As a bonus episode of BTM Hedley Thomas interviews Stephen Brook on his last day as The Australia's Media Diary columnist and host of the podcast. They discuss Brooky's 15 years at the newspaper, his time in London reporting for The Guardian, b

George Negus: "I don't think I'm much of a reporter to be honest."

Dec 9th, 2018 43m 38s

Media Diarist Stephen Brook interviews the veteran broadcaster of This Day Tonight, Foreign Correspondent, Dateline and 60 Minutes. George is involved in the launch of lobby group ABC Alumni to campaign for the public broadcaster, he’s also cel

Ed Kavalee: "Be the weirdo you are off air, on air."

Dec 2nd, 2018 51m 10s

Media Diarist Stephen Brook interviews Ed Kavalee, the TodayFM Sydney breakfast co-host, and comedian. Stephen asks if Ed can rescue the low ratings since Kyle and Jackie O left, they discuss Kavalee's wife and media personality, Tiffiny Hall.

Ben Fordham: "You do need to protect yourself... do I want that rattling around in my head? The answer I've learned is no."

Nov 25th, 2018 43m 37s

Stephen Brook, The Australian’s Media Diarist interviews Ben Fordham, broadcast journalist on 2GB radio and Channel 9’s Today show. As a young radio reporter he covered the 1997 Thredbo landslide which won him a Walkley award. See acast.com/

Hedley Thomas: "I didn't lose control, but I was worried that I couldn't do justice to the scale of the story, the magnitude, the importance of it."

Nov 18th, 2018 55m 36s

Media Diarist Stephen Brook interviews Hedley Thomas, the investigative journalist behind the record breaking true crime podcast The Teacher’s Pet, which has him fielding offers for a Hollywood adaptation.Hedley’s has taken on Prime Ministers,

Michael Rowland: "I loathe this word chemistry, absolutely hate it. People talk about breakfast tv... or radio duo having chemistry. I just think it's pretty artificial."

Oct 28th, 2018 35m 56s

The Australian’s Media Diarist Stephen Brook interviews Michael Rowland, co-host of ABC New Breakfast. The two engage in an ABC vs The Australian arm wrestle over the newspapers coverage of the national broadcaster. In the fallout of the Michel

Barrie Cassidy: "There are more partisan journalists (now) than there ever were in the past"

Oct 21st, 2018 33m 54s

It's hard to imagine the ABC without Insiders, the television show that reshaped the broadcaster's Sunday morning political programming. Host Barrie Cassidy launched Insiders 17 years ago, but plans for the program actually began in Belgium, wh

Dan Box: "True Crime is so hot right now... I just wanted to reach across and slap him."

Oct 14th, 2018 35m 44s

Former crime reporter at The Australian Dan Box has spent the past three years covering the Bowraville murders in print, and for a podcast. He returned to Australia this month to cover the latest developments in the case, which has been referre

Anton Enus: "The apartheid masters did everything they could to exert pressure on the organisation to conform to the message they wanted to send out."

Oct 7th, 2018 43m 38s

Back on our screens after being diagnosed with bowel cancer two years ago, Anton Enus says the whole experience changed him as a person and a journalist. Despite being quite private Anton documented his treatment on Facebook and for SBS online,

Feature writer Trent Dalton: "They will size you up, and open that friggin door, and that's a beautiful trust exercise."

Sep 23rd, 2018 50m 42s

Media Diarist Stephen Brook interviews The Weekend Australian Magazine staff writer Trent Dalton, discussing the intense emotional attachment he forms with the people he’s interviewing. Dalton’s new book Boy Swallows Universe is a novel influen

Drama scriptwriter Bevan Lee: "I don't think overall in Australian drama there tends to be enough emotion."

Sep 9th, 2018 41m 50s

Since the 1980s, Lee has described Australia to itself via the medium of commercial television drama, working on Sons and Daughters as a writer, rewriting the first episode of Home And Away, before creating Always Greener, Packed to the Rafters

Paul Kelly: "Predictions are cheap, particularly if you get them wrong"

Sep 2nd, 2018 25m 56s

The Australian's editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, gives his account of Australia's recent political turmoil and discusses the state of press gallery journalism on this episode of Behind the Media. Also discussed: why he doesn't use social media, th

NT News Editor Matt Williams: "I love crocodile stories... I'm less obsessed with aliens and UFOs than my previous counterparts"

Aug 26th, 2018 36m 55s

The Northern Territory News is a tabloid paper which has grown a global reputation for it's quirky coverage of life in Australia's north. Editor Matt Williams speaks to Stephen Brook about some of the publication's outrageous cover stories, how

Helen McCabe: "I had no idea, about magazines. My advice... is don't let that stop you"

Aug 19th, 2018 43m

Helen McCabe is one of the most powerful women in media, with a resume ranging from editing the Australian Women's Weekly, time on newspaper back benches and the press gallery, to a foreign correspondent stint in London. Now she's heading up Ni

Campbell Brown: "The publishers who built businesses on Facebook around clickbait have seen their traffic plummet."

Aug 12th, 2018 29m 57s

Facebook's head of news partnerships Campbell Brown is a serious journalist who worked at NBC, CNN and won an Emmy Award for her reporting on Hurricane Katrina in her home state of Louisiana. She speaks to The Australian's Media Diarist Stephen

Mark Schoofs: "I began to learn the power not of opinion, not of empathy ... but of simply hard fact."

Aug 5th, 2018 43m 45s

Mark Schoofs heads a global team of investigative reporters for BuzzFeed News. He set up the team that has prosecuted important investigations into tennis match fixing, Russian collusion in US elections and Russian assassinations in Britain. Sc

Les Hinton: "I hesitated about writing my life story at all because I knew I was going to have to deal with Rupert."

Jul 29th, 2018 55m 35s

Stephen Brook interviews Les Hinton, who for decades was Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand man. He left News International in 2011 after the News of the World phone hacking scandal but says he was in ignorance of it. Les says what Rupert Murdoch is r

Kate McClymont: "Whenever I do a story in the back of my mind is a lawsuit."

Jul 22nd, 2018 46m 5s

The Sydney Morning Herald’s investigative reporter discusses getting more death threats than awards, being sued by Eddie Obeid and her reporting landing him in jail, her book getting pulped over a slight mistake and she plays a game of true or

Shaun Micallef: "I don't want to be a dirty comic and I don't want to be a political comic. I will not be misinterpreted by an audience."

Jul 15th, 2018 43m 53s

Actor, comedian and author Shaun Micallef adds "promiscuity" to his list of abilities after successfully working with every major Australian tv channel. After this year's Logie Awards, Shaun told BTM he’s not overtly political or dirty and will

Hamish Blake and Andy Lee: "We've only got our one trick and we continue to do it."

Jul 8th, 2018 31m 33s

Poolside the morning after the Logies at The Star Gold Coast, Hamish and Andy talk about their enduring partnership, Bert Newton's clanger, the difficulty in getting a new show up and selling their True Stories format around the world. See a

Kerry O'Brien: "Politicians would kill to have the level of trust the ABC has."

May 13th, 2018 36m 23s

The legendary former anchor of 7:30 Report and Four Corners discusses the "punishment" behind the governments ABC cuts, how the public broadcaster must mobilise, the trick to getting a good interview, why he admires John Howard and his forthcom

Richard Lloyd Parry: "I do sometimes feel like one of the dinosaurs soon after the comet hit the Yucatan peninsula."

May 6th, 2018 42m 15s

International guest Richard Lloyd Parry is the Asia Editor of The Times newspaper.He’s the author of Ghosts Of The Tsunami, a book about how that disaster devastated a community in northern Japan in 2011, and People Who Eat Darkness about the d

Julia Zemiro: "There's something about getting older, wanting to open up a bit more and explore where you come from, why you're doing the things you're doing, forgiving stuff in the past."

Apr 29th, 2018 39m 24s

Zemiro is the host with the most; she’s the face of Home Delivery on ABC, RocKwiz on SBS and calls herself the midwife of Eurovision in Australia. And she's about to present All Together Now, a big budget singing show on Channel 7.Born in Franc

Sharri Markson: "The news isn't always comfortable. That was a news photograph, it told the story and the story was in the public interest."

Apr 22nd, 2018 36m 33s

At 34, the indefatigable Markson is the national political editor for The Daily Telegraph.She broke the news that Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce was having a love child with a former staffer, which cost him his job, and explains how the Canberra Press

Ross Coulthart: "The commercial TV industry is full of eccentric A-type personalities, most of whom are barking mad."

Apr 15th, 2018 43m 2s

A senior presence at the Nine Network's 60 Minutes, investigative journalist Ross Coulthart talks about why he is departing, and what he might to do next. The former lawyer who has worked at the ABC, Seven and Nine, is discouraged about the sta