Latest / The Front / ABC sacks an ex-bikie – for hosting a podcast

Transcript

ABC sacks an ex-bikie – for hosting a podcast · The Front

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's Friday May twenty nine, twenty twenty six. Australia's most
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: powerful transgender lobby group is facing new accusations it runs
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: a gender clinic that hides potentially life threatening medical risks
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: from its patients. The clinic says it does discuss all
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the risks with patients. That's an exclusive life now at
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au. The Albanesi government has
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: launched a two billion dollar lawsuit against American chemical giant
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: three M, accusing it of contaminating defense sites with forever
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: chemicals in firefighting foam. Threem says it'll fight the action.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: A rough day for the ABC, which lost its head
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of news and a star reporter who also happened to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: be an ex bikey. What's going on at the National Broadcaster.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Stephen Rice is here in just a mine moment. Stephen
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Rice is the Australians New South Wales editor and we're
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: going to talk today about the ultimate Sydney story. Ricey.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: There are colorful characters left, right and center.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Here.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: It starts with ABC News boss Justin Stevens. Who is
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: leaving the public broadcaster. He's saying for a mix of
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: professional and personal reasons. It's not really clear exactly why,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: but during his tenure at the ABC, Justin Stevens was criticized,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: among other things, for failing to keep in line the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: ABC's more colorful personalities. One of those in I think
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the most spectacular example was muckmud Fissile, a former bikey
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: who was hired as a reporter at for Corners in
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. What was the ABC thinking when it
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: hired muckmud Fassile.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Well, you've got a wonder Fazile was as you say,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: it was not just any bikey. By the way, he
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: was the sergeant at arms of the Mongols. This is
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: pretty serious stuff. So what were they thinking. Well, around
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: that time, four Corners was a bit in the doldrums.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It wasn't making the kind of impact that it had
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: in past decades, and I think they were just looking
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: for something to frankly, just jazz the program up of it,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: just to give it a bit of spark, a bit
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: of excitement. But then they landed on a former bikey
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: who still had lots of connections with the underworld, with
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: organized crime, and Fazle was quite open about that and
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: was basically saying to the ABC, will hire me and
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: this is all yours. But as we saw it went
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: catastrophically wrong.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Well, he certainly brought a pretty amazing contact book. He
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: claimed macmud Fassle that when he was a mongol, his
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: job was less beating people's heads in and more delivering
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: messages to people who were in prison and maybe people
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: who were on the outside. That kind of business of
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: an outlaw motorcycle gang that I guess we can imagine.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Macmod Fissile well even did a Ted talk.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: Now. Circles that were traded, drug dealers and radicals, everything
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: typical Australians had access to seem just out of reach
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: for us.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Being a thug was the.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Easy way out.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: At the ABC, though he was really covering the underworld
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: four four corners and you can kind of see the
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: magic of that, can't you. And it had a career
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: as a journalist before. Gavin Fang from the ABC says
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: that he'd come from vice. It wasn't like they'd plucked
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: him off the streets to become a journo. Was he
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: capable of doing journalism?
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean as you say, they called him the postman.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: You know, he was supposedly just delivering these messages between
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: the baky heavies and people in jail, and you know,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: maybe we've just got to take his word for that.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: It's certainly not the traditional role of the sergeant at
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: arms at a motorcycle gang, which tends to be more
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: an enforcer. But let's take him at his word on that.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: He certainly bought in depth stories to Four Corners, including
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: stories where he would meet people with vast amounts of
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: cocaine and other drugs. But there were a lot of
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: questions at the end of the day about exactly what
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: his relationship was with these gangs and in particular the
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Alamadine crime family.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: ABC boss Schu Marx and editorial director Gavin Fang were
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: grilled at Senate estimates by the liberals Sarah Henderson.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: So there is another way to tell those stories. You
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: use one of your highly qualified journalists at the ABC
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: working for Four Corners to interview mister fisial I. He's
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: got a good story to tell, doesn't mean you've got
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: to hire him as a journalist. And I've never seen
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: those sorts of standards apply to a program such as
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: four Corners or in fact any news or kind of
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: his program. Working for Vice News I don't think necessarily
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: qualifies him to work at four Corners.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Here's Gavin fang Well.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: I agree with you.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: The highest standards need to apply at four Corners, etc.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Here's q Marx.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: The reasons to hire are to try and get deeper
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: into an area of society in are of Australia that is.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Of some interest. I think to the public that was
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: the objective.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Have we met those objectives?
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: I think there's been.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Some good stories produced. Obviously, there have been issues which
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: have led us to where we are today. Now, nobody's
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: suggesting that all that Bizarre was committing any crimes himself,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: let's be clear on that. But there were suggestions for
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: a clear suggestions that, particularly in one case, that he
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: had passed on messages from the Alamadine crime family to
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: a program called Friendly Jeordie's warning them that they needed
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: to take down a video that they'd done which cast
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: dispersions on the Alamedine family. Now, according to the producer
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: of the Friendly Jeordie segment, that wasn't just a friendly
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: hey can you take it down? It was a clear
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: threat there and it was in terms of, hey, make
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: these people kill people. So this is serious. So this
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: producer went and reported that to police. Now at the
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: end of the day, Fazal refused to give a statement
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: to police. There the matter ended, at least until it
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: got reported. The whole thing came out in the open
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: and the ABC just accepted Fassal's assurances that nothing to
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: see here, which was pretty remarkable. In fact, they actually
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: issued a statement. The entire Four Corners team issued a
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: statement on the same day that this news came out
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: absolutely unilaterally, without question, backing Fazile and his journalism. Even
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: by ABC standards. That was quite remarkable. If an allegation
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: like that had been made here or at Fairfax or
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: any any other large media organization, the first thing that
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: would happen is there would be an investigation.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, you'd have to explain whether or not you'd issued
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: any death threats. Precisely, Yeah, so yes, of course, Mark
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Munfazzel denied that he was passing on a death threat
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: where he communicated with the friendly Jeordie's guys that's Jordan
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Shanks and producer Christo Lanka. They are rabbel rousers. They've
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: got a YouTube channel where they go poking bears all
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: the time and kicking over rocks and making pretty out
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: their accusations. Sometimes now want to be proved that I'm
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: not crazy by making a video about a TV presenter
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: who I think is involved in conspiracy against me.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: Like why I keep repeating.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: They had been doing a series about the Almadine family
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and what they were up to. Jordan Shanks home in
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Bondi was firebombed in twenty twenty two and an Alamdine
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: you've described him as a foot soldier, has been convicted
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: over that. Then it was a subsequent alleged threat from
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Fasile which really rattled Christolanka and he went to the ABC.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Both Justin Stevens and the head of Investigations Joe Puccini
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: put out statements as well as that staff statement very
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: strongly defending muckmud Fassile and almost saying that there was
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: nothing to see here. Muckmund Fassial then had a story
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: on television getting right into one of the big controversy.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: He's again a very Sydney story, the Dural caravan plot.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: This is where a caravan packed with explosives was found
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: by police and Muckhmud Fassile interviewed an Australian man in
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Turkey who said that he'd been involved in some way,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: but it was all a hoax. For the first time,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: say Aka tells his story, were you manipulating law enforcement?
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: I was giving them explosives.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: This was a guy called Aaron Akka, who admitted in
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: the interview that he did know something indeed about the
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: explosion laden caravan, but seemed to suggest at the same
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: time that he was just some kind of intermediary, some
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: kind of facilitator, but not actually the organizer of the event,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: and strangely, Fasal never really seemed to grill him on that.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: In fact, during the program, this remarkable thing came out
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: where we learned that Akka had actually texted or communicated
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: with Fassal before the caravan was discovered, alerting him to
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: the fact that there was a caravan and the target
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: of it was Israeli's. But in the same interview that
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: he did with Fazal, he denied any knowledge of a note,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: saying that there were Jewish targets. There were a lot
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: of questions that remained very much unanswered. A lot of
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: questions that remained unasked during that whole program. I don't
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: think that program really did any credit to for owners.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Being a full Corners reporter is of course a full
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: time job. It's one of the dream jobs in Australian journalism.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: But Faisal had a side Hustle, which was a podcast
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: that he was making with a guy in Melbourne, Ryan Nemenko,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: himself with a very colorful past. He's had a criminal
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: conviction for fraud that seems to be on the straight
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and narrow now and his turned to journalism. Those two
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: fell out quite spectacularly, Nemenko and Fassle, and that's what's
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: actually brought Fassile down. There's some spectacular text messages that
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the pair exchanged where Nemenko claims that Fassile was expressing
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: a hatred of Jordan Shanks, the friendly Jeordie's guy, and
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: saying some things that sounded quite sinister. Fassal says that's
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: all a fabrication and being taken out of context. Why
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: was it the side Hustle podcast which ended Fazle's career
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: at the ABC.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Well, basically because Fissile had asked Normanco to pay him
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: for this podcast. Fasile hadn't told the ABC that Fasile
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: basically said to his boss at the ABC, I want
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: to do this podcast. Is that okay? And EP had
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: said yeah, sure, not revealing some fairly crucial information, which
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: included the fact that the podcast itself was sponsored by
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: a casino, an online Vegas casino, which is pretty much
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: not on the manage for corners or the ABC.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: And so now, at senate estimates, the ABC is saying, well,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: nothing to see here. We ended his employment at the
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: ABC because he had an unauthorized outside work commitment that
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: he hadn't gone and sought permission for. At any media organization,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: if you want to go and do a side project,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: you would have to ask for permission at the ABC.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: You would think the rules about that would be pretty strict,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: given the ABC's charter requires them to be independent and
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: of course to not take any advertising. Do you buy
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: this explanation from the ABC that they got rid of
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: him because of the podcast.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Well, in itself, I guess it's a legitimate reason to
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: get rid of somebody. I mean, they should get rid
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: of people who defy the rules and that way, But
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: they've left a big gap in what actually happened. Surely
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: they should have investigated at the time what Fazzal's links
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: were with the Alamedine family. You would have thought for
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: a program like Four Corners, with its deserved reputation for
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: integrity and investigative journalism, to leave those questions unanswered. I
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: don't think that sits well with what the ABC should
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: stand for.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Well, no doubt the Vegas Beating Shop is looking for
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: a new podcast to sponsor. I might hit them up.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I think so, Thanks, Rissie.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, cheers.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Stephen Rice is The Australian's new South Wales EDNA. You
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: can read all his reporting anytime at the Australian dot
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: com dou