What many in TV still can’t understand is why the Nine Network and its A Current Affair program have been giving Don Burke occasional segments on the program, even though his reputation has preceded him for two decades — as comments by two former CEOs in David Leckie and Sam Chisholm in this morning’s Fairfax Media report attest.
Fairfax Media reported this morning:
“However, the Nine Network refused to accept any responsibility for Burke’s behaviour. Questioned about claims that the network turned a blind eye to complaints and failed to take any action to protect their staff from Burke, Nine issued a statement saying: ‘Burke’s Backyard was a production of CTC Productions and they employed and managed all staff.’
“However, some of Burke’s worst behaviour allegedly occurred while the program was produced at Nine. In late 1991 Burke took over the production of his popular gardening program.”
Burke has strenuously denied the allegations levelled against him.
When I worked at Nine from 1986 to the start of 2004, Burke’s reputation was first as “good TV talent”. But, from the early 1990s, stories started circulating of some of his comments about women (of all ages). Women working at Nine, especially in the production and make-up areas were wary of being alone with Burke especially when he was at Nine for the taping of the final compilation of Burke’s Backyard (if it was a studio-based edition or had studio-based segments requiring his presence).
Burke was also a frequent guest on Midday, on the Today Show and on A Current Affair where he needed make up. Stories spread of some of his comments before and after interviews. “Inappropriate” would be the best description of some of the comments, if true.
Given that there is still the odd person working at Nine from the days of being controlled by the Packer family (there is at least one senior programming executive at Nine from the 1990s), it’s hard to understand how Nine allowed Burke to reappear on ACA.
Questions about Burke’s low-key return to Nine and ACA are best asked of the network’s CEO Hugh Marks and his predecessor David Gyngell (who remains a Nine board member and who was at Nine in the dying days of Burke’s Backyard).
Nine has had experience with alleged harassers. Back in the late 1990s, Chris Smith (now at 2GB radio station in Sydney) was working at A Current Affair and allegedly exposed himself to a number of female employees whose complaints were ignored by the program’s management but not by the network bosses. Smith was sacked. Smith later was involved in harassment allegations at 2GB, but was not dismissed. And the current sports host on Nine News in Sydney Cameron Williams was dumped by Fox Sports back in 2001 following sexual harassment claims.
As I wrote in Crikey in May 2005: “last night’s interview with Don Burke on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope ABC program was like the subject himself — infuriating, self absorbed, cringe-making and full of examples of a huge ego”.
Nine has always been a boys’ club. Nothing has changed.
Give me a home amongst the gum trees with lots of plumb trees and no sexual harassment.
Don Burke has always been regarded as An All Quiet
(on the Western Front.)
The Complete History of Australian Television in 25 Seconds, Loz!
You know how it works, man.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/video/watch/38021946/footage-of-don-burke-asking-woman-about-her-breasts-reemerges/
…untalented but vaguely pretty fake blonde, knowingly (gamely, no doubt miserably, self-loathingly) subjecting herself to public physical humiliation in the service of her own dubious ambition, at the hands of an over-amplified, arrogant, trivial grub, whose ‘Talent’ pivots on nothing more substantial than the capacity to look ‘natural’ on a small glass screen, all of it framed within its own smugly excusing cocoon of knowing irony, and paid for by the preceding 15 second appeal to its ‘mainstream’ audience to buy a fucking car.
Like I said, Laurence Mooney: welcome to television. Presuming it’s you, btw…why didn’t ‘Dirty Laundry’ ever air the ‘always known’ industry fact that our mate Don wasn’t so nice? It’s not as if you were ever under any commercial pressure, right?
Like I also said: you know how a TV career works matey. You all do. ‘Play the game’…or you don’t get to keep playing the game. Which makes the whole game itself the problem, don’t it.
Bring on the catharsis. Let all the shit (and shits) that work in the mud hatch out, Tracey Spicer…
Never would have happened on “Gardening Australia”
Why am I not surprised at these allegations?
I’m sort of enjoying the pile in that happens when these things start. It looks terribly unfair, but I have worked with a few people of whom I have said “Once the first complaint becomes public there will be a long line with baseball bats behind them.”
Perhaps more women will be emboldened, and I hope so. There might be a lot of very senior executives around the traps who will be leading very worried lives at the moment.
I hope so.
They certainly will be. Any man with a slight sense of guilt is second guessing harmless encounters, innocuous behaviours and his relationship with women.
I hope it doesn’t drive us apart.
As a man, I totally get that. Self-reflection isn’t a bad thing, though. Perhaps it’s just a bitter pill we need to swallow.
Yeah, Lawrence, the real victims are the men aren’t they? How will we cope?
If you are in any doubt, any at all, then you know best.
As a gardener he showed zero understanding or empathy with his victims – why would it be different with women?