Nine in sorry state over 60 Minutes debacle in Beirut

The “sorry” by Nine chief Hugh Marks today is certainly much more appropriate than the clinking of drinks as the 60 Minutes team flew back to Australia. How could the crew be celebrating after leaving behind a trail of human disaster in Beirut?

That damage included two children who had been snatched by masked men and violently dragged from their grandmother, the grandmother being bashed on the head and the mother, Sally Faulkner, who has now lost any chance of shared custody of her children.

As they toasted in business class with drinks, the 60 Minutes team also left in a Beirut prison their business associates who did the Channel Nine-subsidised kidnapping so that 60 Minutes could get its main “picture sequence”.

The obscenity of this episode which has damaged the 60 Minutes brand was highlighted in The Weekend Australian, which pieced together the hours after the kidnapping.

Having left their luxury hotel, the 60 Minutes team convinced Ms Faulkner to make one last phone call to the father of the children — it was this final act of choreography that ruined the whole plan. As things started to go wrong, the 60 Minutes crew fled — abandoning Ms Faulkner to sleep in one of the poorest parts of the city, without any protection, until armed police stormed in, terrifying the two children.

Mr Marks’ apology may begin the rebuilding process for 60 Minutes — unless, of course, cases emerge of other similar atrocities by Nine or its main rival, Seven. Should this happen then the entire culture of chequebook journalism will be under the microscope.

Mr Marks’ apology came the day after Nine’s news chief Darren Wick said the network must face up to its mistakes in a “brutal” soul-search and that “We can’t sit here and think: ‘we didn’t do anything wrong — we had a bit of bad luck’. You make your own luck”.

For the inquiry Nine has established to have any credibility, it needs to establish:

• Who approved the story?

• Who approved the payment?

• Has 60 Minutes been involved in other apparently illegal operations in Australia or overseas, or was this a one-off?

• Does Nine think this is serious enough for anybody to lose their job?

• What changes will Nine make to ensure this does not happen again?

Nine needs to question the whole philosophy of 60 Minutes — where its “stars”, or reporters, often are not across the detail they should be.

60 Minutes is a producer-­driven show. While producer Stephen Rice, in the planning process, would have known every detail of the Beirut story, it’s quite possible Tara Brown only knew the basics.

Yet it’s Ms Brown’s reputation which is being most damaged as she is the public face of this story.

One lesson for Ms Brown and the other reporters at 60 Minutes is to try to learn as much about any story as the producer.

Every reporter and story is different but sometimes a reporter at 60 Minutes is handed a brief by the producer — even including suggested questions — shortly before an interview.

Had the 60 Minutes crew remained in jail indefinitely, or been injured or killed in prison, the program itself may have been closed.

The 60 Minutes franchise will not be able to survive another such catastrophe. These days the public is unforgiving of the media behaving badly.

In one way, Nine has been ­extremely lucky — given how volatile Beirut can be, it’s conceivable that right now, had various Is­lamic militias detained the 60 ­Minutes crew rather than the Lebanese police, that the four crew could be in an underground dungeon somewhere dressed in orange   jumpsuits and with a massive ransom on their heads.

In a world much more dangerous than it was 10 years ago, Nine can never again put its employees at this sort of risk, let alone the two children whose kidnapping it helped plan and finance.

John Lyons was an executive producer of the Nine Network’s Sunday program