Behind the Media Podcast
A weekly interview with journalists, writers, editors, presenters and other media careerists.
The Australian’s media diarist Stephen Brook hosts Behind The Media, a sometimes casual, sometimes serious weekly interview.
Expect candid conversations with journalists, writers, editors, presenters and other media careerists who discuss the state of the industry and their own careers.
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Latest podcast: Stephen Brook
Media Diary Editor / Behind the Media presenter
In a bonus episode of Behind The Media, the tables were turned and Stephen Brook is interviewed by Hedley Thomas, The Australian’s National Chief Correspondent and the investigative reporter who created The Teacher’s Pet podcast.
On his last day Stephen reflects on 15 years at The Australian; from starting out as a copy boy, becoming a cadet and covering the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre and moving to Perth where he wrote an magazine feature on becoming a jackaroo.
Like many notable journalists, Stephen moved to to London where he worked at The Guardian.
Since returning to Australia in 2011, ‘Brooky’ as he is affectionately called in the newsroom has been media editor and features editor before he took up the role of Media Diary editor and creator of Behind the Media.
“I think that gossips make very good journalists, if you’ve got a skill you should embrace it and try and exploit it professionally.”
Recently he broke the story of ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie being sacked.
Read more here.
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PREVIOUS EPISODES
George Negus
Television interviewer
When it is put to the veteran TV interviewer and correspondent that political interference has been a massive topic for the public broadcaster this year, he pipes up, “It’s always been.” and Negus should know.
Now he runs his own media company with partner Kirsty Cockburn. They host conferences and Negus works for several international travel groups hosting tours, including through the Middle East for Travel for the Mind. For him, it is an extension of his foreign reporting. Read more here.
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Ed Kavalee
Radio presenter
“One of the more serious conversations we had when we were getting more serious was hey, our life is now copy,” says Kavalee of a discussion he had with wife Tiffiny Hall.
“What radio does (is) it make you alive in your own life. So things that would have normally have passed you by, you suddenly stop and go, hang on a second, that’s content.” Read morehere
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Ben Fordham
Radio presenter
“2GB is the most powerful radio station in the country,” radio presenter Ben Fordham tells Behind the Media. “And with that comes a lot of fans and a lot of critics.”
“I think the weight of Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, who are the two senior broadcasters, lends itself to 2GB being a very powerful outfit.
“But I think some people can misunderstand that power, because most of the time that power is used in a way just to help people out and to make a positive difference. Read more here.
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Hedley Thomas
Investigative reporter
Stephen Brook interviews Hedley Thomas, the investigative journalist behind the record-breaking true crime podcast The Teacher’s Pet, which has Hollywood pursuing him.
Hedley has taken on prime ministers, billionaires, and the Australian Federal Police. As a foreign correspondent he covered the collapse of communism. He’s won a gold Walkley award for the shocking case of Dr Mohamed Haneef, but shocked the industry by walking away from journalism.
As the National Chief Correspondent at The Australian, Hedley reinvented himself as a podcaster with The Teacher’s Pet. Read more here.
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Michael Rowland
Presenter
Michael Rowland joined ABC News Breakfast in 2010 after a varied reporting career that included federal parliament, business and finance rounds and a stint as US correspondent covering the election of Barack Obama and the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.
Adjusting to the breakfast style was difficult, he says. “You need to be, for want of a better expression, provocative, where you need to go outside your journalistic comfort zone and express an opinion on something.” Read more here.
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Barrie Cassidy
Presenter
It’s hard to imagine the ABC without Insiders, the television show that reshaped the broadcaster’s Sunday morning political programming. Host Barrie Cassidy launched Insiders 17 years ago, but plans for the program actually began in Belgium, where he sketched out a promising format with his houseguests, photographer Mike Bowers and future news director Gaven Morris.
Barrie has seen both sides of politics in an extensive career. He spent three years as a press gallery journalist in Canberra, and six as Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s press secretary.
In this episode of Behind the Media, he tells Stephen Brook about accusations of partisan bias, what went wrong with sacked ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie, and his own experiences of political fallout at the national broadcaster decades ago. Read more here.
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Dan Box
Crime reporter
Former crime reporter at The Australian Dan Box has spent the past three years covering the Bowraville murders in print, and for a podcast. He returned to Australia this month to cover the latest developments in the case, which has been referred to the High Court.
He talks to media diarist Stephen Brook about the podcast that won him two Walkley awards in 2016, his follow up video documentary series The Queen & Zak Grieve, and the state of true crime at the moment. Read more here.
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Anton Enus
Newsreader
Anton Enus is back on our screens after a two year fight against bowel cancer, an experience that he says changed him as a person and a journalist.
He documented his medical treatment through social media and SBS’s website, allowing the usually private journalist to become the story. He says it was cathartic.
Anton’s 20 year career at SBS began unexpectedly while looking for freelance work on a holiday in Sydney. Hailing from South Africa, he worked for the South African Broadcasting Corporation during the apartheid regime. It was just one of the times Anton had to swallow his pride in a country that classified him as ‘cape coloured’. Another was having to get special permission to study journalism at a white-only university.
In an extensive and frank conversation with Stephen Brook, he corrects the record on being outed by South African and Australian media, the role of public broadcasting in the face of government pressure and taking over from Lee Lin Chin as the SBS weekend newsreader.
Read more here.
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Trent Dalton
Feature writer
The Weekend Australian Magazine staff writer Trent Dalton forms intense emotional attachments with the people he’s interviewing. But what happens every Saturday when the story is published?
He admits his stories can be so emotional that he sometimes cries when he is writing, but how does he convince people to open up to him?
Dalton’s new novel Boy Swallows Universe is influenced by his childhood in Brisbane growing up on the wrong side of the tracks and mixes humour with violence. It is a love letter to the 1980s but also to journalism.
He confesses when he was younger that he knew his ambitious journalism could hurt people, but now he is trying to find a different way to deliver the yarn but still make people feel good about themselves. Read more here.
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Bevan Lee
Television scriptwriter
Since the 1980s, Bevan Lee has described Australia to itself through the medium of commercial television drama, working on Sons and Daughters as a writer and rewriting the first episode of Home and Away before creating Always Greener, Packed to the Rafters and Winners & Losers.
Lee is a fierce critic of the state of Australian television, which he says is far too character-driven and not plot-driven. Read more here.
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Paul Kelly
Political journalist and historian
The Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, gives his account of Australia’s recent political turmoil and tells us if conservative commentators are to blame.
Kelly also discusses the state of press gallery journalism and says it is much harder now than it ever used to be.
The former editor-in-chief of The Australian explains why he doesn’t use Twitter, the time he missed out on a cadetship to another famous journalist, and how to handle being shouted at by prime ministers. Read more here.
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Matt Williams
Editor, NT News
There is a serious side to Matt Williams, who edits Darwin’s “unconventional, bold, unique and unashamedly Territorian” tabloid, to quote its own marketing material. Read more here.
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Helen McCabe
Digital content director, nine.com.au
Helen talks to Stephen about Nine’s new digital play - Future Women, her memories of editing the Women’s Weekly, and what her involvement in Fairfax could be. Read more here.
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Campbell Brown
Digital media executive
Campbell Brown, Facebook’s global head of news partnerships, is a former NBC News correspondent and CNN anchor who won an Emmy award for covering Hurricane Katrina in her home state of Louisiana. She is a charming and effective ambassador, but the New York Times once said some in the industry thought she was an “ambassador from a dictatorship, willing to deliver bad news with a smile and some canapes”. Read more here.
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Mark Schoofs
Investigative journalist
Mark Schoofs, 55, heads a global team of investigative reporters for BuzzFeed News. The journalist studied philosophy at university and became a journalist in the cruicible of the US AIDS crisis in the 1980s, when many in his community were dying.
But when he was approached about joining the news and entertainment site, he had to be honest. “I did not know what Buzzfeed was.” Read more here.
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Les Hinton
Journalist and business executive
Les Hinton worked in newspapers for Rupert Murdoch for 52 years but is frank about their future. “I don’t think that newspapers can ever be the great giants of profit that they used to be. There are too many people telling the same stories.” Read more here.
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Kate McClymont
Journalist
Journalist Kate McClymont has spent almost her entire career at The Sydney Morning Herald, bar a two-year stint as a Four Corners researcher. She is well known for talking to anyone, any time. “If people bother to either ring you or contact you or email you, you owe those people a duty to say yes or no. I can’t bear it when I contact people and they don’t get back to me.” Read more here.
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Shaun Micallef
Comedian and TV personality
Comedian Shaun Micallef, a former lawyer who started out doing university reviews in Adelaide, will cut a joke if he feels the response is too partisan.
“There might be a sense of satisfaction in having your views about a particular subject confirmed or endorsed or validated by the television. But that doesn’t really interest me. It’s kind of not what I’m there for,” he says. Read more here.
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Hamish and Andy
Comedians
Hamish Blake and Andy Lee are known universally as just Hamish and Andy, but to each other as Hayme and Ando.
The morning after the Logies, the pair sit down to discuss the forthcoming series of their comedy program True Story, creating an international TV format, saving Dave Hughes at the Logies, why Bert Newton needs to say sorry, and why they don’t let business get in the way of their enduring friendship. Read more here.
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Kerry O’Brien
Broadcaster
The six-time Walkley award winner and former anchor of 7:30 Report and Four Corners reveals his new book project and says the ABC must mobilise to fight the “punishment” of budget cuts.
O’Brien talks about the trick to getting a good interview, how politicians do their best to avoid answering the question, and why he admires John Howard for fronting up to his interrogations. Read more here.
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Richard Lloyd Parry
Foreign Correspondent
International guest Richard Lloyd Parry is the Asia Editor of The Times newspaper.
He has worked for The Independent and The Times and reported from most of Asia’s trouble spots including Indonesia and Afghanistan. He speaks about about whether foreign correspondents have a future, how to use a pseudonym to sneak into Burma, and where he keeps Osama Bin Laden’s underwear. Read more here.
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Julia Zemiro
TV Presenter
Zemiro is the host with the most; she’s the face of Home Delivery on ABC, RocKwiz on SBS and calls herself the midwife of Eurovision in Australia. And she’s about to present All Together Now, a big budget singing show on Channel 7.
She talks about why she won’t present Eurovision again, if RocKwiz will ever come back, plus her talents in getting showbusiness veterans to open up in interviews. Read more here.
Sharri Markson
Political Journalist
At 34, the indefatigable Markson is the national political editor for The Daily Telegraph.
She broke the news that Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce was having a love child with a former staffer, which cost him his job, and explains how the Canberra Press Gallery works.
Sharri spent a year editing Cleo magazine, was media editor of The Australian, won a Walkley award at Seven news, convinced a wealthy businessman to let her have her wedding on his private country estate despite his initial refusal. And there’s the time the ABC baked her a birthday cake. Read more here.
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Ross Coulthart
Investigative Journalist
A senior presence at the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes, investigative journalist Ross Coulthart talks about why he is departing, and what he might to do next.
The former lawyer who has worked at the ABC, Seven and Nine, is discouraged about the state of television to investigate stories, he says it lacks the sufficient budgets and attracting audiences are a problem. US start-ups such as The Intercept might be able to fix the formula.
Coulthart accuses the ABC of mishandling the return of the Cabinet Files and recalls the ABC’s different approach during his days on Four Corners. And if you want to leak him a story, don’t call him on your mobile. It’ll only end badly, due to the chilling effect of metadata laws. Write a letter instead. Read more here.
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David Koch
Sunrise co-host
Kochie talks about staying on top of breakfast TV for 15 years with Seven’s breakfast program and why former Prime Minister John Howard has still never forgiven him for an on-air incident.
The presenter also talks about how to fix cricket, why his chairmanship of Port Adelaide is not a conflict with his journalism, campaigning to mend our organ donation system and his deep disappointment with Australia’s attitude to East Timor. Read more here.
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Peter Blunden
Managing director - editorial, Herald and Weekly Times
Peter Blunden is in a reflective mood as he looks back over more than 40 years in journalism, including editing the Herald Sun and Adelaide Advertiser.
He talks about the importance of shaking up coverage on AFL, the digital future and the lowest time in his career - spending the day in the Supreme Court getting grilled by a QC in the Bruce Guthrie unfair dismissal case. Read more here.
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Patricia Karvelas
ABC presenter
Patricia Karvelas is a rare journalist: she spent her formative years at The Australian before making the move to the ABC four years ago.
Now she presents three programs: RN Drive on weeknights, National Wrap on Sunday nights and the Party Room podcast with colleague Fran Kelly. Read more here.
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Jane Kennedy
Radio Host
Jane Kennedy rose to fame as bitchy Brooke Vandenberg on the ABC comedy Frontline. But she is also a TV producer, casting director, comedian, cookbook author and mother of five.
This year she has added the national Triple M Drive program with friend Mick Molloy to her schedule that includes appearances on Ten’s Have You Been Paying Attention?Read more here.
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Andrew Bolt
Columnist, blogger, TV presenter, radio co-host and author
Controversial media figure Andrew Bolt labels himself a conservative, not right wing.
The Melbourne-based News Corp columnist and blogger, Sky News host and Macquarie Media radio co-host speaks candidly to Behind the Media about retirement plans, political plans, loyalty to readers outweighing his friendship with politicians including Tony Abbott. And he reveals the influence his late father-in- law had on his journalism. Read more here.
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Michael Ware
War correspondent, documentary maker
He is little know in Australia but Brisbane-born reporter Michael Ware became the voice of the Iraq war when he was based in Baghdad for Time magazine and CNN for six years from 2003. Read more here.
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Ita Buttrose
Journalist
Ita founded Cleo magazine in the 1970s, then became editor in chief of the Australian Women’s Weekly and later the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers. She has been a magazine founder, media executive, Australian of the Year and now appears on Studio 10. Read more here.
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Janet Albrechtsen
Opinion columnist with The Australian
Janet Albrechtsen is an opinion columnist with The Australian who came to the paper after a career in law. She sat down with Stephen Brook to talk about the #metoo movement going too far, writing her centre right column but turning against liberal party prime ministers and the time she was called a “skanky ho” by Mark Latham. Read more here.
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Russel Howcroft
Partner, PwC
Russel Howcroft is an industry veteran who this year celebrates a decade on The Gruen Transfer, the hit ABC advertising panel show. Howcroft tells Stephen Brook that the digital media business is maturing. He also lifts the lid on how the Gruen program changed his life. Read more here.
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Julian Morrow
Satirist, producer, lawyer
A founding member of The Chaser, executive producer of The Checkout and Growing up Gracefully, Morrow chats to his old uni friend Brook about making the move to satire after practicing as a lawyer, numerous stoushes with the law and court of public opinion after the APEC stunt, Make a Wish sketch and the Chris Kenny debacle and the future of the satirical group. Read more here.
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Mia Freedman
Editor and journalist
The MamaMia founder sits down for her first extensive interview after her annus horribilis, and discusses why she continues to put herself out there, how she’s learned to be a better boss, and why she thinks she’s been able to stay ahead of rapidly shifting media trends. Read more here.
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Chris Kenny
The Australian’s chief leader writer and columnist
Stephen Brook asks Chris Kenny about green-left journalists who want to appeal to their mates rather than tell the truth, why he is leaving Sky News for radio, whether Kevin Rudd really tried to block him getting a job on the Oz, why he sued the Chaser boys and the necessity of being an arse in print.
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Peter Greste
Foreign correspondent
After 400 days in an Egyptian prison, foreign correspondent Peter Greste experienced a level of fame he was uncomfortable with. He is a free man, but still trapped. His conviction in Egypt on terror charges means he can no longer practice the job he loves, that of reporting from the world’s trouble spots. Now he mixes journalism with campaigning for press freedom. Read more here.
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Miranda Devine
News Corp columnist
Miranda Devine generates controversy with almost every column she writes for News Corp papers. She talks about the same sex marriage vote, telling the truth and losing friends, her rocky relationship with Tony Abbott and Andrew Bolt. Read more here.
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Amanda Keller
FM radio breakfast announcer
The respected WSFM breakfast radio announcer Amanda Keller this year was inducted into the Commercial Radio Australia hall of fame. Here she talks about, fights between co-presenters, equal pay, how radio treats women well and why she doesn’t enjoy interviewing the prime minister. Read more here.
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Hugh Riminton
Ten News presenter, foreign correspondent
The news presenter talks about his book Minefields, how life as a foreign correspondent saved him from teenage alcoholism and the killing of a colleague right in front of him. Read more here.
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Annabel Crabb
ABC presenter, political commentator, podcaster
Fresh from the success of The House, her documentary about Parliament House in Canberra, Annabel Crabb talks about her approach to interviewing, attacks on the ABC, and how she is great mates with “trashbag” Leigh Sales and their podcast together. Read more here.