Depending on which newspaper you read, Geoff Bainbridge is either a chief executive who lost his job after he was exposed smoking a substance purported to be meth in one of several videos filmed last year, or he is the victim of an elaborate six-year extortion racket by foreign criminals.
Bainbridge resigned on Wednesday as the chief executive of Lark Distillery, an ASX-listed alcohol company, after the footage was published in the Australian.
The first version of the Grill’d co-founder’s downfall, written by Sharri Markson and Kylar Loussikian, was published in the Australian after the paper spoke to Bainbridge’s lawyers, who said the 2015 timestamp on one of the videos had been manipulated to look as if it was filmed in 2021, that it was “unverified” and that other allegedly explicit video footage that had been given to the paper was fake.
The second version was published in the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald after Bainbridge himself spoke to chief reporter Chip Le Grand, detailing an incredible tale of “public humiliation and shame [that] has stalked the Melbourne entrepreneur” since he was set-up in a bar in south-east Asia.
“The rest is a jumble,” the Age reported. “He confirms it is him in the video but says he isn’t an ice user and doesn’t know how he came to have the drug or what else he was given.”
Incensed by The Age article, Markson, who had offered Bainbridge an interview, wrote a second piece giving the background to her scoop. She said she had given Bainbridge 24 hours to respond to her questions when he ran to the rival newspaper with an amended version of events, no longer saying the videos were “fake, manipulated or unverified”. She accused the Age of “suspending belief”.
The Age, suspending belief, published without evidence a claim by Bainbridge that the extortionists were so technically proficient that they had managed to alter the date stamp on one of the videos to make it appear as if it was filmed in 2021, not 2015.https://t.co/AcbmJijdb2
— Sharri Markson (@SharriMarkson) February 16, 2022
“Bainbridge claims it was part of an ongoing extortion attempt that began six years ago but my sources say the videos were filmed more recently,” Markson wrote.
But the Age, who said in their report they had been provided with text messages and numerous other documents – including a “control risks” report from a global risk consultancy firm which they said assessed Bainbridge was facing an “escalating, credible threat” – was clearly satisfied Bainbridge was telling them the truth. This will likely be of little consolation to Bainbridge, whose high-flying career has crashed in the most spectacular way.
“Although I consider myself a victim of a crime, I accept that I am also responsible for the circumstances I find myself in,” he said in a statement. “Ultimately, I put myself in a situation I shouldn’t have been in. I’m a victim of extortion but that wouldn’t have occurred without my poor judgment. I am deeply remorseful for my own actions.”
Viewers turn off PM
The Morrison family’s interview with the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes program on Sunday night sparked a media frenzy which failed to translate into viewers. When Jenny Morrison told Karl Stefanovic she was a little bit disappointed with the behaviour of the former Australian of the Year Grace Tame at the Lodge in January, only 574,000 people were watching. The police drama Vera on ABC beat the highly publicised interview with 587,000 viewers.
Catch up on yesterday's landmark address with @TamePunk and @BrittHiggins_. Available now on ABC iview and on the #NPC Youtube channel: https://t.co/H6C9L5hE3j
— National Press Club (@PressClubAust) February 9, 2022
But it was Tame’s appearance last week at the National Press Club with Brittany Higgins that may have set records. The consolidated (including catch-up) figure for Wednesday’s telecast was 504,000 viewers, an extraordinarily high figure for a Press Club broadcast which rarely reaches half that when a politician is talking.
MAFs diplomacy
Under the PacificAus TV initiative Australian content is aired free of charge by commercial broadcasters in seven Pacific nations at a cost of $17.1m to the government, in a move seen as an attempt to combat Chinese influence in the Pacific region.
But thousands of hours of lifestyle, news, drama and sport has never matched the soft diplomacy the ABC once provided to the region before it was axed by the Abbott government in 2014.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked the ABC managing director David Anderson in Senate estimates this week if there was any progress in attempts to get the ABC broadcasting internationally again.
“You’d have to think that the ABC and even SBS would have a better soft diplomatic reach than Married at First Sight or some of that rubbish which is what you currently broadcast out there,” Hanson-Young said.
To which Anderson said: “Arguably yes.”
During the two-hour hearing, which included the usual hectoring by Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz who loves to cut him off mid-sentence, Anderson was asked how many hours a year he spent at estimates. Anderson, who released a 90-page essay about the public broadcaster this week, said he spent 13 or 14 hours at estimates each year and countless hours answering questions on notice.
Something for everyone
Speaking of ABC statistics, a new report reveals the relative value of the public broadcaster’s service to taxpayers. The ABC is provided with $41 for each Australian every year to deliver its comprehensive services which include the streaming service iView, four broadcast television channels, 11 national and digital radio services, a 53-station local radio network, national news, local news for 53 regions, podcasting, audio streaming and specialist websites.
By comparison, the cheapest Netflix subscription costs $131.88 a year, a digital-only subscription to the Australian newspaper costs $520 a year and a Spotify subscription will set you back $143.88.
The total for the three subscriptions would be $795.76 a year or almost 20 times the ABC’s per capita funding, according to a report by former staffers Quentin Dempster and Fergus Pitt about the contemporary history of political interference and harassment directed at the ABC.
Stop the press
Seven West Media’s West Australian newspaper locked out 102 printers on 4 February after their rejection of the proposed enterprise bargaining agreement which the union says would slash workers’ terms and conditions.
WA Newspapers have locked out their printers without pay because they refuse to sign an EBA that slashes their conditions.
— The AMWU (@theamwu) February 15, 2022
Anyway, here's the paper today. pic.twitter.com/G5z5xPFEHq
The paper has continued to be printed by other West Australian staff and casuals, with some less than perfect results, according to a photo tweeted by the union.
Take down
Twitter melted down when Shaun Micallef revealed Mad as Hell had been taken down from iView to be edited. Were they too harsh on the prime minister they asked?
Anyone wondering why last night's #MadAsHell was not repeated today and why it's gone from iview: ABC's Editorial Policy required a small cut so it's back in the edit suite being operated on. I'm assured it'll be back on its feet on iview shorty and repeated tonight as usual.
— Shaun Micallef (@shaunmicallef) February 17, 2022
The program had to be re-edited to remove a coincidental reference to a shark attack which may have been construed as insensitive in light of the tragedy at Little Bay this week.
“We removed an animation that was explaining superannuation which referenced a shark attack,” an ABC spokesperson said. “It was removed in deference to the family of the victim in NSW.”
News wastelands
A report by ABC online this week showed media releases written by politicians’ staff are being presented as news stories in some regional papers.
The editor of the Mildura Weekly, John Dooley, was quoted in a report saying that his aim was to present local community news rather than parse controversial public debates. Dooley reportedly said the vast majority of the political releases he uses are about local funding announcements, which he took “on face value”.
“I think the releases should always be scrutinised and not always reproduced verbatim,” he said.
“But generally speaking, I take releases on face value. If one was to follow up and question, and in a sense create another story from that release you wouldn’t have the resources to do it anyway,” Dooley said.
The Public Interest Journalism Initiative’s Australian Newsroom Mapping Project has revealed the location of news deserts for the first time.
The project has revealed that 6.3% or 33 local government areas have no local print or digital news coverage.
This information is included in PIJI’s submission to the inquiry into Australia’s regional newspapers examining regional news’ vulnerabilities.
