EDITORIAL: Nine should come clean on $700k hush money payment
Nine Entertainment journalist Nick McKenzie has made a career out of telling stories others didn’t want told.
The investigative reporter has cast himself as a defender of the truth, determined to shine light into dark places.
And his bosses at Nine, formerly Fairfax, were firmly in his corner, backing to the hilt his mission to expose cover-ups and scandal, wherever they were to be found.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.But Nine’s fearless commitment to the truth at any cost is shoved to the side when it comes to keeping the media organisation’s own skeletons safely hidden.
When a witness involved in Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith’s war crimes defamation case against Nine wrote to the publisher making explosive allegations of ill-treatment by McKenzie, it responded by deploying a weapon which is one of the greatest enemies to the truth: a non-disclosure agreement.
On the eve of the appeal against Nine’s win in the defamation trial, the media company paid the witness, who was Mr Roberts-Smith’s former mistress, $700,000 to fall silent about what she knew that was damaging to McKenzie and could have had an impact on the hearing.
In her emails to Nine executives, the woman alleged that McKenzie had wrongly obtained Mr Roberts-Smith’s legal strategy. And she had evidence in secret recordings.
The woman, identified during the trial only as Person 17, claimed McKenzie had admitted receiving confidential legal strategies from the former SAS soldier’s ex-wife Emma Roberts and her friend Danielle Scott.
“I also know these women were passing on confidential and privileged information to Nick as far back as mid-late 2020,” the email said.
In another twist, Nine has now demanded the return of the hush money, after Sky News broadcast audio in which McKenzie could be heard saying Ms Roberts and Ms Scott had been “actively briefing us on his legal strategy in respect of you”.
“I shouldn’t tell you. I’ve just breached my f...ing ethics in doing that,” he says on the recording.
Nine has accused Person 17 of orchestrating the leak, and in doing so having breached an NDA.
She denies she was the source, and has threatened to sue the ABC after its Media Watch program suggested the same.
One person who had no problem keeping silent was Nine chair Catherine West.She refuses to talk about the hush payment.
What Nine’s “independent always” staff think about all this is anyone’s guess. What do they make of the tactics deployed by their colleague McKenzie, and how do they feel about paying a woman they claim is a victim of domestic violence $700,000 to protect their reporter?
McKenzie is famous for his indifference to the reputations of his subjects. He admitted in court to sometimes acting in “conflict” with the law to get a yarn. He is not known for giving anyone he skewers the benefit of the doubt. The question is, why should we give it to him?
