Inside the drama at Nine and ABC

From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, May thirty one. Missing mum Bronwyn Winfield told a male friend she was being stalked and harassed by her estranged husband before she vanished. That's a revelation in the newest episode of The Australian's latest investigative podcast, It's called Bronwen and subscribers can hear episode three right now

Yeah, it does, in an era which most workplaces in Australia have left behind long ago. I suppose one of the saddest elements for me and pursuing this story was hearing from so many women who felt they had no recourse at nine, no one to trust, no one to lodge a complain with. They didn't have faith in the HR department, which is pretty damning in itself. You could probably argue that the test for any workplace in terms of staff management is the degree of support available to staff.

It's emerged now that he left Nine with a million dollar payout. Now television's very famous for enormous salaries, that is still a huge amount of money to give someone who was pretty close to retirement age, isn't it.

Yes, And it's infuriated Nine employees on the floor. It's certainly the case that nine has long celebrated its robust culture, but it seems the network and the wider media company perhaps has been slow to evolve, whereas the rest of corporate Australia has long moved past the era where harassment of women can be swept under the carpet.

As I said, you broke this story. It was then widely covered in other media outlets, but it took several days Fort nine's own print publications, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Financial Review to get involved in that coverage. When they did, they went pretty hard, didn't they, James, Given that the person who's alleged to have overseen that one million dollar payout is still in charge of Nine.

Yes, it was certainly noticeable how strident the criticism was coming out of Nine's publishing division. Investigative reporter Cape mcclemont certainly wrote a fierce piece that was on the page one of the weekend edition on Saturday. But it's also interesting to note how unusual it was as the coverage developed, how critical they were of Mike sneeze Bee, and how open those master heads were just speculating about his likely demise.

Nine's overall board met on Thursday. How does eruptive? Do you think this issue has been for the functioning of the business.

Hugely disruptive and in fact Nine is admitting how damaging the past fortnight's revelations have been on the business. There's certainly been strong indications from inside nine that the CEO, Mike Sneezebe and the chair Peter Costello appear to be at cross purposes in how to handle the crisis, and perhaps more importantly, the five other members of the board are understood to be deeply upset and shocked in fact, at the way the matter has been handled.

Do you think Mike Sneezebey can keep his job and Peter Costello can keep his job.

I think mister Sneezeby faces an uphill battle to save his job. Not only is there talk that he's lost support of the board, it seems quite clear that journalists on the editorial flaws across nine are furious at the way nine's leadership have pursued this issue. One thing that might save mister Sneezby in the short term is his announcement earlier this week of a wide ranging internal investigation

At the top. And what about Peter Costello.

Well, Peter Costllo has been nine chair men for close to thirteen years now, and he's been noticeably silent over the past ten days. His silence hasn't gone down too well inside nine either. Plenty of people I've spoken to have said, you would think at a moment like this, mister Costello would stand up and express regret at the toxic culture that has flourished under his leadership, and perhaps be more forthright about where nine will go in the future.

Over at the ABC, there's a different kind of drama with a superstar journalist reprimanded by her bosses. All the big media stories including news corps restructure, Network ten's legal adventures and Channel seven's leadership eruptions are in The Australian, with our media team breaking all the big yarns each Monday and throughout the week. You can subscribe for a lot less than a CEO salary to get all our journalism twenty four to seven. We'll be back after this break. I know that.

On the night of Paduttance address and replying to the budget, I was sitting there with this terrible chill running through me, thinking, okay, we're back.

Into this territory. This is the ABC's Laura Tingle, who's previously worked at a number of other outlets, including The Australian. She was speaking at the Sydney Writers Festival last weekend. If you didn't catch it, Tingle said she felt a terrible chill when listening to Peter Dutton, the Opposition leader, making this speech.

Amidst this housing crisis. Labor is bringing in one point sixty seven million migrants over five years, more than the population of Adelaide. We celebrate the contributions of migrants over many decades or a great country because of what they've helped to build, and the great Australian achievement of modern Australia is something that we celebrate every day. But by getting the migration policy settings right, the Coalition can free

Tingle went on saying she had a sudden flash of people turning up to try to rent property or at auction and being abused for being different as.

That basically he has given them license to be abused.

Tingle said, I mean we are a racist country and it's very depressing.

I mean, we are a racist capulet's face it. We always have been, and it's very depressing. But to give license like that I find profoundly depressing and a terrible prospect.

For the next election. Here's Coalition Senator Sarah Henderson at Senate Estimates on Thursday night, grilling ABC Managing director David Anderson.

I'm mister Anderson, will you apologize to mister Dutton for the comments.

Of Laura Tingle. Green's Senator Sarah Hanson Young chimes in, you don't want racism, don't peddle it or order, and Anderson replies the Senator, I am.

I am quite regretful that these statements were made without the usual qualification they would normally have, and therefore that actually hurt hurt the ABC. I think miss Tingles suffered for it, and I think that it allowed that when these comments are put together sometimes it allows for other people to take a debate into a different direction. I am generally sorry that that happened. I wish it hadn't have happened.

Jingle's remarks were broken by the Australians Media reporter Sophie Ellsworth. She's media editor James Madden.

I was shocked, to be honest, Claire. It basically exposed the ABC to severe criticism given her obvious lack of impartiality. Firstly, she said unequivocally that Australia is a racist country. Secondly, she took aim at Peter Dutton specifically over his migration and housing policies, and suggested that his policies were so divisive that ordinary Australians would now have an understandable license to abuse migrants at events such as home inspections and auctions.

The Australian has a lot of senior journalists who write news and they also make commentary. Why is it different for someone who works at the ABC.

Well, put simply, journalists who work at the ABC are bound by the ABC Charter. The ABC Charter demands balance, fair mindedness and impartiality. That's a non negotiable. A lot of ABC journalists appear not necessarily to like those guidelines, but they're there in black and white, and they're there for a reason. The ABC is the public broadcaster, and without impartiality, it's reason for existence is no longer.

It's a bit of a vicious circle, isn't it. James because every time a coalition government comes in, people at the ABC fear that there's going to be retribution that their budget will become Does the coalition punish the ABC when it has the opportunity.

That's certainly opened for debate, And that's certainly a perception that has existed in the past, most recently under Tony Abbott when there was an argument or indeed a debate over the indexing of the ABC funding. But Peter Dutton, in comments on Ray Hadley's program, made it very clear that the ABC had nailed its political colors to the mast. Tingles comments on the Weekend were in no way balanced

Dingle has been formally reprimanded by News boss Justin Stevens, who released a statement saying Tingle's remarks would not have met babc's standards for on air balance. Babc's new chair Kim Williams, who used to run News Corps Australia has said anyone who doesn't want to be impartial shouldn't work at the ABC.

It is a test for Williams. He made clear that he wasn't going to stand for any breach of the editorial guidelines and you can be assured that Williams's fingerprints were all over that statement released by Justin Stephens.

James Madden is The Australian's Media editor and you can check out all his journalism by subscribing at The Australian dot com dot au. Thanks for joining us on the front this week. Our team is Christian Amyot, Joshua Burton, Leotsammaglue, Matthew Condon, Jasper League, Tiffany Dim Back and make Clare hobby