A senior ABC journalist has been caught describing a female Sky News journalist as “unhinged” before conceding that she might be right about the origins of Covid-19.
On Saturday, Stephen Dziedzic, the ABC’s foreign affairs reporter, shared his thoughts on colleagues and political leaders with The Australian’s foreign affairs and defence correspondent Ben Packham and The Sydney Morning Herald’s foreign affairs reporter Matthew Knott.
The journalists didn’t realise that the microphones they were wearing were capturing their unplugged views and sharing them into multiple news rooms. The story was first broken by news.com.au.
When Packham observed that “amazingly” Sky news journalist Sharri Markson (LEAD) may be right in a story she wrote suggesting that Covid-19 came from a lab, rather than a bat.
“She’s like a pit bull and she’s so unhinged but yet she might still be right,” Dziedzic said laughing.
Knott then adds that Covid is “definitely unresolved” but the origin remains suspicious.
“You can be unhinged and still be right,” Dziedzic said jokingly.
“How does she know it’s not a bat?” Knott asks, laughing.
“She doesn’t know, no one does,” Dziedzic then said.
“But the location is extremely suspicious. You don’t want to let the Chinese off the hook,” Knott replies.
Dziedzic then admits he “remembers being super dismissive of that”.
“That it was the most unhinged thing ever,” Dziedzic says. “I was overly influenced by the fact it was truly nasty, crazy people who were so deep down the rabbit hole. I probably didn’t look at it dispassionately enough.”
Markson hit back at the comments on Monday evening, describing them as “defamatory”.
She adds: ‘The ABC is meant to serve the public interest and public interest journalism and the origins of the pandemic, what was unfolding in Wuhan is absolutely what was in the public interest with seven million people who have now died.
‘But this stunning admission that a journalist didn’t consider it or investigate it because of ideological reasons… is a disservice to our society and its a shame that public interest journalism wasn’t pursued.’
Dziedzic also gave his thoughts on ABC’s decision to make ABC political editor Andrew Probyn redundant.
“It was the worst decision we have ever made,” Dziedzic said.
He also said that there we now many young new reporters on the team.
“Honestly. There’s all [these] young people. They’re all on like 70 grand, probably four or five of them would have been Probes [salary],” he says.
Dziedzic went on to suggest that there was a “generational divide” in the ABC Canberra newsroom.
“There has been a generational split and it was the worst thing like, whoever the f**k leaked to our dear friends at The Australian,” he said.
“I would be hypocritical to complain about leaks. But like, people in the bureau feel personally attacked, right? So we had this awful bloody meeting literally afterwards. It was just scarifying. I don’t think it was a diversity thing, I genuinely don’t.”
