Former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach was motivated by “hate” for a former colleague when he leaked details about the Seven Network’s dealings with Bruce Lehrmann to the press, Seven has alleged in court documents.
The claim forms part of Seven’s defence of a lawsuit brought by Auerbach, its former employee, in March. The journalist, who was a late witness in the Lehrmann defamation trial in March 2024, claims the network’s public statements about him outside the court last year led to him being vilified and shunned.
Auerbach alleged Seven executives spoke to a news.com.au journalist and provided statements to News Corp and ABC’s Media Watch which disparaged him.
After leaving Spotlight in 2023 and signing a non-disclosure agreement, Auerbach was employed by Sky News Australia as an investigations producer. But he lost his job at Sky when – after the Lehrmann defamation trial initially wrapped – News Corp published text messages between a Seven employee and a Thai massage parlour about the use of a Seven credit card.
In its defence to Auerbach’s lawsuit, Seven agreed that it entered into a confidential deed of settlement and release with Auerbach, but countered that he had breached his “own obligation not to disparage Seven” in communications with the media.
Seven said Auerbach worked with a more senior producer, Steve Jackson, at Spotlight but that they had a falling out, and Auerbach had by March 2024 “come to hate” him and was “backgrounding journalists against Jackson” about a 2019 incident.
In a cross-claim filed in the federal court in late April, the network included contextual imputations – other statements that may cast potentially defamatory material as insignificant – alleging Auerbach had behaved unethically when he took a photograph of a “partly naked” vulnerable woman sitting next to Jackson in December 2019. At the time, the cross-claim detailed, Jackson was a journalist at the Australian, and conducting an interview with the woman.
“During the course of the interview, photographs were taken of the woman by Auerbach whilst she was (at least) partly naked. In at least one of the photographs the woman appeared with her breasts exposed sitting next to Mr Jackson,” Seven alleged.
“Auerbach observed the woman to be behaving erratically and he knew she was in a vulnerable state and fragile and volatile. Even if the woman consented to the taking of the photographs, the act of taking them in these circumstances was intrusive, exploitative and unethical.”
Seven alleged Auerbach “began to circulate one or more of the photographs” among journalists in March 2024, when Jackson took up a role as chief media adviser to the NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb. The network claimed Auerbach was “enraged” by the appointment.
Auerbach circulated the photographs, Seven said, “without the woman’s consent and in order to harm Mr Jackson’s reputation and increase pressure on the Commissioner of Police to rescind the appointment”.
The network also alleged in its cross-claim that Auberbach provided text messages to news.com.au which contained “confidential information relating to Seven’s business, organisation or affairs” and that he disparaged both Seven and its former employee Jackson.
In his defence to the cross-claim, Auerbach said he did speak to Daily Telegraph journalists about his relationship to Jackson, but only to defend himself.
He said the Daily Telegraph put to him that he and Jackson had a falling out over the Lehrmann Spotlight interview, and that when Jackson was preparing an article for The Australian he had “engaged in a threesome with the woman” and “had consumed illicit drugs with the woman”.
Auerbach said in his defence that he told the Daily Telegraph the claims about drugs and a threesome were untrue and that he believed Jackson was the source of those claims.
Auerbach, who worked at Seven for nearly five years, said in his defence that he was instrumental in securing the network’s interview with Lehrmann, including purchasing $1,000 in services from a Thai masseuse for Lehrmann on the Seven’s credit card.
In his 2025 statement of claim against Seven, Auerbach said he began discussions with Lehrmann in October 2022 on behalf of Seven “with a view to Mr Lehrmann providing interviews and materials to Seven in exchange for payments”.
Auerbach said in the statement he was sent to Tasmania to play golf with Lehrmann and was “instructed to use the same credit card to purchase golf equipment for Mr Lehrmann and the expensive course fees at championship course Barnbougle”.
According to Auerbach he was “instructed to continue to use the credit card to purchase lavish dinners for Mr Lehrmann and purchase luxury accommodation stays for him over the course of the succeeding months”.
