Piers Morgan and Bruce Lehrmann (Image: AAP/Private Media)
Piers Morgan and Bruce Lehrmann (Image: AAP/Private Media)

Lehrmannheimer

It’s been a big week in the media law world, with a number of prominent trials and hearings taking place in Sydney’s legal district.

At one end of town, there was Antoinette Lattouf’s Fair Work Commission hearing in her ongoing unfair dismissal case against the ABC, which your humble correspondent attended. Meanwhile on Phillip St was the ongoing Lehrmann vs Network Ten defamation hearing, as well as the associated cross-claims — specifically, former The Project host Lisa Wilkinson’s claim against Ten for her legal fees. At the same time, former ACT DPP Shane Drumgold was fighting the findings of the Sofronoff inquiry in the nation’s capital.

The collision of the two previously separate cases precipitated The Australian’s editorial director, Claire Harvey, dubbing the hearing “Lehrmannheimer”, a reference to the Barbenheimer phenomenon, as she hosted Tuesday’s episode of the broadsheet’s daily news podcast, The Front. 

In a promotional post to her LinkedIn, Harvey said the episode was a “walkthrough on the Shane Drumgold/Lisa Wilkinson/Bruce Lehrmann/Brittany Higgins legal melodrama”. I will leave judgment of that framing to you, dear reader, but if you would like a walkthrough of the case that doesn’t make pop culture references in talking about the legalities of an alleged rape, you can find one by yours truly here. 

Media Briefs put questions to Harvey, as well as The Australian’s editor Kelvin Healey, as to whether the Lehrmann defamation matter was really analogous to Barbenheimer and whether they agreed with sexual consent activist Chanel Contos that the media needs to be more responsible when reporting on gendered violence.

Briefs also asked the pair whether they felt The Australian had a heightened responsibility in reporting on the Lehrmann/Higgins/Wilkinson matters, given the paper’s proximity to proceedings, and whether they felt it was discharging that responsibility appropriately.

Harvey told Briefs that the episode was “entirely appropriate”, along with the rest of The Australian‘s coverage.

“This particular episode is not about the rape allegation, nor the main defamation case where that allegation is pivotal. The title is clearly an allusion to two events coinciding in the same sphere,” she said.

“The Australian — and I personally – both have a long record of reporting on allegations of sexual, family and intimate partner violence, from podcast investigations to news and analysis.

“We are always respectful and sensitive.”

Newsrooms see profits dropping

While it might have been a big week in the media law world, it’s been an awful week for media shareholder confidence. Seven West Media announced a 53% half-yearly profit drop on Tuesday, which also saw stocks tank. Seven blamed a decline in the television advertising market, with its total revenue dropping 4.8%. 

The advertising downturn is industry-wide, with Nine Entertainment last August reporting its profits had dropped 38%, also off the back of reduced advertising revenue. Employees at The Guardian in the UK this week are also preparing for cost cuts, with the newspaper’s owners reporting a “beyond acceptable or sustainable” loss of £39 million off the back of declining digital advertising revenue. Guardian Australia, which is also owned by The Scott Trust, did not respond in time for publication to Crikey’s questions about whether the losses would affect local staff. 

Job cuts owing to the advertising market have also affected this masthead, with Crikey owner Private Media cutting a number of jobs late last year after a “very challenging year for advertising revenue”, according to CEO Will Hayward.

While Seven and Guardian Australia staff face an anxious wait, staff at Network Ten have even more imminent worries, with owners Paramount Global this week announcing job losses in Australia.

Local job losses have also followed at Craig Hutchison’s Sports Entertainment Network (SEN), with News Corp reporting his network cut at least four staff while Hutchison himself was in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl alongside his highly-paid star broadcaster Gerard Whateley. SEN’s share price dropped 9% over the last five-day reporting period, and Media Briefs understands SEN staff have expressed serious concerns about the financial future of the company.

TikTok ATO fraud 

This week, Australian Taxation Office (ATO) commissioner Chris Jordan admitted to Senate estimates that the office’s “not fit for purpose” fraud detection systems were snowed under by the scale of a scheme spread on TikTok that saw 57,000 people defraud taxpayers of $2 billion, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. 

At least 150 ATO officials have been investigated as part of the scheme, which involved fake businesses with ABNs then using fake business activity statements to claim GST refunds. 

The recovery effort, dubbed Operation Protego, has resulted in more than 100 arrests and 16 convictions through criminal investigations, according to a report released by the auditor-general this week. 

The ATO told ABC News in a statement that the majority of people involved in the scheme were “former contractors or ex-employees and were not working with the ATO at the time they are suspected of committing Operation Protego fraud”.

Moves 

  • Piers Morgan’s nightly talk show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, will no longer screen on Sky News Australia, with Morgan leaving News Corp’s TalkTV opinion channel to focus on his YouTube channel. Uncensored was one of the flagship programs for TalkTV, but Morgan described it as an “unnecessary straitjacket”. 
  • Guardian Australia has announced Karen Middleton as political editor, as first reported by Crikey. Middleton replaces Katharine Murphy, who moves into Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s office. 
  • Former 3AW Mornings host Neil Mitchell will join Seven’s Sunrise as a contributor. Mitchell left the Nine-owned program last year after more than three decades.

Tweet of the week