Nine CEO Hugh Marks: Questions about 60 Minutes answered ‘when everyone gets back’
Brown: Facing kidnapping charges in Lebanon.
The CEO of Nine Entertainment, Hugh Marks, has written to Nine staff seeking to reassure them the network is doing everything it can to free its 60 Minutes crew currently facing charges in Lebanon.
On Tuesday, reporter Tara Brown, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson and sound recordist David Ballment were formally charged over their involvement in a child recovery operation involving Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner, who was seeking to retrieve her two children from their father. Among the charges is one for kidnapping.
In recent days, a number of questions surrounding Nine’s involvement in the case have been raised, including allegations that 60 Minutes paid $120,000 to the agency involved in the child recovery operation.
Dead set – Sunday Night should do a story on this as it would rate it’s socks off.
“We are highly respectful of the Lebanese legal process”
Well, they are now.
Progressive approach by the judge, ordering the parents to meditate! I find however it’s more so Nine who should go into themselves and look for meaning…
Lucky the judge ordered Mum and Dad in meditation.
I think it’s meant to read ‘mediation’!!
Thanks for flagging Anne,
now fixed.
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
Allegedly kidnapping and exploiting children for ratings and advertising revenue. If proven, hope Lebanon enforces lengthy sentences. We’d enforce no less if the nationalities were reversed.
It’s fair to say no one will emerge unscathed from this. Not the parents, not the children, nor the hired child snatchers.
That said, this sad story would hardly have attracted attention were it not for Nine and 60 Minutes.
Similar custody battles are being played out daily and too often with tragic results. In fact many of us only just learned that the business of Child Custody Rescue is thriving across the globe.
Nine – bound by their legal counsel. secret contracts and confidentiality clauses have been mute – have been ominously silent, save for release of a placatory message from the embattled Mr Marks to staff, with it’s “all will be revealed when they get back” message.
But will all be revealed? No way. Complicit in what Peter Manning (ex ‘Four Corners’ et al) dubbed ‘Cowboys for Justice’ 60 Minutes culture, we can only expect a sanitised version of events and the crowning of Ms Brown as their Sunday night savior.
What will be forgotten of course, will be the fact that the 60 Minutes brand has been damaged and Nine’s pathetic attempt to re-write the journalists’ code of ethics will, or should, fail.
As long as the mob bay for such shock stories on the box, and the cowboys serve up half-baked stuff ups like this, we’ll continue to get the media we deserve.
Ratings, damned ratings.
No sympathy for this very arrogant lot of Journalists in particular Tara Brown, they should have respected the laws of another Country. they will now have to suffer the consequences.
Thereagain he (the father), certainly didn’t respect the laws of our country … nor the rights of his children.
“The Lebanese Penal Code specifically makes the abduction or taking of a child a criminal offense punished by three months to three years imprisonment or by temporary hard labor if the child is under thirteen years of age, or was taken or abducted by force or by ploy.”
https://www.loc.gov/law/help/child-rights/lebanon.php
Whoever signed off on this should be removed from the role as well as the EP and producer. Unacceptable. Nine have attacked so many other organisations and businesses over the years for unethical behaviour. This is TV’s biggest mistake in history. People need to be held accountable. They refuse to address the payment issue, this is because we all know why…
Marks or whomever authorises these projects should be fired. Together with those who undertook the assignment. It’s a desperate and childish act.
One wonders where they’d stop if they think it’s ok to have media kidnap kids for the sake of a yarn. Of course they would never do it in New York or even Auckland. And they’ve found it out that Beirut has laws too.
I hope they get the max.
Australia must have the worst journalists in the world, arrogant, manipulative and bias. they will do anything to gain media attention and notoriety, well now Tara you and your team are getting a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons, this will end very badly.
It’s TV’s biggest mistake, but so far at least no one has wound up dead.
2Day FM’s ‘prank’ call to King Edward VII’s Hospital led to the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha – the darkest day in the history of Australian broadcasting.
Looks like Tara is going to be starring in Orange is the New Black.
If the father didn’t do the wrong thing in the first place none of this would have happened.
If the father didn’t do the wrong thing in the first place none of this would have happened. He’s the one who should be facing court.
I feel for Tara Browns camera snd sound crew. They were there just doing their job. Now facing up to 20 years in a foreign jail. Accountability from 60 minutes management back in Australia will help ease the burdon for those locked up by showing the true Aussie Spirit & coming clean with their cowboy legalities.
Well well well.
60 Minutes high horse seems as if it may have had its legs cut off and is now left laying in the same mud that it has thrown from its lofty perch onto all those whose ethics they’ve questioned in the past.
How ironic.
Sensationalistic journalism is so transparent, the way that they push their agendas onto the gullible masses leaves me amused.
This story, had it gone theway they wanted would have been to promote an ‘Us vs Them’ agenda. Obviously the Muslim the enemy and the Australian the all conquering hero.
Now I’m struggling to find anyone that has an ounce of sympathy for those rightfully detained. I do however truly feel sorry for the Mother who was no doubt lead down this garden path by channel 9 for nothing more than ratings. How Sad.
It will be hard to watch 60 minutes questioning people about their integrity from now on with how feeling a deep sense of hypocrisy.
Welcome back to Earth to all involved.
I’m utterly amazed by the expectation of so many Australians that the laws of Australia should somehow trump the laws of other nations.
Anne’s assertion that the father ‘didn’t respect the laws of this country’ is blatant nonsense. The father and children are presumably dual nationals of Lebanon and Australia. They were not taken from Australia in contravention of any court order. The father broke no Australian law by taking the children to Lebanon with the agreement of his wife.
While in Lebanon, the father and children are subject to Lebanese law, not Australian law. The father obtained a custody order from the Lebanese courts and was therefore acting completely within the law.
It would seem the mother obtained a similar order from an Australian court but neither parent registered their respective orders in the other country, leaving both the Lebanese and Australian courts unaware of the orders of the other. It would seem reasonable that neither court would wish to make orders contradicting another court of equal status. From the reported comments of the Lebanese magistrate, it would appear he is keen to find a resolution to the impasse that is in the interests of the children and is acceptable to both parents.
The stupidity of Channel 9 and the incompetents at this ‘child recovery’ outfit is breathtaking. There is an interesting commentary in the Fairfax papers by Maher Mughrabi which would, if accurate, confirm the inadequacy of any background research done by either company.
Whatever criminal offences the court eventually decides to prosecute, can you imagine the uproar there would be in Australia if a Lebanese father brought a Lebanese snatch squad into Australia, bypassing Australian immigration authorities, and adding insult to injury, brought a commercial, Lebanese tv crew to film the ‘action’?
It would rightly be seen as a clear disrespect of Australia’s sovereignty. Lebanese sovereignty has been equally disrespected and we in Australia should be equally outraged by the disgraceful behaviour of Channel 9 and the snatch squad cowboys!
Bob – the father took the children for a ‘holiday’ with the permission of his wife, and then failed to return them. Dual nationality or not, this is equivalent to kidnapping. Enough said.
What absolute nonsense Anne…..kidnapping is a serious criminal offence. This is a family dispute involving 2 legal systems. Nobody with any legal authority has even tried to accuse the father of any crime, far less a serious one.
The mother acted irrationally but perhaps understandably…..the tv crew and the abduction crew acted irresponsibly, stupidly and criminally.
Hopefully the family will find, through the courts, a resolution that is in the best interest of the children. The others might be in considerable trouble though given the family connections of the old lady who was assaulted in the attack.
The crew and reporter knew they were there to forcibly take someone’s children, and were in Lebanon doing this by their own choice, for money. These are the facts.
This is yet another example of why many people think tabloid media are a disgusting group of people.