Nine news boss’s controlling ways ruined countless careers
For the young women in Nine’s newsroom, the uninvited overtures were simply the beginning. Darren Wick had the power to make or break a career — and he did so ruthlessly.
Over the course of his 13 years as Nine’s head of news and current affairs, Darren Wick created a culture of fear among his newsrooms’ female staff.
It wasn’t so much his uninvited, drunken overtures to the predominantly young reporters that were the main issue, although most found his handsy behaviour revolting.
It was Wick’s manipulative, controlling conduct that devastated Nine’s talented crop of female journalists. The uncomfortable truth was that the news veteran could make or break the careers of anyone in the newsroom, at any time. He could do as he pleased – and he did.
His modus operandi was well-rehearsed. Wick would identify his favourites, quite often a new female recruit to the newsroom, and shower them with praise.
He would promise the kind of career progression women in their 20s could only dream of. And then, usually in a setting where alcohol was (or had been) flowing freely, Wick would make a clumsy, pathetic pass.
When his amorous approaches were rebuffed – and mostly they were – Wick’s mood would darken. Those who stood up to him were “frozen out”; workplace opportunities would dry up, long-held promises of promotion would disappear, and his unrealistic demands would push female staff to breaking point.
“When I first started, I had a really good run under Wickie,” one former Nine journalist told The Australian.
“But I didn’t realise what his intentions were. One night after a work dinner – I was in my mid-20s at the time – he drove me home.
“When we pulled up outside my place, I got the full, hand-up-the-skirt, I-wanna-come-upstairs-with-you routine. I was totally caught by surprise and I knocked him back.
“But that wasn’t the worst part. It was what happened in the aftermath.
“I’d start copping abuse, I’d go out and do a story, and he’d tell me to go back out and reshoot it, even though there was obviously nothing wrong with it.
“I didn’t report it. It wasn’t something you did if you wanted a job at Nine News.”
After a while, it became too much, and the reporter quit. Wick’s offensive behaviour wasn’t the only reason for her departure, she told The Australian, but had Nine management taken steps to address his conduct – which often happened in full view of senior figures at the company – “things might have been different”.
“And speaking about it now after all these years makes me realise how insidious his behaviour was. He made me doubt myself professionally, and that anxiety stays without you. It doesn’t go away,” she said.
Another female staffer also recalls getting the “Wick treatment” in the early 2010s.
“It was well known that you had to keep sweet with Wickie or you were going nowhere at Nine,” said the woman, who worked directly under the news boss when she was in her late 20s and early 30s.
“At first, he was full of praise, and would tell me I’d been earmarked to eventually work on the big shows,” she told The Australian.
“But the moment he turned on me was at a Christmas party. I’d been working nights, and I arrived late and sober, and everyone else was already a few hours in.
“Wickie didn’t care who was around. He just started whispering lecherous stuff in my ear. It wasn’t sexual in nature, but it was about my physical appearance.
“It was inappropriate and it was gross, quite frankly.
“I left straight away and he watched me leave, so he knew he’d crossed the line. But his behaviour towards me changed after that night.
“Up until then I’d been one of his favourites. He was always saying I was underrated and that he could see my talent, but after that night it all changed.
“He would chip away at your confidence and your belief in yourself, and you ended up believing that you weren’t up to the job anymore.
“He got off on the power that he wielded, he loved holding people’s career progression in his hands.
“But it was the mental torture about my career that probably bothered me the most, though. The freezing me out, the fact that I knew I had no options to progress, that’s probably what destroyed me.
“They talk about the Nine family but it was probably a bit cultish in some respects, looking back.
“There’s a lot of pressure to be ‘Team Nine’.”
Asked why she didn’t make a complaint to HR at the time, the ex-journalist said simply: “There was no point. Management saw examples of his inappropriate conduct with their own two eyes, but still nothing was done.
“They saw Wickie grab women’s blouses and undo them at Christmas parties and the like.
“Unfortunately the response was just, ‘that’s just Wickie, what a slimebag’. And everyone would shake their heads and move on.”
Another former female staffer said it was known among female staff at Nine that they should not get into a taxi with Wick after functions where alcohol had been served, and should avoid sitting next to him at work dinners.
Some men knew about his bad behaviour too – backed up by claims Wick’s inappropriate behaviour was an open secret within the company.
“His bad behaviour on the drink was pretty well known, even by those at the top. Everyone on executive level would have known about it,” one insider, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Australian.
“It was tolerated, I saw him drunk all the time at events.
“Even when the whole MeToo thing was going off, people were too scared to say anything. They were afraid they would lose their livelihoods, their jobs. You couldn’t even trust HR, that’s how bad it was.”
The insider said females across Nine’s capital city newsrooms were furious at the company’s awkward attempt at placating them during a brief conference last Wednesday, and the overwhelming sense among reporters was that they were being lied to about the circumstances surrounding 60-year-old Wick’s departure in March.
“Staff are saying there needs to be an internal investigation about who knew what, and failed to act,” he said. “People who have made complaints feel that Darren Wick has been protected, and that’s very upsetting for people.”
A high-profile Nine star added: “It’s been the worst-kept secret. The safe was so secure regarding Wick,” the senior figure said, alluding to the fact the ex-news boss’s indiscretions were regularly buried by management.
The Australian is aware of many other claims and anecdotes of inappropriate behaviour by Wick, but the pressure is now on Nine management, and the board, to effect material change.
The company has previously tried to address the problem of a perceived toxic culture, most infamously in 2008, when then head of news and current affairs John Westacott was alleged to have said “women on TV have to be f..kable” in order to make it in the industry.
“I can remember the Nine PR department encouraging women to speak out about how great the culture at Nine was, in a bid to counter Westacott’s remarks,” one source at Nine recalls.
“But nothing much changed.”
Another insider told The Australian that it’s a matter of now or never for Nine’s management team to fix the problem.
“This is a come-to-Jesus moment,” the anonymous senior insider said.
“It’s seriously disappointing for a lot of people at Nine. We thought we had moved into the 21st century, I think we thought we were better than that, but we still have a way to go.”
Wick was contacted for comment but did not respond.
The Australian also sent questions to Nine chairman Peter Costello, chief executive officer Mike Sneesby (to whom Wick directly reported for the past three years), communications chief Victoria Buchan and director of Nine TV Michael Healy, asking if they knew about Wick’s alleged behaviour. None of them individually responded to the questions.
Instead a Nine spokesperson responded on their behalf: “Senior executives and directors you have approached were not aware of the historic allegations regarding Darren Wick and the news team.
“It is distressing to hear these stories, as Nine works hard across the organisation to prioritise a safe and respectful workplace for all our people. We continue to do so and as emphasised previously, any complaints made across our business are handled confidentially for the wellbeing of all involved.”
