Kerry Stokes and Seven’s questionable taste in men

So, Seven wasn’t putting Lehrmann up for a night or two, which is standard practice to facilitate major interviews. The network was instead putting a roof over his head for a full 12 months.

“We paid him nothing, sir! Just some accommodation costs, is all.” For all intents and purposes, Lehrmann was Seven’s tenant. And still is!

It’s a grubby arrangement for a major media organisation, and was presumably designed to ward off the high priests of the media establishment standing ready with accusations of chequebook journalism. But by trying to sneak in a side deal, then issuing carefully worded denials about it, it appears that Seven honchos knew what was happening was, at the very least, unethical.

Who else knew? Did CEO James Warburton sign off carrying Lehrmann’s rent on his balance sheet? Did controlling shareholder Kerry Stokes? And when did Seven know that there was a second woman accusing Lehrmann of rape under seal in a Queensland court?

That’s the problem with paying interview subjects. The minute money changes hands, you’re not telling an accused’s story. You’re part of it.

On Tuesday, after the rent came to light, a Seven spokesman reiterated that “we said at the time we were assisting Bruce Lehrmann with his accommodation costs. It was well reported back then.”

Seven’s Lehrmann arrangements were reached in the months around the network’s devastating Ben Roberts-Smith own goal. For years, BRS defended himself by attacking Nine newspapers and journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters, using the patronage of Stokes and resources of Seven West Media.

Nine is the publisher of The Australian Financial Review, so any criticism in these pages is generally discounted as one rival going after another. But in Lehrmann and BRS, Seven has shown repeated bad judgment in whose causes it chooses to champion.

Standing by embattled men has been Seven’s habit since the network stood by its then-CEO Tim Worner when he was accused by a former executive assistant of what even Seven described as an “inappropriate consensual sexual relationship”.

More recently, Seven has been planning to launch a digital-only national publication called The Nightly. As part of the project, Seven has signed on former editor-in-chief of The Australian Chris Dore to be a senior columnist. Dore abruptly left News Corp last year after an incident at a work function in the United States.

Last Thursday, Seven West Media sent a group of journalists and editors to the Walkley Awards, who all awkwardly stayed seated as the room rose to applaud McKenzie and Masters.

The Seven group included Llewellyn from Spotlight plus the program’s Steve Jackson, following their nomination for Scoop of the Year for, what else, the Lehrmann interview. It was something that the network pointed to on Tuesday. Go figure, it didn’t win the award.