Seven’s deadly sins: The questionable culture of the network and Mark Llewellyn

By the water on Billyard Avenue, a sought-after address in Sydney’s genteel inner suburb of Elizabeth Bay, sits what this week became Australia’s most notorious apartment. It was to this classic example of art deco design, purchased by former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach’s grandparents in the 1970s, that Auerbach claims he and Bruce Lehrmann brought Thai sex workers one fateful night in late 2022, while the former Liberal staffer was being wooed to appear on the program.

It was here that actor Craig McLachlan was interviewed months after he was acquitted of indecent assault, and hairdresser Anthony Koletti, the widower of fraudster Melissa Caddick (who went on to style Lehrmann’s tresses), earned the $150,000 he was paid to break his silence. They are just two of the colourful characters paid in cash or covert kickbacks by a show that’s interviewed so many people accused of wrongdoing that it has earned the nickname Reputation Rescue.

The apartment, inherited by Auerbach’s generation and soon to be sold, was also where Bruce McWilliam, lieutenant to Seven’s owner Kerry Stokes, recorded former chief executive David Leckie’s eulogy. It hosted re-enacted murder and sex scenes and was an unofficial home away from home for the powerful triumvirate at the core of the controversial Seven show, chief of staff Steve Jackson, Auerbach, 32, and executive producer Mark Llewellyn, a veteran of Australian broadcast media who is famous for his genius in the edit suite, his take-no-prisoners approach to stories, and his fondness for a drink.

Since the Lehrmann interview, that triumvirate has been blown apart with such velocity that it knocked Australia’s most-watched defamation suit off its tracks. Auerbach’s claims about how Spotlight staff wooed Lehrmann by covering the costs of his lavish lunches, golf games, cocaine and sex workers, and in return was given access to legal documents that were supposed to remain secret, this week led a Federal Court judge to reopen evidence and postpone his judgment on whether Channel Ten defamed Lehrmann when it aired Brittany Higgins’ claims.

The trio at the centre of Spotlight: (from left) Taylor Auerbach, Mark Llewellyn and Steve Jackson.Credit: AFR

Many long-time colleagues of Llewellyn’s, and past and present Seven employees, are shocked – but not necessarily surprised – at the allegations surfacing about Spotlight.

Former staff say the culture at the show is a throwback to a bygone era of journalism, with its boozy lunches, raised cursing voices, and hours so intense that staff slept at their desks. “Working there was like 1982 with a bullet,” says one former producer. “It’s like walking into a madhouse,” said another. A third described it like being on a freight train of destruction. “No option but to cling on for dear life and brace for the inevitable crash.”

The fallout has drawn attention to the culture within Spotlight and the high-ranking Seven Network executives who oversaw it, and who either failed to notice what was going on or turned a blind eye. Some accuse the show of being unethical. “I dismiss any suggestion that Spotlight is an amoral show,” says Llewellyn. “The values I respect are to tell stories honestly and fearlessly.”

Spotlight is the creation of Llewellyn, who has often been described as a creative genius of commercial current affairs, and whose work in the edit suite is unparalleled. He is one of Australian journalism’s great survivors, a veteran of programs such as A Current Affair, Witness and 60 Minutes, and has worked with some of its best-known reporters, including Media Watch presenter Paul Barry. Llewellyn has always been relentless in the pursuit of a story; he was the first television journalist to track down fugitive businessman Christopher Skase in Majorca, and to do a live cross from the Iraq border during the first Gulf War.

Bruce Lehrmann leaves court in 2023 … Justice Lee reopened the defamation case this week in Sydney.Credit: Edwina Pickles

“I gave him his start as a very junior reporter for me on 2GB,” said former television current affairs journalist Mike Carlton, a close friend of Lisa Wilkinson, who Lehrmann is suing, alongside Ten’s The Project, for airing Brittany Higgins’ claims that she was raped in Parliament House (he was not named). “[Llewellyn] was a good kid. He was smart. He was intelligent. Gutsy. He was a good reporter. One of the first stories he did was when the Fairfax catastrophe was happening – he chased young Warwick Fairfax down the street with a microphone and didn’t stop until he got him. I don’t know what’s happened, but he seems to have lost the plot.”

He’s always been known as a pusher of boundaries, too. “Mark was a young turk, the guy who would ask questions no one else would ask,” said one former colleague. They included once quizzing visiting singer k. d. lang, then one of the few openly lesbian female performers, on whether she’d ever have sex with a man and whether he’d be the bloke for the job, and sparking a row with Manchester after asking the British city’s Olympic committee why anyone would prefer its canal over Sydney’s harbour.

He’s famous for heavy drinking – a hallmark of Australian journalism in the 1980s and ’90s – and often held meetings at the pub. “There have been times in my life where, like others, I have enjoyed a wine,” he said. “This is no secret. However, I am no longer a regular drinker. I spend more time these days exercising either with tennis or the gym.”

Llewellyn rose through the ranks at Nine, the publisher of this masthead, and Seven. Television executives wanted stories and ratings and admired Llewellyn’s lust for both. “He likes high stakes, he likes to break things,” said one former colleague. “He’s a very smart guy. But he’s also an example of where in commercial current affairs – the extreme end, the underbelly – the ends justify the means.”

Over the past 20 years, Llewellyn has benefited from expedient forgiveness from Australia’s biggest networks. He defected to Seven when Nine slashed his salary in 2006, and during ensuing court action by Nine fired off an affidavit that famously accused then chief executive Eddie McGuire of wanting to “bone”, or sack, Today presenter Jessica Rowe (which McGuire has always denied). At Seven, he became the executive producer of 60 Minutes rival Sunday Night but was taken off the show – yet kept at the network – for allegedly assaulting a producer.

Former staff vividly remember that incident in 2014. They were celebrating a colleague’s birthday over a pub lunch when the producer – who declined to comment – walked in with his shirt ripped and his face, says one witness, “as white as a sheet”. Llewellyn had allegedly pushed him against a wall and had to be dragged away by investigative journalist and karate black belt Ross Coulthart. Seven’s HR department was informed and Llewellyn was taken off the show, but he stayed at Seven until a brief stint at Nine in 2018. A year later he was back at Seven to lead Sunday Night’s successor, Spotlight.

That the network overlooked the alleged assault in its enthusiasm to rehire Llewellyn was no surprise to many of its staff. Seven had spent years backing its former chief executive, Tim Worner, over his affair with an executive assistant, Amber Harrison, which became public in 2016. She claimed they met during work hours to have sex, snorted cocaine together, and that Worner misused a company credit card (a Seven investigation cleared him of misconduct), a habit that she said was rife among company executives. “It’s just a big boy’s club,” said one.

The network’s owner, Kerry Stokes, also spent millions of dollars supporting a defamation action pursued by another employee, Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith, who was accused by this masthead of committing war crimes by being complicit in the murder of four unarmed prisoners while serving in Afghanistan. He lost the case, and was ordered to pay the newspaper’s costs. He has brought an appeal and that judgment is still reserved.

This week, WhatsApp messages flew between former employees of Sunday Night and Spotlight, reminiscing about their time in “the nuthouse”. The details about Spotlight aired in court were “so triggering”, one said. They remembered the drinking (meetings were often in a pub over wine), the cutthroat approach (Llewellyn would play with his phone in silence while people were pitching stories, and then say, “why do I care?”), and what they saw as a habit of pitting employees against each other (after one drinking session, he walked the floor pointing fingers at staff and saying either “friend” or “foe”).

They remembered the intense editing sessions into the early hours of the morning as stories they believed could have been finished a week earlier were pushed right to the deadline; the rare praise and frequent criticism (“we were comrades in our victimhood, and pitted against each other,” said one); and the off-the-wall story ideas. Once, a former Sunday Night employee said, Llewellyn tried to buy Osama bin Laden’s former bunker so he could take cameras inside. “The workplace was chaotic, dysfunctional, intense, booze-soaked,” one said.

Some former employees (often freelancers, as there were few permanent staff) said Llewellyn was often charming – “he could be quite lovable” – but would also mock employees for their height, weight or appearance. “We use the word inappropriate these days – it doesn’t begin to cover the language at that place,” said one former Sunday Night staffer.

Another described him as a relic of the 1970s but a journalist who cut their teeth in the 1970s took exception to the comparison, saying subsidising sex workers for interviewees would have been a bridge too far, even then.

“He’s the only one in the business who is still doing this stuff.” Carlton said he’d worked at Seven, Nine and the ABC and “I have never seen anything as brazen and squalid as this”.

As one former employee put it, pastoral care is not Llewellyn’s strong suit. “Partly because he didn’t look after himself – he’s a bit of a train wreck,” the former Sunday Night employee said. “He’s a story genius. But he needs a good manager next to him. He can make television in a way I’ve never seen anyone make it. But you can’t have the mad genius running a program. There’s budgets to adhere to, there’s cultural practices. Things [in the industry] are changing but not at Seven.”

Last year, Nine threatened to re-think its financial contribution to the NSW Kennedy Awards for journalism after a nomination for a senior, female Nine staff member was leaked, and its content parodied by Llewellyn on his Instagram account. Then-Nine director of news and current affairs Darren Wick described the behaviour as a “vicious act of misogynistic bullying” in a letter to the awards’ board.

Mark Llewellyn - one of commercial television’s great survivors - with Taylor Auerbach.

A colleague of Llewellyn’s from early journalism days, who remains in the industry, said Llewellyn was rarely held to account. “As long as he got the story, he was left alone,” he said. “Now look where they’ve ended up – they’ve got a guy who’s a complete maverick.” Said another who has worked for him, “he’s been enabled all of his career. He’s been enabled by executives through Nine and Seven, who know what he’s done, and let him carry on a lifestyle and demand that people indulge in the culture to be part of his program, which is unhealthy, mentally and physically. They’ve built a monster.”

However, Peter Meakin, another industry veteran who helped former Seven chief executive David Leckie and Llewellyn set up Sunday Night, said he would not judge Spotlight, Llewellyn or the show’s culture until the judge presiding over the case, Justice Michael Lee, had his say. “I’ve heard complaints about every show I’ve worked on,” Meakin said. “I can’t think of a program in history where everyone is happy. Mark Llewellyn is one of the most talented producers I’ve ever worked with.”

In response to questions, Llewellyn said he encouraged “men and women equally. I dismiss the suggestion of a ‘blokey culture’. I am sure there are people who have disliked my style in the past, and people who like it. I would describe that as human nature. And yes, I have sworn in the past. People have sworn at me. It happens in newsrooms. However, I recognise and believe it is not the best way to communicate or explain. And if I have occasionally failed, it is something I ... regret”.

Llewellyn has also acknowledged his professional decisions have damaged friendships. A decades-long one with Wilkinson would be among them. In an interview by Seven reporter Michael Usher at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival last year, he said, “I did [lose] very good friends.” But he said he had to ask himself, “to preserve some of the friendships I had, do I leave certain bits out? But in doing so, I’m asking, what am I leaving out that the audience will never see … the compromises I make will compromise the story.”

One of the producers who survived the demise of Sunday Night and its re-badging as Spotlight was Auerbach, a young turk in Llewellyn’s mould who had cut his teeth at News Corp before moving into television. He had already become the youngest-ever winner of McGuire’s Nine show Millionaire Hot Seat, taking home $50,000, and appeared in series two of Australia’s version of Come Dine With Me.

People who’d worked with Auerbach in his early television years liked him. “The Taylor I knew was a slightly overweight, gentle kind of person,” one said. “He was ambitious and tenacious in his drive to get a story. He didn’t drink much. He didn’t get plastered by any stretch of the imagination.” In the months before his departure last year, however, a colleague described him as inattentive and chaotic, as well as frequently drunk (Auerbach admitted in court that he was drinking heavily).

Former Seven Network Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach was ‘kind’ but driven when he started out in journalism.Credit: AAP

“He wasn’t great at being prepared,” said one, pointing out that he was the producer when singer Adele cancelled a Seven interview because the reporter had not listened to her album.

In 2021, Llewellyn hired as Spotlight’s chief of staff Steve Jackson, a former 60 Minutes and newspaper chief of staff with whom Auerbach was close friends and with whom he’d spent a raucous night at the apartment of a naked former socialite in 2019 (Jackson filed a story about the evening for The Australian). Staff who worked on Spotlight say the three men were a tight, sometimes-fractious clique, sharing similar approaches to stories, personnel management and drinking.

Under their stewardship, Spotlight landed some bombshell exclusives, many of which have been controversial.

The interview with Koletti won the 2022 Scoop of the Year award at NSW journalism awards The Kennedys, although the team did not disclose it had paid the widower $150,000 (the award show reviewed its entry policies as a result). This was despite comments from Llewellyn in a 2012 interview stressing the importance of being upfront with payments for stories (which he preferred to avoid). “If you don’t [tell], then if it’s discovered subsequently, people will say, ‘why did you keep that from me and what was the motive of you for payment and what was the motive of them?’”

Koletti, a hairdresser, later styled Lehrmann’s hair at the recommendation of Llewellyn’s wife.

The same year, Spotlight is rumoured to have paid former Gold Logie winner Craig McLachlan more than $200,000 for an interview months after he was acquitted of indecent assault.

“Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn, who conducted hours of interviews with McLachlan … describes the story as one of the most powerful of his career,” Jackson wrote.

Said Llewellyn of McLachlan’s downfall: “This is a side seldom seen. It’s raw emotion. It’s real pain. It’s what happens when your career, your reputation – your life – vanishes overnight.”

However, raw footage from McLachlan’s interview later contributed to the collapse of his defamation trial against The Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC, over allegations against the actor including sexual harassment, indecent exposure, indecent assault and bullying. McLachlan told his defamation trial that he’d lost his phone.

When the media companies subpoenaed the raw footage from his interview with Llewellyn, McLachlan was heard boasting about hiring forensic specialists to recover material from his phone. The former Rocky Horror Show star dropped the case shortly after it was revealed that he’d failed to hand over 4000 emails, texts and photos extracted from his iPhone 3. In abandoning the case, he agreed to pay his opponents more than $2 million in legal costs.

In 2022, Spotlight featured an interview with so-called Cocaine Cassie, who confessed to knowing drugs were inside 18 headphone cases she attempted to smuggle out of Colombia in 2017. And last year, Seven apologised for using material without the consent of a young transgender woman in a Spotlight promotion. The show also featured controversial neurosurgeon Charlie Teo claiming “hundreds if not thousands have died” due to negative publicity about his work by the Herald’s chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont.

An upcoming program is rumoured to feature Heston Russell, the former commando and Only Fans model. When contacted, Russell said, “I don’t know how you know that” and refused to answer any more questions.

But it was the Lehrmann interviews, the first of which aired in June last year, that blew up the Llewellyn-Jackson-Auerbach triumvirate with spectacular consequences and put the future of Spotlight under a cloud.

Other outlets, including streaming services and podcasts, flirted with paying for Lehrmann’s story but backed away when his criminal trial collapsed. Spotlight persisted, and the extent to which Auerbach courted him on the show’s behalf in late 2022 and early 2023 has been alleged in the Federal Court this week. “They really wanted that story,” a person involved in the deal said, on the condition of anonymity.

Auerbach did the groundwork on wooing Lehrmann. He told the court this week that he had been assigned as Lehrmann’s babysitter or minder, as Spotlight worked to secure a deal.

The court heard on Friday that he and Lehrmann’s then-friend and “media manager” John Macgowan met in Canberra to discuss a prospective interview, which Macgowan hoped would net $200,000. It was October 21, 2022, and as the men had coffee, the jury was deliberating in Lehrmann’s rape trial.

According to his affidavits to the court, Auerbach was using the corporate credit card to pay for meals worth around $500 (not including alcohol), accommodation worth thousands, and a $400 Tasmanian golfing experience. He claims he received key leaked documents relating to the case.

Auerbach also says Seven covered two evenings with sex workers for himself and Lehrmann, claims the former staffer’s lawyer challenged in court on Thursday.

He told the court Llewellyn gave verbal approval for one of the nights and refused to accept his resignation over the other. The claims, which are not proven, have left many of those who have worked with Llewellyn over the years shocked but not entirely surprised. “Whether or not he knew that Taylor was spending money on drugs and sex workers, it appears to have been a climate where Taylor thought he could do that in order to get an interview,” said one person who worked with Llewellyn at another network.

The person close to the deal said Llewellyn’s broad-mindedness when it comes to stories – as well as Seven’s willingness to spend money on a story others were disinclined to touch – made Spotlight the most attractive option for Lehrmann. “[Llewellyn] is old school,” said the person on the condition of anonymity. “He’s done and seen everything. He was fully able to see what kind of a shitstorm he was getting himself into with Bruce. In private, [Llewellyn] has contempt for the media and axes to grind.“

As foreseen by the early appointment of a “babysitter”, Lehrmann has proved a liability for Seven. The problems began early on; at a beachfront apartment hired by the network as part of the deal, his behaviour – and that of his dog, which was not walked or cleaned up after – caused serious consternation among neighbours. “Every couple of weekends, there’d be a bender,” said one, on the condition of anonymity. “He and his mates would get themselves off their heads. One was a Canberra adviser of some nature, we know because they were shouting his name in the backyard once and we got on Linkedin and looked him up.”

The return on investment for Spotlight’s Lehrmann interview is also dubious. The first special’s average metro audience was 600,000 in a Sunday prime-time slot, only marginally better than an investigation into vaping the week prior (528,000). The second exclusive dropped to 516,000.

Bruce Lehrmann on Monday leaving the beachside home Seven paid for.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Still, it’s not all about ratings. Spotlight entered the interview in the Walkley journalism awards, and it was a finalist for Scoop of the Year. The entry said Lehrmann’s accommodation was paid during production, but did not disclose that it took the form of an entire year’s rent. That detail emerged in the defamation suit the former Liberal staffer is running against Channel Ten for airing claims he had sexually assaulted a colleague, Brittany Higgins (the nomination was rescinded).

In response to a question from this masthead, Llewellyn said the production was always intended to involve stories over 12 months. In December, Seven executives insisted Lehrmann was still scheduled to take a lie detector test live on air as part of the deal. This masthead attempted to contact the reporter on the story, Liam Bartlett, but did not get a response.

Auerbach, who says he fell out with Jackson a year ago, told a court on Thursday his former colleagues distanced him from the story. The rift was complete by mid-2023, when Auerbach’s name was not on the Lehrmann Walkley nomination. That contributed to his feud with Jackson, who Auerbach confessed in court to particularly hating and blaming, in part, for Seven’s decision not to renew his contract last year. Auerbach admitted to backgrounding journalists after Jackson was appointed as interim head of public affairs for NSW Police last month (the appointment was later cancelled by the police, saying it would cause external distractions).

The court also heard that Auerbach lodged a psychological injury claim of his own against Jackson, Llewellyn and others at Seven, which alleged “sustained bullying [and] antisemitism over a significant period”, and was settled on confidential terms when he left the network last year.

The court drama is still unfolding. Llewellyn said on Thursday that he was still employed at Seven. His boss, Seven’s director of news and public affairs Craig McPherson, did not respond to calls. However, a tape of an internal 2023 Spotlight meeting about shrinking budgets obtained by News.com.au reportedly records Jackson as saying that McPherson was “still very much onside” with the show.

“I greatly respect Craig,” Llewellyn told the Herald.

Seven did not respond to questions about whether it still had confidence in Llewellyn.

Bruce McWilliam, one of Seven West Media’s most senior executives and its billionaire chairman Kerry Stokes’ closest adviser (who is leaving the company) on Thursday blamed Llewellyn for Seven’s failure to produce documents requested under subpoena last year, which were handed over this week.

In a signed affidavit, McWilliam said the network relied on Llewellyn’s untested assurance that there was nothing to produce. “Given Mr Llewellyn’s status as a senior producer, I had no reason to doubt his indication that no written or electronic communications with Mr Lehrmann existed, and consistently with that indication, extensive searches of Seven’s email system were not performed at that time,” Mr McWilliam wrote.

But the evidence so far shows Seven management was aware of at least three complaints against Llewellyn including the 2014 incident with the producer, and Auerbach’s claim, which attracted a six-figure payout.

While Spotlight may avoid cancellation for now, a former Seven executive – who requested anonymity to speak openly about internal workings of the company – said they would be surprised there wasn’t at least a change to its current name, 7News Spotlight, given the reputation damage suffered to the 7News brand.

Some say Seven’s mistake was to allow Llewellyn to run the show without the support of another experienced executive with stronger people management skills. Throughout his career, Llewellyn has worked closely with people such as legendary news boss Peter Meakin. “Putting him in charge of his own show was a dangerous move,” said one former journalist, who has known him for decades.

Some of Llewellyn’s long-term friends in journalism are quietly wondering what went wrong, and what’s next for an increasingly isolated Llewellyn. He has always been a risk-taker, they say, but his editorial decisions over recent years have left them stunned. “What a morality tale,” said one. “He ended up eating himself.” Another former boss, who is no fan, would only say bitterly, “you wait long enough and the cake bakes”.

with Sally Rawsthorne

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