If so,it wasn’t a question Seven West Media board memberRyan Stokes,son of the network’s decaying overlordKerry Stokes,and managing director of parent company Seven Group Holdings,was prepared to answer.
Ryan Stokes was spotted emerging from Daddy’s Darling Point mansion on Wednesday morning,a day before the board’s first meeting since we learnt of the scandalous lengths Seven’sSpotlightwent to to secure an interview with Lehrmann.
Asked whether recent evidence at the Lehrmann defamation trial represented an ongoing cultural problem for Seven,Stokes jr gave a silent,knowing smile,before being whisked away in a silver BMW M5 (they retail for about $250,000).
A judge has ruled that,on the balance of probabilities,former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins as his defamation case against Network 10's reporting failed.
No doubt the board will have much to discuss.
Federal Court JusticeMichael Lee’s judgment against Lehrmann on Monday hardly spells the end of the network’s woes. On Tuesday,formerSpotlight producer and recent Federal Court star witnessTaylor Auerbach sent a concerns notice,naming outgoing chief executiveJames Warburton,recently departed commercial directorBruce McWilliam and producerRob McKnight,alleging he’d been defamed by comments they made about his claims about the Lehrmann payments scandal.
Seven is facing separate defamation threats fromBen Cohen, as the perpetrator of the Bondi Junction attack.
Seven suffered a smaller courtroom loss on Tuesday which somehow flew under the radar amid a cluttered news cycle. In February,Mina Greiss,a supporter of former rugby league star and convicted rapistJarryd Hayne (who’s appealing that verdict – again) won $37,940 after Federal Court judgeAnna Katzmann found Seven defamed him by suggesting he “spat” at Hayne’s victim outside a hearing. We couldn’t think of two nicer parties locking horns in court.
This week,Katzmann ruled that Seven had to pay Greiss’ costs,despite the network’s lawyers seeking to characterise his victory as a pyrrhic one and demanding the plaintiff pay half of theirs instead.
That argument was rejected,leaving more salt in the eye for a network that just can’t stop losing.
OPEN MIKE
After keeping a low profile since hefrom his perch atop the Department of Home Affairs last year,Mike Pezzullois ready to break his silence.
On Thursday,Iron Mike is set to appear as a guest on theMeridian100podcast,hosted byPaul Maley,a former scribbler forThe Australianturned Coalition ministerial staffer,now a policy adviser and consultant.
Prepublicity for the podcast promises a glimpse into Pezzullo’s thinking on “submarines,China and the threat of war in our region”. It should be an interesting hour’s chat because the former top mandarin,a noted thinker on such matters,is renowned for his prognosticating about the “beating drums” of war.
He basically wrote the Rudd government’s 2009 Defence white paper which advised Australia to overhaul its sea and air forces in preparation for a conflict in the Pacific where it was possible we might just have to manage without great and powerful friends.
Now,that’s obviously not going very well,but it’s hardly Mike’s fault,and in fairness,conflict in the Pacific is all anybody seems to talk about these days.
When we checked in with Pezzullo on Wednesday,he politely declined to give away any spoilers on Thursday’s pod.
Guess we’ll just have to tune in.
BURROWING IN
Tim Burrowes was not happy,Jasmin.
Indeed,the veteran media and marketing trade press publisher has used his email newsletter Unmade to hit back at what he reckons is an unacceptable slur against the line-up he and colleagueCat McGinn have assembled for their HumAIn artificial intelligence conference next month.
The target of Tim’s ire is Jasmin Bedir,CEO at ad agency Innocean,who took to the virtual pages ofMediaWeek recently to take aim at “talking heads” who appeared at AI conferences.
Bedir didn’t specify that she was writing about the HumAIn event,exactly,but quoting the conference’s slogan “the cutting edge of AI” was taken by the Unmade team as a giveaway,and they didn’t appreciate it.
The adwoman’s comparison of said “talking heads” to Frank Abagnale – the real-life American conman who posed as a Pan-Am pilot to defraud millions and was immortalised byLeonardo DiCaprio in the 2002 comedy caperCatch Me If You Can – didn’t help either.
CBD fears Jasmin might have overcooked that one,in these litigious times,and we make it clear right now that there is no suggestion from us that anybody associated with the conference can be compared to any conman,real or imagined.
But as for Tim,he wanted the world to know his irritation at Bedir’s piece.
But by Wednesday,Burrowes was feeling much better about things after his impassioned public defence of the conference in the newsletter,advertising a 10 per cent discount on tickets to anybody declaring that “Frank sent me”.
Tim told CBD “there are no ill feelings on our part”.
Bedir meanwhile told us she hadn’t intended to single out Unmade’s event,but was making a more general call for the industry to get out of the conferences and “onto the tools”.
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