Tuesday, 26 July 2005

Sluggo Richardson, the reporter who shouldn’t be on air

Paula Piccinini, family law barrister, writes:

Journalists often wonder why they rate so poorly in public trust surveys, but they should not be surprised when people like Today Tonight reporter Dave “Sluggo” Richardson are still on air.

Sluggo was done over by Liz Jackson on Media Watch this week for harassing a single mother who had five children by four men. The woman was stalked and ambushed, her child’s face was revealed and then the program paraded a range of benefits that she could claim but doesn’t.

“Mary-Anne” was patronisingly called “darling” by Sluggo but far from being some sort of promiscuous dole bludger, she actually works as a waitress while also looking after five children.

In my ten years working in family law, single mothers with children to different fathers were a dime a dozen. I can specifically recall two mums with five kids to four dads. Neither of them did it for the pension money. Both of them were constantly looking for a man to save them and give them support, companionship and security. Both of them were poor judges of character.

More often than not, the guy would make himself at home in the mother’s house, sleep with her, endear himself to her kids and then do a runner when it all got too hard. Or, worse still, the guy was a brute and the mother and kids would have to do a runner. Both these women had flawed characters. Poor self esteem was at the core of their problems, but the guys were no better and often worse. Had “Sluggo” shone his devious spotlight on the four dads in this story, I’m confident the mother would be receiving donations not condemnation.

It might be time for my shareholder activist husband to give Sluggo another airing at the forthcoming Seven AGM. In October 1998, Stephen got up at the Seven AGM and had a dip at executive chairman Kerry Stokes for only suspending “Sluggo” for huge ethical breaches but then sacking the well regarded Melbourne Today Tonight team of Jill Singer, Greg Hoy, Mark Forbes, Jeremy Thompson and Marco Bass, who just happened to have upset Jeff Kennett with some real journalism. This is what appeared in The Daily Telegraph on 24 October 1998:

Stokes also openly dealt with the apparent contradiction in axing several highly regarded Seven journalists, most notably Witness reporter Graham Davis, whilst not sacking David Richardson, the Today Tonight reporter caught blatantly fabricating footage on the Skase chase. He said the Davis battle boiled down to a dispute with his executive producer and last week’s settlement was “well less than half” reported figures of $1 million.

He agreed Richardson’s action was “something we were not proud of” but deemed suspension was “the appropriate disciplinary action” and mistakes “should not impinge on a person’s career forever.”

Go to this link and you’ll also see that in 2003 “Sluggo” was caught pretending to be in Iraq when he wasn’t. As you can see, the cowboy has been giving tabloid television a bad name for almost a decade now. It’s time to sack Sluggo, Kerry!