work out how much they would
Speaker 2: get in redundancy if they took up the offer.
Speaker 1: Suddenly we're all interested in mathematics.
Speaker 2: Not always the strongest point of journalists, I can tell
Speaker 2: you from personal experience.
Speaker 1: I know. I mean, like there's a bit of dark
Speaker 1: humour around job losses in journalism in particular, and of
Speaker 1: course it's sad and it's not good news for anybody,
Speaker 1: but readers are the ones ultimately who I think suffer,
Speaker 1: particularly in this case where you know, Fairfax newspapers still
Speaker 1: do some of the best investigative reporting and some of
Speaker 1: the most public interest journalism in the country. What will
Speaker 1: the impact be of these cuts, because you know, they
Speaker 1: might not get rid of a Nick mackenzie, for example,
Speaker 1: but people who do the bread and butter stuff, who
Speaker 1: support those bigger names, maybe.
Speaker 2: Well, that's right, and we've already seen this. I mean,
Speaker 2: when I were a lad, you know, you had all
Speaker 2: these special reporters covering specialist rounds beats, you know, and
Speaker 2: there's not nearly as much of that anymore. So there's
Speaker 2: lots of stuff already that is not as comprehensively covered
Speaker 2: as it once was, and you'd have to think that
Speaker 2: that's going to get worse, you know, as you allude
Speaker 2: to fair facts. Is particularly interesting case, because you know,
Speaker 2: it's not like the Murdock papers, it's not like seven West,
Speaker 2: where they are to some extent beholden to the ideology
Speaker 2: and moods of their of their owners. It says right
Speaker 2: under the mast head, it says independent always, and the
Speaker 2: staff actually take that quite seriously. And I might add
Speaker 2: that that is undergirded by the fact that they're a
Speaker 2: union shop and the union is fiercely predictive in every
Speaker 2: round of negotiations about the charter of independence. So if
Speaker 2: management is going after them because they unionized and because
Speaker 2: they were independent, well that's a particularly sad thing.
Speaker 1: Michael Secam, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot rick, Could you Michael Ops?
Speaker 1: I was thinking to my head it'd be funny to
Speaker 1: got you Michael instead of Mike, and then I actually
Speaker 1: did it. Also in the news today, the CEO of
Speaker 1: nine owned youth publisher Pedestrian Group has announced he'll be
Speaker 1: leaving the business as forty jobs are said to be cut.
Speaker 1: These jobs are in addition to the two hundred jobs
Speaker 1: already announced by nine. The company will restructure and titles
Speaker 1: including Vice, Refinery twenty nine, Gizmodo and Life Hacker will
Speaker 1: no longer be published in Australia and Marine. Le Penn's
Speaker 1: far right National Rally has failed to take power in
Speaker 1: the French election. In a shock result, a left wing
Speaker 1: coalition won the most seats, with President Emmanuel mccron's Centrist
Speaker 1: Alliance in second and the far right in third. I'm
Speaker 1: Rick Morton, misus seven am, see you tomorrow.