As Erin Patterson faced a plea hearing on Monday, several of her victims’ families told the court how the media’s interest in the case had exacerbated their suffering.
The daughter of Heather and Ian Wilkinson, Ruth Dubois, said the media’s behaviour had changed the way she interacts with people, leaving her isolated.
“The intense media coverage has left me second-guessing every word I say, worried about who I can trust with my thoughts and feelings,” Dubois said in her victim impact statement.
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“It is particularly revolting to experience our family’s tragedy being turned into entertainment for the masses and to know that people are using our family’s trauma for their own personal gain.”
Dubois was referring to the multiple books, television programs and podcasts that the crime has spawned, and they are all about to be rolled out.
A week after Patterson is sentenced on 8 September, Stan will screen the first episode of a three-part documentary, Revealed – Death Cap Murders, from Age journalists John Silvester and Marta Pascual Juanola.
Crown prosecutor Jane Warren said she believed the fascination with the triple murderer would wane, just as it has for Martin Bryant, who killed 35 people in the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.
Justice Christopher Beale asked Warren: “[Did] they make a TV series out of Martin Bryant?”
Warren: “I think it was a different time then. No Netflix, your honour. They make TV series out of everything now.”
Warren said that even when the court process ends, the case will continue to attract attention: “Everyone’s aware that there’s going to be some other media and content that refers to this case that’s going to come in the next while.”
Gail Patterson’s sister, Lynette Young, said her family was subjected to a “media frenzy” and Erin’s estranged husband, Simon, told the court at length of the toll on his family.
Simon said the court process and an “occasionally callous mainstream media” had been dehumanising and he was critical of the “deplorable” behaviour of journalists who stalked him and his children and knocked on the window of his house in the early hours.
“My kids and I have suffered many days filled with strangers menacing our home, brandishing notebooks, phones, cameras and microphones,” he said.
“We have faced people waiting in ambush at our front door, inches away with TV camera and microphone at the ready after ringing our door bell.”
Greener pastures
The ABC’s former defence correspondent Andrew Greene wasted no time in getting a new gig, after resigning this week after the investigation of “serious allegations” he failed to disclose a junket with an arms manufacturer.
Media Watch revealed in June that Greene filed a story about a German shipbuilder without disclosing that he had travelled to Germany courtesy of Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems, which was hoping to win Australian navy contracts.
The story, broadcast on ABC Radio’s The World Today, failed to disclose that the journalist had been a guest of the defence company. He did not tell his editor that he had travelled to Germany while on personal leave.
On Monday, the Canberra bureau was told Greene had resigned with a note which added: “The ABC maintains the importance of upholding its editorial and other policies.”
By Thursday, it became clear Greene was ensconced with another media giant, Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media, when he sat with the West Australian at the Midwinter Ball hosted by the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery in Canberra.
If you’re surprised he was picked up so fast after an ethical breach at the ABC, you haven’t been reading sections of the media.
In the Murdoch press, where the unauthorised trip was described as “a puerile travel junket”, the sentiment was that he should be rapped over the knuckles and given another chance.
Conservative broadcaster and former Seven news director Jason Morrison congratulated the West for hiring Greene, calling him one of the ABC’s genuine news-breakers. “He stuffed-up, should have been kicked up the arse for it – not driven out of the organisation. ABC’s loss is self-funded media sector’s gain,” he said on X.
Chris Dore, the editor-in-chief of The Nightly and the West Australian, did not respond to a request for comment. The former editor-in-chief of The Australian is a man who knows about second chances. He was let go from News Corp after reports of inappropriate behaviour in 2023 and then hired by Stokes less than a year later.
Out of Szeps
It’s almost two years since broadcaster Josh Szeps resigned from the ABC, saying he was “a bit too spicy for this gig”.
The gig was the highly coveted Afternoons slot on ABC Radio Sydney. But after several run-ins with management over his content, he walked away. In November 2023 Szeps quit live on air, telling audiences: “I’m a misfit. I’m a child of refugees but I’m a white Australian. I’m a gay guy but I hate Mardi Gras. I have Holocaust-surviving grandparents but I’m conflicted about Zionism. I’m an ABC presenter but I don’t like kale.
Szeps now hosts a hit podcast called Uncomfortable Conversations on Substack and has clocked up hundreds of interviews with everyone from Bob Carr to Candace Owens, Antony Loewenstein and comedian Jimmy Carr. His podcast is ranked top 20 globally in its category.
Last week the broadcaster spoke to Substack founders Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie about reinventing media. During the 90-minute conversation Szeps asked the entrepreneurs how much their lives had changed since they became successful. (And that was after he joked in the intro that they would discuss “why Nazis are great”).
Szeps asked them if they still they do their own laundry. Hamish said yes, he did laundry all the time, to which Szeps said: “This is why Filipinos exist, Hamish. You’re not supposed to be doing your own laundry, not at this level of success.”
On the face of it this comment was at least uncomfortable, but Szeps told Weekly Beast it was “a satire of the way that suddenly wealthy, or not even suddenly wealthy, white people are likely to regard the people around them as being instruments of their own privilege”.
He was trying to “prod and tease a couple of newly wealthy millionaires”.
“The gag is on me,” he said. “We white, wealthy, middle-class people only see the people around us as being helpers, and we can outsource all of the labour of our lives to disadvantaged people.”
Szeps added that he doesn’t think we should be so constrained that we can’t make playful comments without the fear of being cancelled: “Anything that is not anodyne is going to be potentially offensive to somebody.”
ABC’s Beijing bureau reopens
Almost five years to the day after it had to abandon its Beijing bureau, the ABC has announced it will return a correspondent to China. Bill Birtles, the ABC’s China correspondent in 2020, left Beijing in a hurry after being questioned by China’s ministry of state security about a case he was not involved in. The bureau has been empty ever since, putting an end to a 50-year presence in China which began in 1973 with Paul Raffaele – the first Australian journalist to be based in Mao’s China.
The ABC news director, Justin Stevens, said a former Middle East correspondent, Allyson Horn, will take up the role in the coming weeks: “Having an Australian journalist reporting this story on the ground for us will significantly bolster our reporting,” he said.
Marked man (and woman)
Eight years after Laurie Oakes leaked Malcolm Turnbull lampooning the US president, Donald Trump, at the Midwinter Ball, Sky News host Sharri Markson has followed suit.
The speeches by the prime minister and opposition leader are off the record, which is always a stretch when they are given in front of a room full of journalists.
The former Nine political editor broadcast leaked audio and video in 2017, saying he was not bound by off-the-record tradition as he did not attend the ball.
Markson replayed the Turnbull speech on her show this week and then announced she too had leaked audio and would broadcast it because, she too, did not attend the ball.
“Now to the Midwinter Ball in Canberra, held last night – where politicians get dressed up and mingle with journalists and lobbyists,” Markson said.
“But really, the stars of the night are the politicians’ speech writers, who embrace the rare opportunity to show their comedic prowess and crack out the jokes.”
Markson went on to replay some of opposition leader Sussan Ley’s very well-received speech, which included a joke about Markson.
“Albo and I are pretty different people but we do have some similarities.” Ley said “Sharri Markson hates me. Sharri Markson hates him.”
