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Nine announces internal review over 60 Minutes saga

Gerald Stone, David Hurley and Rachel Launders "to ascertain what went wrong and why our systems, designed to protect staff, failed."

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Nine CEO Hugh Marks has announced an internal review of its 60 Minutes saga will be conducted by founding 60 Minutes Executive Producer Gerald Stone, former A Current Affair Executive Producer David Hurley and General Counsel Rachel Launders.

In an email to staff, Marks thanked DFAT staff and its news team in helping to secure the release of the four crew members.

The 60 Minutes crew are expected back in Australia later today while Sally Faulkner is due to have access to her children in Lebanon, with estranged husband Ali Elamine.

Charges for remaining detainees, including Australian Adam Whittington, are still pending.

Dear All
As you would all by now be aware our 60 Minutes team, together with Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner, are out of detention and on their way home. It is an enormous relief for all involved but particularly the families and loved ones of our 60 Minutes team who have suffered a great deal over these last two weeks.

I would like to personally thank the Australian Government, the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, the Australian Ambassador to Lebanon, Glenn Miles, and his consular staff in Beirut and staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra for their advice and assistance.

I also pass on my thanks to our local team in Lebanon, and those who supported them from Australia (particularly Kirsty Thomson and the 60 Minutes team) who have worked around the clock in securing our team’s release.

You should know that the crew has asked me to thank the officials in Lebanon who were involved in their detention for their professionalism and for treating them with dignity and respect.

It is important to reiterate that at no stage did anyone from Nine or 60 Minutes intend to act in any way that made them susceptible to charges that they breached the law or to become part of the story that is Sally’s story. But we did become part of the story and we shouldn’t have.

Nine will conduct a full review that will be headed by Gerald Stone, with David Hurley and General Counsel Rachel Launders, to ascertain what went wrong and why our systems, designed to protect staff, failed to do so in this case. We will task the review with recommending the necessary actions to ensure that none of our colleagues are put in a similar position in the future.

This has been an extraordinarily stressful time for the crew and for their families and I want to very publicly acknowledge how much they have been through and thank them for their courage, their perseverance and for the trust they placed in us to resolve events.

What has happened to Sally happens all too often and affects thousands of Australian families. It is a story that not only is profoundly in the public interest but also one the public is interested in. It’s an issue that we will continue to highlight.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank our head of news and current affairs Darren Wick who has been in Lebanon since early last week. We should all drop in to Wickie’s office when he is back and say thanks.
Hugh

11 Responses

  1. An internal review …

    Two of the three ‘reviewers’ can hardly be considered to be independent of Ch 9.

    I wouldn’t mind betting that the review is just to work out what went wrong this time so it won’t go pear-shaped next tme they do something similar. Morality, ethics and legality are unlikely to be a consideration.

    1. Agree. It’s pretty easy to see how this will end. If nine had even a skeric of integrity they would do a full independent review with someone or a company with no ties.

  2. Well Tara will be free to go home and see her kids but how often will the mother be able to see hers? This whole thing has just been a mess.

    The Australian media seems to be talking to the dad a lot. Lets just hope the mum and dad can work something out because the 2 children are the important ones here.

    1. The more media talk to the father, the clearer it becomes that he’s a piece of work. There’s a reason the mother had sole custody in Australia. Don’t forget the father breeched the Australian custody ruling in the first place.

  3. If Frontline has taught us anything there will be no real remorse or lessons learnt over this incident from anyone involved particularly the Journalists at Nine, especially Tara Brown. Nine will be hoping it will blow over by the time the internal review concludes so they can sweep it under the rug.

  4. That photo is a really bad look. Not much to grin about and celebrate with booze, especially in a country that’s 54% Moslem. Almost as bad as that script no doubt penned by their spin doctor. If that’s the best he could do Nine should demand a refund.
    “It is important to reiterate that at no stage did anyone from Nine or 60 Minutes intend to act in any way that made them susceptible to charges that they breached the law”. Really? Scary thing is that Marks & co. probably believe that.

  5. I’m sorry 60 minutes but I’m on the fathers side here. Why are they taking Sally’s side in this? How do they know that she is the better parent!
    Speaking from experience I wish my brother could have taken his children to another country to escape a very bias family court system in Australia, that favours mothers regardless how bad they are and the lies they tell to get what they want. I’m sure El Amine would have faced a similar situation as my brother, costly exercise with seeing the children only every other weekend. If we lived in an honest society then it would probably work ok but not a lot of honest people around when money is involved, such as family tax benefits and single mothers pension and all the perks that go with it.
    60 minutes you are a disgrace for getting involved and bashing old grandmothers.

  6. “Stuff the kid!”

    God, it’s Frontline all over again. The whole email is B.S. They ingeniously neglected to make any mention of the children whatsoever as they know that it will stir up ill feeling from anybody with a soul who may happen to be reading. They talk about the crew “suffering a great deal” at one point and then talk about how the detention staff treated them with “dignity and respect”. Make up your mind, man. These people know nothing of “suffering”. These vultures got a free pass for their deplorable actions and they’ve most likely gotten sloshed at the local piss joint in celebration after they were released.

    And yet the masses blindly follow the so-called “news” and any inquiry into the facts is dismissed as a “conspiracy”. Please.

  7. Again, where are the children in all this? And Marks’ second-last para implicitly paints El Amine as the bad guy which is not supported by the facts.

    1. Yes I wish there’d be clarification as to whether the family was originally living together in Lebanon then Sally brought the children home for a holiday, destroyed their passports and told her husband they are not coming back. I’ve read many different versions of the parents’ actions. The whole thing is awful, no child should be unreasonably denied access to a parent but neither parent appears to have acted with the child’s best interest.

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