Crikey boss Peter Fray delivers outburst at ABC’s Walkley Awards win
Crikey’s editor-in-chief caused a scene at the awards night by yelling at two ABC reporters as they gave an acceptance speech.
The editor-in-chief of news website Crikey caused a scene at the annual Walkley Awards on Thursday night, yelling at two female ABC reporters as they gave their speech after winning the most prestigious prize in Australian journalism.
Crikey boss Peter Fray shocked onlookers at the black-tie event in Sydney when he repeatedly roared “what about Crikey”, as the ABC’s Anne Connolly and Stephanie Zillman delivered their acceptance speech after being awarded the Gold Walkley.
Zillman appeared to halt mid-speech as Fray interjected from the floor.
Connolly and Zillman (along with fellow ABC journalist Ali Russell, who wasn’t present at Thursday’s ceremony) were recognised for their year-long body of work titled “State Control”, which investigated financial mismanagement by the nation’s public guardian and trustee agencies.
Fray was apparently aggrieved that Crikey’s own reporting on issues surrounding the public guardian had not been publicly acknowledged.
Crikey’s investigation into the failings of the system of public guardianship was not a finalist in any category of this year’s Walkleys.
Moments after his audible interjections during the speech by Connolly and Zillman, Fray took to Twitter to further demean the ABC’s journalism.
“Crikey wins Gold Walkley for ABC,” Fray wrote just after 10pm on Thursday.
Three minutes later, he posted: “Dear ABC, you are a fraud.”
The tweets were later deleted.
It is the case that Crikey reported on public guardianship issues earlier this year, but Fray was wrong to suggest that the ABC had simply followed the work of the news website, given that Connolly and Zillman had published several reports on the topic dating back to 2018.
On Friday morning, the ABC’s director of news, analysis and investigations, Justin Stevens, contacted executives from Private Media (Crikey’s publisher) to request that Fray apologise to Connolly and Zillman.
On Friday afternoon, Fray, a former deputy editor of The Australian newspaper and a one-time editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, posted on Twitter: “I wish to unreservedly apologise for my actions at last night’s Walkley awards. They were unacceptable. I have apologised to the ABC’s news director Justin Stevens, the deserved winners of the Gold Walkley, Anne Connolly, Stephanie Zillman and Ali Russell and ABC editorial.”
The editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, Bevan Shields, posted on Twitter: “This was appalling and disrespectful behaviour by Peter Fray.”
The ABC declined to comment.
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