BotW: The ABC's Antoinette problem is a long way from over; ARN confronts its K+J problem; In praise of the ACCC

Jun 28, 2025

Welcome to Best of the Week, kicked off on board QF1 somewhere over India and wrapped up on a sticky summer’s day in Hampshire. You know things are tense in the Middle East when they turn off the seat back map while we go round Iran.

Today: What will Hugh Marks do about the ABC managers who the judge says didn’t tell the truth?; Home truths at ARN; and the ACCC’s five year mission comes to an end.

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What happens to the ABC managers whose evidence was ruled by a judge to be untrue?

On Wednesday, I woke up at my Sydney Airport hotel well before my alarm, pretty much on the dot of 5am. As I brushed my teeth, I found myself thinking about the people across the city who were also waking early, or more likely hadn’t slept properly, ahead of one of the most consequential days of their careers.

Just a few kilometres away, Judge Darryl Rangiah was a little more than five hours from sharing his decision in the most watched court case he’s been involved in. Journalist Antoinette Lattouf would be getting up to find out whether she had succeeded in her battle with the ABC. Her former managers would be preparing to watch the 10.15am live stream, knowing what the judge said could have almost as much impact on their own reputations. In more expensive houses, former chair Ita Buttrose and former MD David Anderson would be wondering how the postscript on their careers would land; their successors Kim Williams and Hugh Marks would be thinking about the challenges ahead for the organisation if they lost.

They lost.

Badly.

It was almost as bad as it could be for the ABC. Judge Rangiah’s written findings were available in time to download before I switched to flight mode as I boarded my long flight to the UK. And they were worse than the verbal summary he’d shared in court.

As I read those findings somewhere over the Simpson Desert, I started to think there was a good chance that when I reconnected to wifi on our brief Singapore stopover, I’d be reading about a couple more ABC resignations.

For Lattouf’s former managers, the written findings were awful. Much, much worse than he read out in court. They told of a chaotic management process that buckled under pressure and came to an unfair decision. And most damagingly for some of the individuals involved, the judge simply didn’t believe them on key details.

First though, to the vindicated.

Antoinette Lattouf was vindicated in her battle with the ABC

Lattouf was indeed wrongfully dismissed back in 2023 after resharing on social media a Human Rights Watch post about terrible conditions in Gaza. She should not have been removed from the show half way into her five day pre-Christmas fill in slot on ABC Sydney.

Although I had watched much of the proceedings when the trial took place, it was only reading the judge’s findings that it became clear that the case pivoted on one central issue.

It was not, as you might assume, about the question of whether journalists have a right to freely share their views in public about world events. It was on the narrow point of whether Lattouf had disobeyed a specific instruction from her boss at the ABC, Radio Sydney content director Elizabeth Green, not to post on social media, or had merely been given advice.

That difference between advice and an instruction would prove to be crucial. Lattouf won because the judge ruled she was only given advice. She didn’t deserve to be sacked because she hadn’t disobeyed. And taking her off air early amounted to a sacking, albeit one that was not, as she claimed, because of her race.

Not that Lattouf emerged entirely with credit. If she had taken that advice and “not made any further social media posts about the Israel/Gaza war, she would have remained in her employment with the ABC for the remainder of the week,” Judge Rangiah pointed out.

Posting it was “ill advised and inconsiderate of her employer”, said the judge. It was a “heedless action”.

And the only ABC manager directly involved in the process who comes out with reputation fully intact is Elizabeth Green.

In court, Green told what the judge ruled was the truth, even when it contradicted more senior colleagues. Even when it was her word against three, around what was discussed in a key meeting before the decision to take Lattouf off air, the judge accepted Green’s version of events. She had been clear to her fellow managers that she had only given advice, not an instruction to Lattouf; she had fought for the presenter. And even when it was inconvenient for the ABC’s case, Green had gone on telling the truth in court.

Not so much her former and current colleagues. The higher you go, the less credit there is.

Former chair Ita Buttrose comes out of the process with her reputation diminished. The judge described her evidence as “difficult to understand” and gave short shrift to Buttrose’s assertions that she’d decided Lattouf was an activist because she was “a general observer of life”. Elsewhere in his judgment, Rangiah observed “Ms Buttrose’s evidence under cross examination was somewhat theatrical and difficult to follow at times.”

Buttrose’s move to pass on coordinated complaints about the appointment of Lattouf directly to chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor contributed to the stressful decision making. She was a major factor in what Oliver Taylor at one point labelled “an Antoinette problem”.

Buttrose had denied it was her decision to pass on the complaints, claiming it was that of MD David Anderson; Anderson said it was her. The judge ruled: '“I find it was Ms Buttrose, not Mr Anderson.”

The judge observed this “placed pressure on Mr Oliver-Taylor.”

Buttrose appeared to have been significantly influenced by the lobbying, incorrectly claiming that Lattouf has somehow misled management prior to her appointment. The judge pointed out: “There is no evidence of dishonesty on Ms Lattouf’s part.”

A final straw that bounced Chris Oliver-Taylor into taking Lattouf off air was The Australian being tipped off about the internal angst over her Human Rights Watch repost by one of the few people within the ABC who knew about the developing crisis.

When the Australian’s reported Lattouf’s sacking, it suggested it knew what Buttrose was thinking, without citing a source. As the newspaper put it: “The Australian understands that the complaints over Lattouf’s appointment were raised with Ms Buttrose and the board, with sources close to ABC management saying the chairwoman was ‘furious’ with the decision to hire the anti-Israel broadcaster.”

The judge does not draw conclusions about how The Australian came to know this, so I won’t speculate either about how the newspaper’s reporter knew Buttrose’s state of mind.

Chris Oliver-Taylor came out of the affair badly too. It’s one of the quirks of the ABC that its top levels include managers who have to make decisions in fast moving news environments despite not having come up through newsrooms. COT was a content and production guy, who’d come back to the ABC from Netflix.

If Oliver-Taylor had not already resigned, then this week he probably would have had to.

The judge painted a picture of somebody who was bounced into the wrong decision under pressure; but also somebody who did not accurately reflect what happened when asked in court.

Crucial to the judgement was the now infamous emergency Teams meeting (nothing good ever happens on Teams) about Lattouf’s repost.

This crucial meeting featured head of audio Ben Latimer, acting editorial director Simon Melkman and acting head of capital city networks Steve Ahern.

Elizabeth Green joined some of the call and explained to her colleagues that Lattouf had only been advised, not instructed. Shortly after she left the call, Oliver-Taylor joined.

In one version of events, Green told her managers that Lattouf had only been warned - but wanting to “beat the story”, as Oliver-Taylor put it, that was about to run in The Australian, they went ahead and took the presenter off air anyway. In the other slightly more benevolent version they misinterpreted or forgot what Green had just told them and ended Lattouf’s contract based on a misunderstanding.

Oliver-Taylor would later claim in court that during that meeting he thought that Lattouf had directly disobeyed an instruction. The judge was having none of it: “I was unimpressed with Mr Oliver-Taylor’s evidence under cross-examination. The difficulties with accepting his evidence include that his assertion he believed Ms Lattouf had disobeyed a direction is inconsistent with the content of his own notes, as well as emails he received from Mr Ahern.”

The judge is almost as negative about Latimer and Melkman, refusing to believe their claims that they did not remember Green telling them about it being advice, not an instruction.

This is more relevant now because both Latimer and Melkman remain employed by the ABC. Bluntly, the judge says: “I do not accept the evidence of Mr Latimer and Mr Melkman about their lack of recollection of what Ms Green said in the Teams meeting.”

Ouch

“The evidence of Mr Latimer, Mr Ahern and Mr Melkman under cross examination left me with substantial doubts as to the reliability and credibility of their evidence on controversial matters.”

Read that comment from the judge again. Will it be possible for the ABC to go on employing two senior managers who a judge says were not reliable or credible in giving evidence?

The judge added: “I reject their evidence asserting that Mr Oliver-Taylor was not informed in the Teams meeting that Ms Green had not given Ms Lattouf a direction and had only given her advice.”

Later in his finding, the judge takes another swing at Latimer: “Mr Latimer’s evidence is that he cannot recall whether Ms Green attended the meeting. A necessary inference is he cannot recall what Ms Green said in the meeting. I find the inability of Mr Latimer to recall Ms Green even being present to be implausible in view of his apparent recollection of the discussions between the other participants.”

The judge also chooses not to believe Latimer’s evidence that he took an email from Ahern to mean Lattouf had been directed not to post. And Latimer’s claim that he left the Teams meeting still believing that a direction had been given was, the judge said, “implausible”.

Similarly, the judge says that Melkman’s claim he remembered that Green was asked about the issue in the meeting, but could not remember her answer was also “implausible”.

The suggestion that Oliver-Taylor was not then told by his team what Green had just said in the meeting six minutes earlier was “quite extraordinary” said the judge. He added: “They could not have forgotten what Ms Green had said.”

On the plane, I found myself thinking of all these managers as they were reading the judge’s words just a few hours before me, and how that career-jolting moment would feel.

I must admit, I feel sympathy.

The single most important role of the ABC chair is to protect their staff from external pressure. Instead Buttrose passed it down and triggered a disaster in which bad decisions were made against the clock while trying to protect the ABC’s reputation. Many of us might make similarly bad calls in those circumstances.

Much earlier in my career, I used to write about medical disasters. When something bad happens to a patient it’s almost always because of a series of preventable missteps. Think of slices of Swiss cheese stacked upon each other. The holes all have to line up for the disaster to occur.

If Elizabeth Green had given Lattouf an unambiguous instruction not to post or repost anything about the Middle East, they’d have likely got through the week despite the lobbying.

If Ita Buttrose had left things to her managers rather than adding to the pressure, they’d have got through the week.

If somebody from the upper levels of management had not tipped off The Australian that Ita Buttrose was “furious” about the repost, then Chris Oliver-Taylor would not have made the wrong decision under deadline pressure.

If David Anderson had not gone off the grid during his pre-Christmas lunch with Buttrose, he might have told Oliver-Taylor not to make the panicked decision.

I also think of my own management style. I wonder how many times as an editor I’ve said to a journalist “I think we should do this…” and gone away thinking I’ve given an instruction. In the judge’s reckoning, that would only be a suggestion. In HR terms, the judge seems to rule that an instruction is an instruction only if stated with harsh military directness.

Nonetheless, I’m trying to think of a circumstance in which managers of a publicly funded organisation, about whom a judge has said such reputation-shredding things, can stay on.

Chris Oliver-Taylor, Steve Ahern, Ita Buttrose and David Anderson are all already gone. As the last people standing, have Ben Latimer and Simon Melkman lost their authority to lead their people? What would happen to their standing as witnesses in any future legal skirmishes involving the organisation after a judge said he didn’t believe their evidence?

Maybe new boss Hugh Marks will view them as good soldiers who put their own reputations on the line to shore up the ABC management’s case against Lattouf. If so, they will need his support rather than being left hanging.

By now, Marks will have read the findings. We’ll learn something about how he intends to run the organisation by what he does about Latimer and Melkman.

A significant declaration of interest on my part: I co-present the weekly show MediaLand on ABC Radio National, although my travel means I’m on a break from the show for two episodes. Ben Latimer played a major part in the commissioning of MediaLand.

Moving forward on the Kyle & Jackie O Show’s Melbourne disaster

Speaking of boss-employee dynamics, ARN Media’s office was the venue of a pretty extraordinary exchange on Thursday afternoon. Do give the full Mumbrella article a read - there are some cracking moments.

Davis, left, talks to Sandilands and Henderson - No-one can accuse ARN of hiding from its Melbourne problem | Pic: Nathan Jolly

CEO Ciaran Davis interviewed Kyle Sandilands in front of an invited audience of media agency staff. Davis said of the launch of The Kyle & Jackie O Show into Melbourne: “It’s been 12 months. And it’s an absolute unmitigated disaster.”

Sandilands was similarly direct in return, telling his boss: “I blame you guys. What we should have done is rolled us out nationally from day one, put our balls in our hand, and fucking moved forward.”

If that’s the level of directness in the corridors of ARN, then I doubt there will be many ABC style instructions-versus-advice misunderstandings in that company.

And Sandilands is right. The network is currently half pregnant, stuck in two-city limbo. As I argued last week, ARN now needs to get on with it and roll out the show nationally.

And Sandilands is wrong: “What you see is the [percentage] share in the survey. You don’t get that on TV. You get numbers on TV. How many people watched MAFS last night? We know the number. We don’t get a share of the audience. It’s a dumb way of doing it.”

But we do know their number. I wrote about it this time last week. In the space of a year, it’s fallen from an average audience of 162,000 to 131,000 across the two cities.

ACCC excellence

As it happens I had plenty of reading material for that long flight to the UK. This week the government finally allowed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to release the final report from its Digital Platform Services Inquiry.

The report recapped a key theme: the worsening power imbalance between the platforms and those who do business with them.

The public institutions do not often get praise, but when it comes to the state of the digital platforms, the ACCC has been excellent, providing a series of authoritative, understandable reports explaining the key issues. The unbylined authors would have a big future in news media if only the business model could afford them.

Unfortunately, diagnosis of the problem(s) is easier than the solution. I hope the ACCC gets the new regime it is asking for. Perhaps th approaching U-turn from the government about its ludicrous plan to exempt YouTube from the under-16s ban is a sign that ministers are finally finding a little more steel.