Channel 7 paid $150k for Caddick interview that won Kennedy Award

Channel 7 paid fraudster Melissa Caddick’s husband Anthony Koletti $150,000 for an interview that went on to win a journalism award, an inquest has revealed.

A foundation that runs an awards for excellence in Australian journalism says it has never required reporters to declare if they have paid for a story after an inquest heard Channel 7 paid missing fraudster Melissa Caddick’s husband $150,000 for an interview that went on to win “scoop of the year”.

Caddick, 49, vanished hours after her luxury Dover Heights home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs was raided by AFP officers and ASIC investigators in November 2020.

ASIC accused Caddick of operating a Ponzi scheme.

The inquest into her disappearance was told on Tuesday that Channel 7 paid her husband, Anthony Koletti, $150,000 to do an interview in which he claimed she had been “interrogated”.

The interview was included in a Spotlight program on Channel 7 entitled “Melissa Caddick: The Vanishing” that later won “scoop of the year” at the annual Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism in August 2022.

Channel 7 presenter Michael Usher and Melissa Caddick’s husband, Anthony Koletti, in a still from the program.

When asked if the Kennedy Awards was aware Channel 7 had paid for that interview, a spokeswoman for the awards foundation said: “The Kennedy Awards are a broad church and have never required commercial and competitive news organisations to provide details of their budgets for delivering exclusive content”.

A Channel 7 spokesman said: “The story complied with all conditions of entry”.

The Walkley Foundation, which runs another series of Australian journalism awards, has said on its website that journalists must state if they paid someone for an interview.

“Entrants must declare if the creation of the work involved payment for information or an interview,” the Walkley Foundation said.