Fear and Loathing on the News Set
The story about a former US newsreader charged with hacking into the emails of his glamorous co-presenter comes as no surprise to those within the industry.
Most co-anchors hate each other’s guts.
There should be Academy Awards handed out for those cheesy ‘family’ shots book-ending commercial breaks. It’s like the Manson family playing the Swiss Family Robinson.
The stories of antipathy are legendary.
In the 90s, one Channel 9 icon measured the office of another male presenter then lodged a complaint that his was a couple of inches smaller. Sounds like that’s not all that was smaller.
A decade earlier, two news superstars fought daily over who would have the one ‘soft focus’ lens.
One ‘hard-working’ male newsreader has systematically harassed and bullied every female co-presenter over the past 25 years.
He made one woman’s life a misery, trying to make her cry during every bulletin for almost a decade.
The reason – because she was immensely popular, mobbed by fans during public appearances, while he was greeted with a blank stare and “who are you again?”
It’s not just the commercial networks. In papers lodged with the Federal Court at the end of her tenure at SBS, Mary Kostakidis alleged co-reader Stan Grant treated her with distain, ignoring her presence and chatting about music with the floor crew.
Interestingly, the 24 hour news services seem to be an exception to the rule.
Presenting breaking news in rolling bulletins, presenters need to help and support each other at every turn, collaborating on research, pronunciations and context. If one of you looks bad, so does the other and, importantly, the product .
For this reason, almost all the presenters at SKY News are mates. There’s simply no time to sit around and back-stab.
On the international stage, Hugh Rimington is (publicly and privately) full of praise for his smart and beautiful co-anchor Kristy Lu Stout on CNN Hong Kong’s breakfast news program.
It’s a working marriage made in heaven; Hugh flying into the region’s troublespots to anchor live coverage; Kristy flexing her intellectual muscles doing finance and tech-savvy interviews in the studio.
So why is there fear and loathing elsewhere? It comes down to ego, money and power.
Lawyers in the US claim alleged hacker and stalker, Larry Mendte, acted out of jealousy over a new contract co-anchor Alycia Lane had signed with the station. She was earning a hundred-thousand dollars a year more than his apparently paltry US$721,200.
In the words of legendary television presenter David Frost, “television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home.” v
Tracey Spicer is an anchor at SKY News, where people actually like each other.
