Karl Stefanovic gets new pair of glasses: shocked when reads report into Nine’s workplace culture
Oct 18, 2024
Report into Nine’s workplace culture released
Yesterday, Nine released the long-awaited independent report into its workplace culture.
The findings are disturbing.
According to the report, Nine is a workplace infested with alarming levels of inappropriate behaviour, including abuse of power or authority, bullying, discrimination, harassment and sexual harassment.
It is also a workplace that is characterised by gender inequality and a lack of diversity.
In an encouraging move, the Nine Board has announced it will implement all 22 recommendations in the report.
You can find my high-level overview of the report here or can download the full report here.
‘Karl speaks’
This morning, viewers of Today, Nine’s flagship breakfast program, were greeted by a serious, bespectacled Karl Stefanovic.
The smiley, cheerful Stefanovic that normally greets viewers had exited the building.
In a segment entitled ‘Karl Speaks’, he expressed his concerns about contents of the report.
‘I genuinely, genuinely feel for women who have given testimony. I can’t imagine how hard that was and the courage that it took’, he told viewers.
Were these words genuine or nothing more than an attempt to ally himself with the forces pushing for change?
What was the point of speaking out?
‘Many people are hurting,’ Stefanovic told viewers.
He then addressed the issue that had been reported by The Australian as causing a great deal of angst for Nine employees after the report was released.
‘What was the point of speaking [to the investigators] if perpetrators were not called out?’, Stefanovic asked viewers.
‘I asked the same question [about perpetrators being held accountable] yesterday [at the Nine meeting]’, he explained, ‘and it is my understanding several investigations are now underway. And we have to be patient for the process … It is essential and critical.’
He is right.
It would have been inappropriate and even unethical for the report authors to reveal the names of alleged perpetrators unless complains had been made and investigated.
The investigation that led to the report was a both fact-finding exercise and delivered recommendations for change.
The trouble is that, from the report, it seems that Nine has a woefully inadequate complaints process. For example, the report recommends that Nine set up an independent external complaints process to deal with complaints against Board members and senior leaders.
The complaints process needs to be trauma-informed.
Yet, anyone who has read the report will have noticed that Nine has no idea what a trauma-informed complaints process looks like.
The process of setting up a proper complaints process at Nine will take time.
There is a lot of work to do.
There are ‘good men’ at Nine
Stefanovic also seemed surprised at the workplace culture described in the report.
It was clear that he found it hard to reconcile what he read in the report to the workplace where he’s worked for over 20 years.
‘I want to say it’s not about us,’ Stefanovic told the audience, ‘but there are good men who do work here at Nine who find what happened absolutely intolerable [and] who struggle to understand how we didn’t know more and so something …
‘I feel like we [the good men] have all, in a way, let you down.’
In a terrific example of mansplaining, in those few sentences, Stefanovic made made it all about him and other so-called ‘good men’. The women at Nine once again found themselves silenced by a man with power, influence and a platform.
Why do men in positions of power so often think they are the ones who get to draw that line between ‘good men’ and ‘bad men’?
It is an unhelpful binary division that glosses over the fact there were a lot of people at Nine, both men and women, who were complicit in creating this workplace culture to develop and thrive without question.
Why Stefanovic should have known about workplace culture issues at Nine
If you take a look at some of the key events in Stefanovic’s career that have been reported in the press, you will see that there were plenty of occasions that Stefanovic should have noticed that all was not well at Nine in terms of the question of workplace culture and, specifically, gender equality.
Boys will be boys
In 2009, after a big night at The Logies, Karl turned up to host the morning show drunk. Dishevelled and bleary eyed, he slurred and joked his way through the early part of the show.
Meanwhile, Lisa Wilkinson, his co-host, was left to rescue the situation.
Instead of finding himself out of a job, Karl cemented his status as a loveable larrikin. A couple of years later, he even acknowledged that the incident boosted his popularity among viewers.
Was it Karl’s fault that his audience loved funny, adorable, drunk Karl?
No, it wasn’t. Rather, it says a lot about the gendered nature of our society and the different expectations we place on men and women in broadcasting.
Didn’t it occur to Karl that if Lisa Wilkinson turned up drunk after a big night at The Logies there may have been a very different outcome for her? My guess that audiences would have been repulsed. Management would have been appalled and they would have flown into damage control.
Didn’t he ever notice the different standards of behaviour expected of men and women working in broadcasting?
Hard to find women with ‘star power’
In the report, there is an extract of an interview with a Nine employee where the interviewee talks about how women were rated for roles at Nine. Basically, women were rated for ‘fuckability’. When it became socially unacceptable to use that term, they switched to ‘star power’, which meant the same thing. Basically, the allegation is that Nine is a culture where women are valued based on their attractiveness.
I find it hard to believe that Stefanovic did not know that the ‘star power’ of female talent was openly discussed by Nine management.
After all, it took ages to find a co-host that had the ‘right chemistry’ with Stefanovic.
Nine axed Tracy Grimshaw, Jessica Rowe, Sarah Murdoch and Kellie Connolly before settling on Lisa Wilkinson. After Lisa left, we were greeted Deborah Knight and Georgie Gardner, Allison Langdon and, currently, Sarah Abo occupies the hot seat next to Stefanovic.
That's a total of 9 co-stars.
Didn't anyone at Nine ever discuss the ‘star power’ of his co-hosts with Stefanovic?
Didn't he ever witness colleagues objectify his female colleagues?
Did he ever question why it was always the women who were ‘moved on’ from Today rather than him?
Gender pay gap
The evidence also indicates Karl was aware of the massive pay gap that had opened up between Lisa Wilkinson and him by 2017. After all, the dispute led to Lisa Wilkinson leaving Today in October of that year.
Didn’t it occur to Karl that he could have campaigned harder for his co-host?
Did he ever consider they could they have negotiated for better pay as a dynamic duo?
Didn’t Karl ever question why he was getting paid more than his co-host?
Trashing colleagues and management
Allegedly, during the conversation which took place on speaker phone, Peter expressed his frustration with working at Nine and Karl trashed some of his colleagues and Nine bosses.
Despite this, it seems that Stefanovic had no idea that the workplace culture at Nine was problematic.
Didn’t he wonder why the team at Today couldn’t have difficult conversations and work towards resolving their differences in a constructive way?
Didn’t he associate the fact his brother hated his job and felt that it was ‘sucking the life out of him’ with a poor workplace culture?
‘This stops now’
On the Today this morning, Karl used a series of tactics to ensure he survives at Nine, including:
- wearing on pair of glasses to look serious
- adopting a sombre tone
- distancing himself from the contents of the report
- presenting himself as a ‘good man’ who did nothing wrong and will form an alliance with women to generate change.
‘I love my work colleagues here’, he said, ‘Women I’ve had the honour to present with. Women on the floor of this great show. Women behind the scenes, who make us all better. I’m grateful.
‘Women are this company and they are the way forward. They will show us the way. We just have to listen and act.
‘It’s going to be up to all of us now to do better, to say enough – this stops now.’
Let’s hope he not only listens but keeps his new glasses firmly perched on his nose so he can use them observe what is going in his workplace.
As one of the network’s main stars, he has power and influence that could help generate meaningful change.
After all, the women who work at Nine deserve a more equitable and respectful workplace. The sooner the 22 recommendations are implemented the better.
