2GB executives lay down the law to Jones

Alan Jones has been sensationally disciplined by Macquarie Media. Plus Four Corners turns its focus on the Guthrie-Milne saga.

Cartoon: Johannes Leak.

Alan Jones has been sensationally disciplined by the board and management of Macquarie Media, which refuses to confirm or deny if it has forced its star breakfast presenter to pay some of the costs of the multi-million defamation action brought against the company by the Wagner brothers.

Australian radio broadcaster Alan Jones. Picture by Chris Pavlich

And the 2GB breakfast announcer’s infamous interview with Sydney Opera House boss Louise Herron was “unbecoming and inappropriate”, bosses say.

Diary is told the board is unhappy with the top-rating veteran broadcaster over three incidents: the Wagner defamation case; the use of the racial epithet “nigger in the woodpile” when discussing Liberal leadership turmoil; and the aggressive Herron interview.

CEO of the Sydney Opera House, Louise Herron. Picture: SydneyOperaHouse.com.au

Macquarie Media chairman Russell Tate told Diary: “Absolutely, we had a couple of big issues. As you would expect, the board and management have been very mindful about these things and ­decided to make sure they don’t happen again and that’s been done. Alan is a professional. He gets it.”

Sick Alan Jones misses breakfast duty

Tate dismissed talk that advertising revenues had suffered in the wake of the controversies. “Our revenues are good, ahead of last year and ahead of forecasts.”

The price of defame

After Jones’s repeated defamations of the Wagner family over the 2011 Lockyer Valley floods, which killed 12 people, 2GB was ordered to pay $3.75 million, the largest defamation payout in history after Queensland Supreme Court judge Peter Flanagan ruled the defamation was “extremely ­serious and of the gravest kind”.

Tate refused to comment to Diary if the board had forced Jones to contribute. At Macquarie Media’s annual general meeting last week, chief executive Adam Lang confirmed the station had ­insurance but he also refused to confirm or deny if the board had asked Jones to pay. “Whether Alan is paying or not, those are matters that we would like to keep within the company.” The legal ­action would cost Macquarie about $5m and “we are prepared for that” Lang said.

But legal sources put the total cost of the action much higher, ­between $8m and $10m. And other sources at Macquarie told Diary the board had demanded Jones pay some of the costs. One 2GB insider said board members snubbed Jones after a board meeting at the network’s Pyrmont studios.

At the AGM, Tate said: “We have learnt from this and there are new procedures and new rules and new training regimes in place ­including in the case of Alan.”

The company also told the AGM it had “dealt” with Jones over his widely criticised interview with Herron.

Shareholder and anti-gambling activist Stephen Mayne told the board the interview was an “outrageous breach of editorial standards”. Lang said: “I agree it was unbecoming and it was inappropriate. Many in the community including some internally were ­offended by the way in which he handled Louise Herron AM in that broadcast. We have dealt with that directly with Alan.”

Jones was enjoying record ­audiences, Lang said.

Macquarie Media is 54.5 per cent owned by Fairfax Media, whose chief executive Greg ­Hywood sits on the Macquarie Media board. Nine Entertainment is due to complete its takeover of Fairfax next month. How any of this ­affects negotiations over Jones’s contract, which expires mid-next year, remains to be seen.

Aunty in the spotlight

All eyes on Four Corners tonight. It already looks like a cracker, and Sarah Ferguson has been overheard telling colleagues she has had great fun putting it together. The program is said to be so good, featuring as it does interviews with sacked managing director ­Michelle ­Guthrie and former chairman Justin Milne, who resigned, that it has been extended to one hour.

So sensitive is the program that acting managing director David Anderson has relinquished his role as editor in chief for the program, an unprecedented move.

The ABC said: “The acting managing director, the editorial director, the news director and board members were not involved in any way in the commissioning or editorial oversight of the program.” The national broadcaster has given ultimate editorial responsibility to John Lyons, a former journalist at The Australian who is now head of investigative and in-depth journalism.

Of course, having Lyons in charge would have smoothed over any residual reluctance on the part of Guthrie from contributing. She had banned herself from appearing after the program’s executive producer Sally Neighbour tweeted “good decision” the day Guthrie was sacked.

Mind you, the fact that Milne readily agreed to an interview probably helped Guthrie change her mind. In addition, the ABC legal team has removed itself from the program in favour of independent legal oversight from Sandy Dawson, who regularly acts for Fairfax Media, Channel 9, Channel 7 and 2GB’s Ray Hadley.

Getting in early

All eyes on Four Corners tonight, unless you happen to be associated with Nine’s 60 Minutes. Nine’s current affairs flagship, which debuted in February 1979, is celebrating its 40th tonight at a venue in the inner Sydney suburb of Waterloo. Reporters past and present will be attending the knees up, including Jana Wendt, George Negus, Liz Hayes and Liam Bartlett.

A case of getting in early? The 40th season of the program is airing this year, so Nine thought the time was right. The program was inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame this year and executive producer Kirsty Thomson said: “This is the perfect occasion to thank everyone who has contributed to 60 Minutes’ enduring success throughout its 40 years — both on-air and off. It’s been an incredible run and we couldn’t have done it without our legion of loyal viewers who tune in every Sunday — and we look forward to sharing the biggest stories with Australians for years to come.”

Plenty of time for the hangovers to die down before the 40th anniversary special airs on ­December 2.

Jana Wendt. Picture: Belinda Rolland

There goes Saturday

Journalists at the soon to merge Nine and Fairfax might like to look over to the west and into the ­future, where journalists at Kerry Stokes’ two Perth newspapers — The West Australian and The Sunday Times — have been told to prepare for the imminent arrival of seven-day rosters. When Stokes’ Seven West Media bought The Sunday Times from News Corp in late 2016, it was generally expected reporters would eventually work across both titles and that the Sunday paper would therefore lose its team of dedicated reporters. An email to staff from SWM boss Maryna Fewster last week finally made that official.

A further big change is that The West’s long-serving editor, Brett McCarthy, will step up to the role of “senior editor”, overseeing both The West and The Sunday Times. Ex-News man Michael Beach continues to edit The Sunday Times and The West’s deputy editor Mark Mallabone will now run the paper on a day-to-day basis — something insiders say he’s been doing for some time anyway.

Woolnough heads west

Speaking of Beach, he had just hired Damien Woolnough to be fashion editor on The Sunday Times Magazine.

It's a long way from Sydney’s Potts Point, where Woolnough, a former fashion editor of The ­Australian, launch editor of vogue.com.au and deputy editor of ELLE Australia, lives, êto Perth: 3933km to be precise, and Woolnough starts work on December 3.

Damien Woolnough.

“An exceptional feature writer with an eye for great design and a big profile in the local and international fashion world, Damien is a great asset to not only The Sunday Times and STM, but the Seven West Media group,” Beach says.

Hopefully, this doesn’t spell the end of one of Diary’s Instagram faves, You Are In My Seat, Woolnough’s compelling series of catwalk dispatches he presents shoulder to shoulder with his fash ed successor at The Oz, Glynis Traill-Nash.

ABC probity probe

Hearings in the ABC Senate inquiry are expected at the end of the month. The inquiry, into “allegations of political interference in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation” will be chaired by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young. It will examine the sacking of Guthrie, the conduct of Milne and the board, how ABC board members are appointed (which will be fascinating) and political ­influence over ABC editorial decision-making, among other things. The deadline for submissions is ­tomorrow.

Turnbull wins a poll

Yes, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull has left politics, as he told everyone on his special Q&A last Thursday. So, crunching the numbers is presumably a thing of the past. But heck, there are always the TV ratings. “Hey Lucy, I got 666,000 viewers in the metro markets. I beat The Bachelorette,” Turnbull probably didn’t say. The Q&A special, which screened on Thursday as the Monday slot was already committed to a festival panel, was the biggest non-news program of the night, and attracted about 1 million viewers on the various digital platforms across which the ABC prides itself on distributing content.

After the broadcast, Turnbull retired briefly to the Q&A green room to debrief with wife Lucy and daughter Daisy before heading off to dinner. Diary, disguised as a glass of ABC regulation cheap red plonk, heard that the centre of political intrigue, Chinatown’s Golden Century, was the likely venue. But who was the dinner guest? A pinstripe-besuited gentleman who had barrister written all over him and who turned out to be none other than Peter Duncan, the creator of Rake, the ABC drama about a raffish lawyer which took a ­decidedly political turn in its final series. Maybe Turnbull is in negotiations over Malcolm: The Miniseries? Whom to cast? Diary nominates Ben Mendelsohn, who has carved out a nice line in playing powerful men with egos, ­although our 29th prime minister would probably think Hugh Jackman more appropriate.

Vanity Fair-ly dull

Vale Vanity Fair. No, the famed glossy title is not dead, but it is lifeless. The glossy magazine that used to be the toast of the town has sunk into sloth of dullness. Conde Nast, the company behind VF, Vogue and The New Yorker, was once a global success and is in free fall, making a loss of about $US120m last year. The editor overseeing the decline is Radhika Jones, the former New York Times books editor who took over from Graydon Carter.

Radhika Jones. Picture: Getty Images

At the time, Diary bumped into an old colleague of Jones, who professed astonishment that the New York Times books editor had landed the gig. The feeling among long-time employees is how dull it is now. Jones caused unease on her first day on the job last November, wearing (well, this is Conde Nast) a navy shift dress with zippers and tights covered with illustrated, cartoon foxes. Women’s Wear Daily reported that Conde Nast creative director and Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour “fixed one of her trademark stoic glares upon Jones’s hosiery throughout the duration of the staff meeting”.

Alumni luminaries

The ABC alumni organisation is taking shape ahead of its official launch in a few weeks. Luminaries who have signed up include: Maxine McKew, George Negus, Jim Middleton, Jeff McMullen, David Hill and Kerry O’Brien.

One prize recruit is the legendary radio man and politician John Tingle. He was an ABC journalist in the 1950s and 1960s before later working at 2UE, 2UW, 3AW, 4BK, 2SM, 2GB, 2CH, Channel 7, Channel 9, WIN4, SBS before founding the Shooters Party in NSW and becoming a parliamentarian in 1995. These days he is better known as Laura’s dad.

Maxine McKew at her office in Gladesville.