‘I feel like Rob Sitch in Utopia’
‘The mood in the newsroom at SBS is “unhinged” at the moment, sources tell Media Briefs, with the broadcaster’s managing director James Taylor grilled at a recent monthly all-staff meeting over staff perceptions that the news and currseent affairs decision was losing diverse talent.
“Highly-skilled, diverse talent from news and current affairs have quit en masse in the last 12 months, impacting the quality of our TV output,” read the question submitted anonymously by a staff member.
“How will senior leadership fix this?”
SBS would not provide the response when asked by Briefs, but it is understood director of news and current affairs Mandi Wicks answered the question.
Media Briefs is aware that at least nine journalists have left the news and current affairs division over the past year, including a wave in mid-2023. That includes World News national editor Matthew Connellan, senior producer Charlie Page, features and investigations editor Kate Sullivan, deputy features editor Isabelle Lane and cross-platform journalist Omar Dehen. More recently, reporter Mahnaz Angury has been seconded on a medium-term deal to Turkey’s public broadcaster TRT World, while former cadets Achol Arok and Francesca De Nuccio have left to join The Daily Aus and Seven respectively.
It is also understood that the broadcaster has also not been successful in recruiting an Indigenous candidate for its 2024 cadetship program, administered with NITV. SBS’ director of Indigenous content Tanya Denning-Orman confirmed the program would not run this year, but said “SBS and NITV remain committed to their dedicated Indigenous cadetship … it will continue again in 2025.”
One journalist at SBS told Briefs: “100 years of experience has walked out the door in a year. There’s a real vibe that the place is being hollowed out from the bottom and at risk of collapsing inwards. I feel increasingly like Rob Sitch in Utopia around here.”
Another source told Media Briefs that diverse staff felt they weren’t listened to by a cohort of generally less-diverse upper management.
One source said the cultural issues within the newsroom felt like “death by a thousand cuts”, while career progression at the company was limited by apparent “different rules for different people”.
Wicks told Briefs she was “constantly working to ensure our newsroom is the best workplace possible and [will] continue to meet with team members to listen to their perspectives and to seek feedback”.
“SBS News prides itself on its diversity — the most diverse newsroom in the country — and as a place that great journalists want to work,” she said.
“Our turnover is in line with or below the wider industry, our newsroom is the most diverse it has ever been, and has increased this diversity during the past 12 months.”
Wicks said SBS rejected the claim the broadcaster’s news leadership was not diverse.
“Of the senior leadership group across news and current affairs, five are either born overseas or have English as a second language (or both),” she said.
“Any way you look at it, the newsroom and the senior leadership team are clearly representative of multicultural Australia.”
At sixes and Sevens
Seven is under serious heat this week.
First came the revelations attached to the Bruce Lehrmann defamation saga, courtesy of the network’s chase of Lehrmann’s signature for last year’s bombshell Spotlight interview. Justice Michael Lee’s judgment found to a civil standard that Lehrmann, who categorically denied in the program having had any sort of untoward interaction with former colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019, had raped her.
One ex-Seven staffer told Media Briefs this week that working in Eveleigh over the course of the Lehrmann affair was “incredibly uncomfortable” for the women in the newsroom. The staffer said Lehrmann was often seen in the office being “chummy” with director of news and public affairs Craig McPherson.
“You’d go to the bathroom, and there was Bruce, in the kitchen with a Spotlight producer. It was a jump scare,” the staffer said.
Then came the revelations of former commercial director Bruce McWilliam’s vitriolic correspondence with journalists over a separate expenses scandal at the network involving travel benefits being allegedly misused by staff working on morning show Sunrise.
Later came former staffer Taylor Auerbach’s concerns notice sent to outgoing chief executive James Warburton, former Spotlight producer Rob McKnight and McWilliam over the company’s public denials relating to Auerbach’s evidence tendered in the Lehrmann matter. Auerbach claims he has suffered “significant distress, embarrassment, humiliation and upset” as a result of the statements.
Finally, the network is also at the centre of defamation proceedings after incorrectly “confirming” the name of the recent Bondi Junction attacker as 20-year-old university student Ben Cohen.
A Seven statement blamed a junior social media editor for the mistake, but one ex-Seven staffer with knowledge of Seven’s social media processes told Media Briefs this was inconceivable because social media producers were not usually tasked with newsgathering, on top of the fact that the information would have usually had to have been approved by multiple producers before being put to air. A dataset reported by ABC News showed pro-Vladimir Putin influencers and conspiracy theorists on X were primarily responsible for amplifying the misinformation that Seven put to air.
Another ex-Seven journalist told Media Briefs she didn’t “think a media outlet had been so thoroughly raked over the coals for multiple issues in such a short period of time”.
Moves
- Peter van Onselen has joined Daily Mail Australia as its new political editor, a year on from leaving the same role at Network Ten.
- The Canberra Times’ chief political correspondent Karen Barlow has left the paper, to be replaced by senior reporter Dana Daniel.
- Our very own Emma Elsworthy has announced she will be leaving her role after three years writing our morning newsletter the Crikey Worm.
