Almost 20 years ago, a Channel Nine correspondent, Christine Spiteri, alleged the news director told women that “to make it in this industry, you gotta have fuckability”. Finally on Thursday, the extent of Nine’s toxic TV newsroom culture was laid bare.
In a remarkably frank independent report, which includes the heartbreaking anonymised experiences of staff, Nine’s broadcast division is painted as a workplace in which sexual harassment, bullying and abuse of power is systemic.
The report even alludes to the notorious comment, made by the late news director John Westacott, when a staffer says women were expected to be conventionally attractive to get ahead.
“They used to say, when they were considering women for roles, that they’d rate her on her ‘fuckability’,” one woman told the report’s authors. “They obviously can’t say that now – so they say ‘that woman has star power’ instead. But it means the same thing.”
It’s always been an open secret that Nine, under the late media mogul Kerry Packer and larrikin chief executives such as David Leckie, had a blokey and sexist culture, but management has certainly never admitted it.
When, in 2007, Spiteri took legal action, the network denied her claims, fought her and lost in the courts.
A woman of Maltese origin, Spiteri alleged Westacott told her: “You should work for SBS, you certainly have the name for it.”
The report, by workplace culture specialists Intersection, suggests this racist culture has persisted.
“I think we are an Anglo Celtic workplace and there is a lot of unconscious bias when it comes to hiring and promoting,” one staffer said. “My immediate supervisor remarked that a person of a particular race was ‘pretty good looking’ considering their ethnicity, to which I also belong.” The supervisor – like all the other people who allegations were made about – was not identified in the report.
“I had to say something to ensure this does not get overlooked or downplayed because it happened to women,” said another staffer. “Women were targets of the sexual harassment, for sure. Everyone was a target of the broader, toxic, bullying culture.”
The report found that in the broadcast division leaders and co-workers thought nothing of commenting on the appearance and bodies of women, in particular those who appear on-air.
This objectifying banter has a long history. In 2006 in a sworn affidavit, the then Nine executive Mark Llewellyn, who was until recently the executive producer of Seven’s Spotlight, said the Nine CEO at the time, Eddie McGuire, had joked about “boning” Jessica Rowe, who was co-hosting Today at the time. By boning he apparently meant to get rid of. McGuire has denied using “boning” and claimed he said “burn”.
Some staff are still experiencing what it’s like to be ridiculed in the workplace. “I have been on ice [by my manager] for speaking up about a story,” one staffer said. “Everyone calls it ‘Punishment Island’. When I was younger I would be in tears about something like this. I have now become disengaged. I am exhausted by the games.”
In 2006 Mia Freedman, now the owner of mamamia.com.au, was brought on as creative services director with a brief to provide more female content.
The former magazine editor lasted a year and later said the environment was toxic and resistant to change.
Nine’s board has apologised to staff and committed to implementing all 22 recommendations, but the painful stories of the human cost remain.
“The anxiety I experienced before [each workday] was debilitating,” one staffer said. “He would humiliate me in front of everyone else on the team. I have endured thousands of micro-aggressions over time. It is death by a thousand cuts … There was a point when I wanted to kill myself.”
Amanda Meade is Guardian Australia’s media correspondent
