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Rumour: Nine planning Beirut special?

"We’ll get a clue to how remorseful Nine really is when its Beirut special go to air, which we hear will be Wednesday after next," says Paul Barry.

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“We’ll get a clue to how remorseful Nine really is when its Beirut special go to air, which we hear will be Wednesday after next,” Media Watch host Paul Barry told ABC viewers last night.

Barry spent his full programme analysing Nine’s latest manoeuvres in the 60 Minutes debacle, giving it no free passes.

But it was the first we’ve heard of a special on the saga. At the moment Nine has a TBA for its 7:30 slot on Wednesday May 4th, with Voice Blind Auditions locked in for Sunday – Tuesday.

It also isn’t clear if any special would air before the findings of its review have been announced.

Nine is also not able to screen any footage of the abduction, after the release deal with Ali Elamine required no footage and no naming of the children be permitted further.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t screen interviews with its 60 Minutes team and Sally Faulkner.

Since Tara Brown spoke briefly in Sunday’s 60 Minutes there has been a negative reaction to her view that Lebanese authorities would have seen them as journalists on assignment.

Nine owes its audience answers on what it did wrong.

But telling that story -without being seen as milking it for ratings- will be a delicate balancing act.

10 Responses

  1. It appears as though the incompetence of the Nine crew using a phone brought their contractors undone. All this in the midst of committing a series of criminal acts. The disgraced Brown and her equally disgraced producer (not to mention the 9 execs who signed off on it in Oz) wish to play the innocent card. If those crimes were committed here they would be facing a holiday in one of the States Hiltons, aka, prisons, where they deserve to be after ruining so many lives to make news. Meanwhile the forgotten contractors, should be Ch 9 employees languish in sub standard backpacker accommodation.

  3. Tara Brown’s attitude reminds me very strongly of the wife who coerced her husband to embezzle $1.6 million in Better Call Saul. Everybody else know’s she’s guilty but she acts like she’s completely innocent despite all the evidence.

    Media Watch was very good last night. It covered all of the major points and issues and didn’t pull any punches. The most galling thing is how Nine is still painting this as a child rescue mission that “somehow went wrong”, while leaving the people that they paid to undertake this “recovery” in gaol.

    1. I do not think it is Nine’s responsibility to get the professionals out who were suppose to get the job done, They, as a company know the risks being undertaken in this line of work.

      1. Legal responsibility and moral responsibility are not necessarily the same thing. It wasn’t Nine’s legal responsibility to pay for Faulkner’s release and then fly her home either but they chose to do that.

        I get that the situation is complicated by Elamine’s desire to try to go easy on the mother of his children while punishing “those responsible for the kidnapping” but it’s still not a good look for Nine. Pretty much everything Nine has done since this blew up in their faces has been the wrong thing from a PR perspective. This just looks like another own-goal as far as the vast majority of interested Australians are concerned.

        1. I understand what you are saying however to pay ‘professionals’ in this line of business is at their own risk. If you personally paid for this and they got caught it again becomes their business to get their people out. Not condoning what Nine have done but they this should and must be looked at from all avenues.

  7. I’d be interested in Liz Hayes take on the whole thing, she is a relic of the show’s quality past. Can’t be too happy with the way things are headed. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has fallen out of love with her job enough to jump ship soon.

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