Media Diary: ABC Four Corners’ Channel 7 promo attracts attention from lawyers
The Four Corners episode delving into alleged misconduct at Seven is facing potential legal hurdles ahead of its scheduled screening on Monday night.
ABC’s Four Corners reporter Louise Milligan has been posting on social media for weeks about her upcoming expose of alleged misconduct at the Seven Network – her former employer – but it appears the program is facing a few potential legal hurdles ahead of its screening on Monday night.
Shortly after Milligan shared a 30-second promo last Thursday, featuring a bunch of former Seven staffers bagging the media company, the video mysteriously vanished from the 50-year-old journalist’s social media accounts.
Diary understands Channel 7 engaged Herbert Smith Freehills in recent days, with the top law firm issuing a stern legal letter to the ABC reminding it to be extremely careful before airing the program, given at least one of the interview subjects featured in the promo is already subject to strict gag orders.
Despite the legal warning, it’s understood that Seven has not requested an injunction to halt the airing of the program.
The now-deleted promo included Amber Harrison, the former lover of ex-Seven West Media boss Tim Worner.
Harrison left the business a decade ago after signing legal documents agreeing not to speak publicly about the media company or her relationship with Worner.
On Thursday, Milligan told her followers on X: “Our next #4Corners program is Monday. It’s been a long time coming”, adding a quote by one interviewee that read: “It’s a very dysfunctional family.”
The post reached more than 127,000 people on X, and was reposted more than 450 times and liked by more than 2000 people. But Milligan stripped it from her account on the weekend.
Before removing the post, Milligan told her followers: “Promo only up a few hours and lots of Channel 7 complainants already getting in touch. Thank you and bear with us while we get back to you all.”
Promo only up a few hours and lots of Channel Seven complainants already getting in touch. Thank you and bear with us while we get back to you all. https://t.co/hFu7rL8lpa
— Louise Milligan (@Milliganreports) August 8, 2024
Another of the interviewees in the now-deleted Four Corners promo, Mark Gibson, is, like Milligan, a former Channel 7 employee turned ABC staffer. These days Gibson, who once worked on Seven’s now defunct tabloid current affairs show Today Tonight, is ABC Perth’s breakfast presenter.
In the promo (complete with obligatory spooky music in the background), Gibson says: “Channel 7 likes to portray itself as a family; it’s a very dysfunctional family. I wouldn’t call it a second chance club, I would call it the third, fourth and five chance club.”
Gibson is a failed Perth mayoral candidate after running for the top job in 2020, losing to none other than Basil Zempilas, a former Channel 7 broadcaster and weekly columnist at Seven West’s newspaper publication The West Australian.
Former Seven TV Toowoomba reporter Olivia Babb also featured in the promo, describing her one-time employer “as one of the most soul-crushing places you can work in”: “They shouldn’t be in business if that’s what they are doing to young women. How do they sleep at night?”
It’s understood Babb was quite surprised to be front and centre of the promo when it was released via Milligan’s social media channels on Thursday.
In recent weeks, as Milligan put the final touches to her investigation, she also posted a picture of herself on Instagram, filming outside Seven’s old Martin Place studios in Sydney where she once worked, referencing her “very old stomping ground”.
That post was liked by former Channel 7 Melbourne newsreader turned 3AW radio host and freebie queen Jacqui Felgate. Felgate quit Seven in 2022 after reports she was not happy with the recruitment of new on-air talent, including presenter Rebecca Maddern’s move to the TV station.
Sneesby’s double snub
Torch-bearing Nine boss Mike Sneesby has certainly got into the habit of dodging the media – or trying to anyway – following a horror few months at the media major. The company has been plagued by allegations of misconduct at the network that first surfaced in May when The Australian revealed the exit of former news bossDarren Wick followed the lodging of an harassment complaint by a female staff member.
When Sneesby was in Paris last month rival network Seven was a little thin on the ground with journos, which resulted in Perth news director Ray Kuka, also second-in-charge to news boss Anthony De Ceglie, rolling up his sleeves and hitting the streets with a cameraman to track down the Nine chief executive.
Amid Nine staff walking off the job and Sneesby just coming off his notorious prance through the suburban streets of Paris bearing the Olympic torch, Kuka headed to Sneesby’s lavish French hotel in the hope of executing a “bounce”.
Sure enough, within minutes of Kuka reaching the hotel, Sneesby was dropped off, right into the line of fire. Peppering him with questions including whether it was a good idea to run with the Olympic torch when Nine had just announced 200 jobs cuts, Sneesby started to scurry away.
“Look I’m just back from dinner and it’s not really the time to have a chat,” Sneesby snapped.
Trying to explain his reasons for not being open to an interview, Sneesby explained: “I’m meeting my family.”
Journalists from the Nine newspaper group have walked off the job, staging a five-day strike after they rejected a pay deal from management. 7NEWS caught up with Nine Entertainment boss Mike Sneesby in Paris. https://t.co/iSooOJBTBM#7NEWSpic.twitter.com/yTkdMd1qvf
— 7NEWS Adelaide (@7NewsAdelaide) July 26, 2024
Then Kuka went in for the kill: “You’re a boss of a media business. Are you here for work or are you on a holiday with your family?”
Sneesby wasn’t thrilled. “I’m not on a holiday.”
That may be the case but it seems there’s never a good time to have a chat with Sneesby.
When Diary ran into him at the Women In Media conference oration dinner in Sydney last Thursday night, we too asked for a chat. And guess what? We got the standard Sneesby brush-off.
“Now’s probably not a good time for chat,” Sneesby said while perched alongside Nine chairwoman Catherine West.
Sneesby directed Diary to arrange a chat with Nine spinner Victoria Buchan butit appears the boss’s diary was full.
Buchan told Diary: “It’s a blackout period before our results so it isn’t really appropriate for Mike to do any interviews.”
Looks like Diary will have to wait until August 28 when Sneesby finally fronts the media at the company’s annual results.
Media Games
The Olympics have been run and won, and from an Australian media perspective there were some hits and misses.
The big fail was obviously the decision by Nine’s publishing division to go on strike during the first five days of the Games, which not only robbed readers of The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, WAtoday and The Brisbane Times of decent coverage of the global event, it also denied some of the company’s best journalists – who had been preparing for their Paris moment for months – the opportunity to report on Australia’s rush of gold medals in the first week.
A rare treasure
— Gerard Whateley (@GerardWhateley) August 11, 2024
That tops off an incredible experience #Paris2024pic.twitter.com/bOUb8kgBwp
Yes, it’s true, in theory the Paris crew could have crossed the picket line, but in newsrooms as heavily unionised as The Age and the SMH such a move would have attracted more trolling than B-girl Raygun.
But rest assured, if Being Seriously Pissed Off at Work Colleagues were an Olympic event, Nine newspapers’ Paris crew would be atop the podium.
Overall, Nine, as holder of Australian broadcasting rights to the Games, did a pretty good job in Diary’s humble opinion, notwithstanding the tricky time zone.
But at the risk of repeating ourselves, athletics commentator Gerard Whateley (seconded to Nine from Fox Footy and SEN 1116 Radio for the Olympics) has cemented his status as Australia’s best sports broadcaster, a mantle he has inherited unofficially from legendary caller Bruce McAvaney. Whateley’s call of the final stages of Jess Hull’s performance in the women’s 1500m early on Sunday morning (AEST) was perfect.
“It’s a rare treasure,” Whateley cried as Hull crossed the line to claim the silver medal. “It’s a feat as good as gold.”
Woke-free zone
Amid all the sporting glory, though, Diary enjoyed the on-air banter at the Olympics between 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley and fellow commentator and one-time athletics star Jane Flemming.
Hadley expressed his admiration for Indian track and field dynamo Neeraj Chopra and his enormous social media following.
“Chopra … he has six million Instagram followers, if that’s what they are called, I’ve got eight including my children and my wife,” Hadley joked.
“I said to Jane … ‘well there’s a billion people over there, of course you can have six million (followers), but you tell me he’s the No.1 in the world when it comes to Instagram followers?”
But Flemming wasn’t taken only by Chopra’s huge online presence. She confessed to being overwhelmed by his dashing good looks. “Chopra, he’s a handsome dude as well. Am I allowed to say that? And he’s the defending Olympic champion as well. Am I not being woke enough?”
Hadley was more than fine with it, telling listeners: “You know what, any program I’m associated with is a woke-free zone.”
Stuart backs Kim
ABC chairman Kim Williams’s reported edict to the organisation’s news division this month that it should focus more on news than crappy “lifestyle” content – Diary is paraphrasing – might not have been welcomed by all staff but the directive won the approval of Aunty’s one-time in-house quality controller, ex Media Watch host Stuart Littlemore.
Last Monday, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Williams had told staff in the news division: ‘‘I think people have, in moments of public torment, crisis, division, challenges to leadership, a right to be able to access it from us reliably and immediately, and not to suddenly see a lifestyle story being No.1 or No.2 or No.3.
‘‘I think I make no apology for the fact I think news should be prioritised appropriately. Sorry if that’s unsatisfying.’’
The following day, barrister Littlemore wrote to the SMH’s letters page to express his admiration for Williams’s attempt to refocus the ABC’s news department on its core business – covering news. A revolutionary concept, no?
Wrote one S. Littlemore from Potts Point: “The ABC’s charter imposes an enforceable duty to maintain a news and current affairs service that takes account of what commercial broadcasting networks do.
In duplicating the trivial, crime-obsessed, ‘human interest’, celebrity-worshipping, formulaic, solecism-riddled, badly spoken and undignified quasi-journalism of the advertising medium that is commercial television, the ABC has proved the necessity of enforcement of that duty it owes to its community. Kim Williams has made a start.”
Well said, Mr Littlemore.
And good luck, Mr Williams.
Lessons learned
ABC music and pop culture journalist Mawunyo Gbogbo took to the stage at the Women In Media annual conference in Sydney last Friday to make it loud and clear she would use social media as she pleased, irrespective of the public broadcaster’s strict rules surrounding the use of the platforms.
Discussing the pros and cons of being online, Gbogbo told the audience she refused to hold back when voicing her views online.
“As a black woman I am both invisible, extremely invisible in the media, but highly visible,” she told the audience.
“So if I have an opinion, god forbid, and share that opinion on social media, people will react to that and so I think the rewards actually outweigh the risks because I would refuse to shut up, I don’t care.”
Her comments were met with cheers from the audience full of journalists and media personalities.
But if anyone knows all too well about how social media can come back to bite you it’s ABC weekend news presenterFauziah Ibrahim.
In 2022 she found herself in hot water during the federal election after posting two partisan lists on X, one featuring “Labor Trolls/Thugs” and the other labelled “Lobotomised Shitheads”. It did not go down well with her followers or ABC management, who said at the time it was “reviewing” the presenter’s social media activity.
On the weekend Ibrahim, who was presenting the news alongside Dan Bourchier, chewed the fat with digital reporter Lia Walsh over viral social media algorithms in relation to JD Vance.
Bourchier told viewers: “This week vice-presidential Republican nominee JD Vance is facing massive backlash for comments he made about childless cat ladies.”
Then Ibrahim chimed in with her experience of how what you put on social media can go pear-shaped.
“These comments were made about three years ago or something like that but of course anything you say three years ago, (or) 10 years ago comes back to haunt you on social media, doesn’t it,” she said to Walsh.
Yup, it certainly does.
ABC complaints
Later this month the ABC Ombudsman’s Office will release its report into complaints made about the public broadcaster in the first half of 2024.
The ABC’s chairman, Williams, recently described some of News Corp’s coverage of the taxpayer-funded media organisation as “unhinged”, so we look forward to his assessment of Joe Public’s complaints about the joint.
It also will be interesting to see if Q+A retains its crown as the most complained about show on the ABC.
Last year Q+A attracted more than double the number of complaints of any other ABC program (the ABC’s online news and the 7.30 program took out the silver and bronze, respectively).
Anyway, Diary has learned of one noteworthy titbit in the upcoming report.
Last year, more than half (51 per cent) of all content complaints to the ABC related to the Israel-Hamas war, which flared on October 7.
However, in the first six months of this year, specific complaints about the ABC’s coverage of the Middle East conflict were down to 24 per cent of total protestations.
Diary understands the public broadcaster’s handling of the Indian general election earlier this year also drew a high number of complaints.
Nick Tabakoff is on leave.
ABC Radio Sydney veteran Richard Glover quits
‘It’s one of the best jobs in Australian journalism, and I feel I’ve hogged it for long enough,’ said Glover on Friday afternoon.
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