Sneesby’s resignation from Nine points to host of problems besetting commercial TV networks

Mike Sneesby’s resignation as chief executive of the Nine Entertainment Company completes a cleanout at the top of an organisation besieged by the consequences of cultural toxicity.

These consequences began coming to light in March, when News Corporation newspapers and Nine’s own mastheads published allegations that Darren Wick, who was Nine’s head of news and current affairs for more than a decade, groped three women in public view of their colleagues.

Wick denied the allegations but left Nine that same month following a formal complaint against him and the establishment of a related investigation.

Nine also commissioned an external firm to conduct a review into “broader cultural issues”.

At the time, Sneesby said:

I believe we have taken positive steps in recent years at Nine to improve our culture […] but the recent reports that detail alleged serious failings of leadership in television news clearly tells me more work needs to be done to ensure we have a safe and inclusive workplace throughout Nine.

Serious failings of leadership: Sneesby might have been writing his own corporate obituary.

The company’s, and his own, responses to the unfolding scandal were always reactive and invited the question: if reporters at a rival news organisation and in his own newspapers’ newsrooms could find out what was going on, why couldn’t the boss?

He confessed he had not directly received any information about the alleged behaviour of Wicks. He then added: “I would encourage those individuals, or anyone else with information, to provide it […] so it can be independently investigated.”

It is fair to assume that if those individuals had any faith at all in the corporate culture, they would have complained years ago.

Sneesby also observed that a concentration of power at the organisation had “damaged the trust and fairness within our television newsrooms”. This raises further questions, such as: how did he allow that to happen and what did he do about it?

These unanswered questions fuelled relentless media interest in the story, which reached its climax on a June afternoon at Canberra airport when Peter Costello, a former federal treasurer and then chair of Nine, was accosted by a News Corp reporter.

The reporter wanted to know whether Costello had known about the allegations against Wick. Did Costello support the way Sneesby was handling the issue?

Costello moved in on the reporter, there was a jostling motion on the reporter’s camera and the reporter fell to the floor. Costello denied having assaulted him, but resigned as chair within the week.

On his way out the door, Costello said Sneesby “always had my full support”.

It now falls to the new chair, Catherine West, and a stand-in chief executive, Matt Stanton, to try to clean up the mess. Stanton is the company’s chief finance and strategy officer.

The company promised in May to establish an external formal complaint line for people to provide information independent of management, and a helpline for “emotional or psychological support”.

The extent to which this works and the external cultural review produces any real change will be important benchmarks against which the performance of the new leadership will be assessed.

The free-to-air television industry is under the same severe commercial strain as newspapers, as streaming services and other internet platforms challenge their traditional supremacy in electronic news and entertainment.

Commercial television newsrooms have never been a place for shrinking violets. But their blokey whatever-it-takes management style seems ill-adapted to cope with the acute stresses created by the digital revolution. They are also increasingly out of step with modern workplace culture and social mores.

This is evident not just at Nine but at Australia’s other two commercial television networks as well.

In April, James Warburton, chief executive of Seven West Media, which operates the Seven Network, resigned during a torrid period for the organisation. Allegations had been made during a defamation trial that Seven’s current affairs program Spotlight had reimbursed Bruce Lehrmann for money spent on cocaine and sex workers while duchessing him for an interview.

Although Seven denied these allegations, in the aftermath Spotlight’s executive producer Mark Llewellyn left the network.

The evidence in court, given by a former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach, revealed a ruthless newsroom culture and a determination to secure what was regarded as a prize interview with Lehrmann, who was subsequently found by the court, on the balance of probabilities, to have raped Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in March 2019.

Lehrmann has always denied the charge, and his criminal prosecution was aborted because of juror misconduct.

Channel Ten’s journalism came in for close scrutiny in the same proceedings. It had been sued for defamation by Lehrmann over an interview with Higgins on The Project in which she said she had been raped. Lehrmann was not named in the broadcast, but was able to satisfy the court that he was the person referred to as having allegedly raped Higgins.

While finding that Ten succeeded with its defence of truth, Justice Michael Lee was critical of what he said was Ten’s failure to test “inconsistencies and implausibilities” in Higgins’s story. He said Ten had ignored “flashing warning lights” and had shown a “lack of curiosity” over certain aspects of the matter to avoid “unnecessary doubt” about the story.

These examples of newsroom culture, whether they concern sexual predation, abandonment of journalistic ethics or poor editorial judgement, clearly have a tendency to undermine public trust in the media as a whole, which is bad for commerce and for democracy.

Ten’s future became uncertain as its parent company, Paramount, faced severe financial pressures. It recently merged with Skydance Media in the United States, but whether this stabilises Ten’s ownership position is unclear.

These developments, plus the management shakeups at Nine and Seven, show the pressure on Australia’s commercial television networks is likely to continue for some time yet.