As veteran broadcaster Tracey Spicer announced last week she was investigating serial sexual predators in the Australian media, she also named one of the men whose misconduct she described in her recent memoir. John Sorell was a legend in the Melbourne news industry — an old-school newsman who was behind Nine’s news ratings successes in the 1980s and ’90s.
Why was Sorell so revered?
And as well as being known for his success, Sorell was especially remembered when he died in 2009 as a larger than life and eccentric character of an era now gone — his liquid lunches and furious outbursts were eulogised in the days after his death, spoken of with reverence.
Sorell started his journalism career as a cadet at The Mercury in Hobart in 1953, but came to notoriety with his On the Spot column in the now-defunct The Herald in Melbourne. He won two Walkley Awards for the column — one was written about US firefighting legend Red Adair in 1969, and the other on John Gorton after he resigned as prime minister in 1971. How he got that first story is the stuff of news legend — he booked a seat on the same flight as Adair, sat down next to him to get the interview, and filed from the airport phone before any competitors had a chance to get the story.
In the early 1970s, he was editor of The Sunday Observer, an outrageous tabloid. A Sydney Morning Herald obituary reported that he was responsible for the headline, “My Billy’s no poofter — Sonia tells”, after rumours about former prime minister William McMahon.
It was 1978 when Kerry Packer brought Sorell across to Nine, where Sorell hit his stride professionally. But it was also at Nine that most stories of his horrendous behaviour come from.
How have allegations against him come out?
Some of the stories of his dictatorial style could just be funny anecdotes but other stories are chilling. After the sexual harassment allegations about movie producer Harvey Weinstein were published earlier this month, New Zealand reporter Alison Mau published a piece about her experience as the victim of “the Weinstein of the [television news] business” in Australia. In it, she described a “collective shell-shock” from the constant abuse and lurid comments:
“When this man died, in his 70s and some years after his retirement, he was eulogised in the media as ‘a gruff old bugger but very fair, very tough, and he could write a great story and had a great nose for news’. He was all that, and also a monster to the young women in his newsroom. And so I felt nothing but relief at the news of his death, which sounds harsh and uncaring. This man was a legend in the game. But the number of scoops broadcast or careers launched will never outweigh the damage done.”
Spicer revealed this week that the man Mau wrote about was Sorell, and that she had also written about him and his harassment of her in her own memoir.
In his recently published book Minefields, broadcaster Hugh Riminton describes Sorell, who gave Riminton his first job at Nine, as a “brilliant, ferocious ogre of a man”.
“Just his nicknames gave the clue: ‘The Admiral’, ‘The Bear’. Massively powerful both physically and in his hold on the city, he had a reputation for being permanently drunk and a hideous sleaze. He was the best raw newsman I have ever met.”
Riminton tells the story of one of the boozey, nightly gatherings in Sorell’s office after the news had been broadcast, when Sorell, drunk, asked his deputy editor, “which one would you fuck first?”, referring to three female journalists who were in the room with them.
“By any measure, even then, this was intolerable behaviour. So why did so many smart young men and women put up with it? … When he died, Jo Hall — a Melbourne television institution — credited Sorell with teaching her ‘about journalism and life’. Tracy Grimshaw, another of his proteges, gave a tender eulogy at his funeral. Sorell would not survive in a newsroom today. Many might argue that would be no loss. But good work got done and most people survived.”
In a profile in The Sunday Age in 2002, Sorell was asked about his reputation as a hard man to work for — he replied by saying it was an “urban myth”.
“I think I’m a fair boss, I don’t think I’m too tough. I have so many people I’ve worked with for so long, they’d leave if they weren’t happy, wouldn’t they? I don’t think I’m an autocratic ruler. I believe, to use an old cliche, in teamwork. And loving your fellow man and woman is just as important. The fact we operate as a highly successful family is more important than operating as an autocratic, dictatorial person who rules by fear.”
Didn’t child-porn connoisseur Ben McCormack also “investigate serial sexual predators”?
And didn’t Adam Whittington (the possibly-registered-nonce paid by Tara Brown to punch a nanna during her second botched child-snatching), also “investigate serial sexual predators” in the Phillipines?
And were Sorell or McCormack subject to the relentless hounding of “predators”? Even now?
I’m trying to understand how you describe Sorells as “an era now gone”, and how Riminton can say that he “would not survive in a newsroom today”; because for the ocean of shock professed by the Nine newsroom at THEIR predators’ outings, nobody’s sneaking into the newsroom in the dead of night and PLACING the turds in your punchbowl (though admittedly they float to the surface a bit more easily these days).
The legal community has Peter Faris; the scientific community has Haruko Obokata (or rather, a list that includes Obokata); politics has Mal Colston; the police have Denis Tanner.
Who are YOUR personae-non-grata? What line would THEY have to cross?
Couldn’t exist today? As long as there are toadies willing to tug their forelocks, grovel and obey, yes sir, no sir, 3 dirty bags full sir, there will be abuse – in every hierarchy.
It is the nature of the Beast.
None of the scandals du jour could exist without minions (myrmidons to our Spartan correspondent) keen & eager to enable the execrable behaviour in the hope/expectation that their turn will arrive, sooner rather than later.
You clearly know the words origin – “ants”:)
John Sorrell had nothing to do with the “Billy’s not a homo” story in the Sunday Observer. He wasn’t even there in that era.
The editor at the time was Alan Armsden and the story was written by a naive young reporter named Jackie Johnson who was initially assigned to interview Mrs McMahon and write a story about how she spends her days as the PM’s wife. At the conclusion of the interview, Ms Johnson asked Mrs McMahon (on her editor’s instructions) what she thought of the rumors circulating at the time that Mr McMahon was a homosexual. “That’s just rubbish,” replied Mrs McMahon.
Armsden rewrote the story and it appeared in print as:
“An angry Sonia McMahon last night lashed out at rumour mongers who have branded the Prime Minister a homosexual.
“It’s just rubbish,” she snarled…..”
It was a classic beat-up, but it WAS factual – and it sold a record number of newspapers.
Worked with Sorell for over ten years, can only recall one incident of sexual harassment at a Nine christmas party. The case settled with the journalist being paid an undisclosed as she resigned . I’ve asked male and female colleagues from the Sorell period. One woman said….”I swear on my heart I never saw any sexual harassment “. None of us can recall. Anyway he was too drunk to know what was what