TV show gets its day in court

Seven West Media CEO Tim Worner may be dragged into court case, Fairfax’s history rewrite and who replaces Ita at Studio 10?

Cartoon: Johannes Leak.

Tim Worner, the chief executive of Seven West Media, could be dragged into a court case involving journalist and author Paul Raffaele, who is taking Seven and explorer and presenter Tim Noonan to court for allegedly “unjustly enriching themselves through claiming full credit and income from my work”. The case has reached the NSW Supreme Court equity division. In court documents, Raf­faele, one of the founders of the ABC’s AM and PM, claims Worner asked Noonan in 2013 to develop a documentary series they could pitch to National Geographic. Noonan asked Raffaele to collaborate and the journalist came up with the idea about living with remote tribes, and both men agreed to share any monetary benefits.

That program, High Adventure with Tim Noonan, was never made. However, several years later Noonan and Seven produced Boy to Man, which Raffaele says is similar. Seven will attempt to bar proceedings based on a deed of release Raffaele signed in 2013 when he was a freelance producer on Seven’s Sunday Night. Seven and Noonan are defending the action. The judge will decide that aspect on June 15.

“I’m looking forward very much to having Tim Worner and Noonan, as well as other senior Seven executives, in the witness box and me cross-examining them,” Raffaele tells Diary. That’s because, after getting a barrister and solicitor to prepare his court documents, the journalist is now representing himself.

Bury the hatchet

What’s this on the horizon? A journalistic ninja warrior assassin in the form of Anne Davies, the respected former Sydney Morning Herald state political editor, who, according to last week’s hot rumour, was preparing a hatchet job on The Australian at the behest of her boss, Guardian Australia editor in chief Lenore Taylor.

Not true, says Davies, a Gold Walkley winner. “I am working on a project. It’s at the really early stages, so I would prefer not to talk about it,” Davies politely told Diary, after mistaking us for a News Corp PR guy. Only on Mondays, Anne! But Davies did tell us — three times — that the project was “not about The Australian”. Diary had heard differently. Besides, there’s nothing The Guardian loves more than a big piece on News Corp.

The book of Ita

Has there ever been a daytime program so little watched, yet so written about, as Ten’s Studio 10? Last week it was the shock news of long-time co-host Ita Buttrose quitting. Much was made of the apparent feud between Buttrose and co-presenters Jessica Rowe, who had already left, and Denise Drysdale, whoinfamously pelted Buttrose with brussels sprouts while filming a Christmas segment last year. Diary’s colleague Dana McCauley has tipped Ten’s Angela Bishop and comedian Denise Scott to replace Buttrose, while former executive producer Rob McKnight is due back in court this week for a directions hearing in his breach of contract case against the network. But what will Buttrose do next? “Opportunities arise when you least expect them,” she tells Diary. Buttrose will continue her heavy speaking engagement schedule with Saxton’s Speakers Bureau, and continue providing marketing advice to her three clients: Priceline, Invocare Funeral Homes and Five Good Friends, which provides services to help the elderly stay in their homes longer. Plus, Buttrose is working on a historical novel, set “in a time when Australians were characters and weren’t so politically correct”.

Rewriting history

Yes, we all make mistakes. But those by journalist historian Dr Jonathan King have just brought him global prominence. The correction about his feature in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on the 1918 battle at Villers-Bretonneux in France was an almighty 300 words long. It became an online news story in New Zealand and was posted on global news aggregator site Reddit, which has 36 million registered users. Dr King turned in a piece about the World War I western front battle, which, as the correction put it with polite understatement, “contained a number of factual errors”. The errors were so extensive that the papers apologised to readers. As one Reddit user commented: “I dare say the article’s author has a new job at SMH as a floor sweeper.”

Knobbly knees matter

When you are the former editor of Cosmopolitan, former host of MasterChef, founder of a multi-million-dollar diet empire and appear on the cover of a glossy magazine swathed head to toe in expensive Victoria B eckham, it’s just a little tricky to bang on about the evils of consumerism. Such a thought occurred belatedly to I Quit Sugar guru Sarah Wilson, who did a big interview with Stellar magazine, the glossy magazine in News Corp’s Sydney and Melbourne Sunday newspapers a week ago and wasn’t entirely happy with the results.

The piece, which also ran in Queensland and Western Australia, canvassed why Wilson had closed her I Quit Sugar business, and her anti-consumerism philosophy. Wilson wrote on her blog about her awkwardness over compromising her values for the magazine, “the glaring irony/hypocrisy? of the high fashion image used to illustrate my story”. “I don’t want to blame anyone for this (and I don’t want to read as ungrateful!).’’

Stellar editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand told Diary readers Wilson fans “agreed Sarah Wilson has never looked better” in the glamorously retro and highly stylised shoot. “In this case I’m sure Sarah would be the first to admit that as a former magazine editor, she struggled not to overthink the experience — and I completely understand and sympathise with that.” Apart from the angst over consumerism, Wilson found space to append a list of corrections for the piece, saving the best until last: : “And my knees were knobbly. Not knobby.”

Falloon still in chair

Domain’s former chief executive, Antony Catalano, left the company in January, and it is nearly May. Domain chairman, Nick Falloon, former executive chairman of Channel 10, has been executive chairman of the real estate listings company ever since. Diary hears several local executives have politely knocked back the opportunity to interview for the position, and there has been difficulty putting together a shortlist. Might Falloon, who looks like he is enjoying himself, keep the job?

Familiar faces

Some familiar faces at the Sophie Mirabella defamation trial, where the former Liberal MP for Indi is taking local newspaper the Benalla Ensign to court over its reporting of an incident involving Cathy McGowan (the independent MP who took the seat from Mirabella) and a photo opportunity before the 2016 election. Instructing solicitor for the Ensign and former editor Libby Price is Nick Pullen, who is also instructing solicitor in Geoffrey Rush’s defamation case against The Daily Telegraph.

Mirabella’s QC is Georgina Schoff, who represented The Australian Women’s Weekly publisher Bauer in Rebel Wilson’s record-making defamation case against the magazine publisher, while instructing Schoff is solicitor Richard Leder, who acted for Wilson in her case, now subject to an appeal on the damages awarded. The case resumes this week with McGowan expected to take the stand.

Movers and shakers

Vaughan Cottier, The Australian’s general manager for sales, is moving to Los Angeles to open an office for Storyful, News Corp’s content arm that focuses on social media intelligence. Today is the first day for Cottier’s replacement, Andrew Cook, who will be general manager advertising for The Australian and the News Prestige Network, which includes Vogue, WISH and GQ, reporting to The Australian’s chief executive Nicholas Gray. Cook joins from SBS.

Beard not weird

Concerned talks at Seven. Not over how to pay for the cricket, but about five-time Walkley winning Sunday Night reporter Steve Pennells’ new beard. Stay or go? Apparently there have even been meetings. How will viewers adapt to the change? Pennells’ 61,000 Instagram followers are in favour and now Sunday Night colleague Matt Doran has a beard of his own. Sunday Night’s reporting line up also includes Alex Cullen and Denham Hitchcock. Or, as the industry collectively calls them, the “boy band”.