‘Should have owned it’: Seven chief admits paying Lehrmann’s rent eroded trust

Seven chief executive Jeff Howard has admitted the company lost the trust of audiences over the handling of its Spotlight interview with former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann. 

Howard, alongside Nine CEO Mike Sneesby and News Corp Australia executive chair Michael Miller, fronted a joint select committee hearing on social media and Australian society on Friday morning, primarily to discuss the ills of social media and the news media bargaining code. 

Most recently, Miller argued at the National Press Club for the introduction of a “social licence” for tech companies that publish in Australia, saying companies should be “liable for all content that is amplified, curated and controlled by their algorithms or recommender engines”. 

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who was present at Miller’s NPC address, said on Friday she wanted to address “the hypocrisy of some of the things that have been said this morning”.

“Seven West hasn’t had the most glorious of years … the hypocrisy is what I think the community would be raising right now. Trust in news and trust in public interest journalism must be paramount,” she said. 

Hanson-Young turned to Howard and asked whether he thought “it was a mistake to pay for sex workers for a rapist to get the story on air”, in reference to the Lehrmann interview and claims made in evidence during the trial. 

“Senator, obviously we’re aware of the allegations around the former employee made in the Federal Court around that matter. We have an invoice on file that says we paid for pre-production expenses. That’s all it says,” Howard replied. 

Pressed on whether “that type of incident creates further distrust in public interest journalism”, Howard said that he thought “the part of the story that created the distrust was the fact that we did pay for accommodation for Bruce Lehrmann, and we didn’t own that at the beginning”. 

“If we owned that at the beginning I think it would have been a very different outcome,” he said, standing by the interview itself. 

The Spotlight interview was a finalist in the 2023 Walkley Awards for Scoop of the Year, but after it emerged that Seven had paid for the interview along with Lehrmann’s accommodation for a year, without disclosing the benefits to the Walkley Foundation (which administers the awards), its status was revoked. 

Lehrmann was found earlier this year to a civil standard to have raped colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019. Seven’s Spotlight interview with Lehrmann was his first interview after the allegations were heard in an aborted criminal trial in the ACT. He denies the allegations and is in the process of appealing the recent civil decision. 

Hanson-Young asked Miller whether he took “any responsibility for the role your organisation has played in whipping up fear”, and whether recent columns published in News Corp’s papers referring to “[Greens leader Adam Bandt] as Hitler … helps build social cohesion in the community”.

Miller bristled at the line of inquiry before insisting that News Corp complies with its obligations in relation to Australian defamation law. 

“I acknowledge politicians and the public … can read items of news that they feel discomfort with,” he said.

“I’m not going to argue today over something which I personally disagree with, and that I could find people who agree with it.”