Kyle Sandilands may have been one of the most repulsively cruel broadcasters in recent memory, but that doesn’t justify News Ltd tracking down and publishing the private financial arrangements between him and his banks. This is indefensible, and whoever leaked that material may be in a great deal of trouble under the Privacy Act:
Meanwhile, Sandilands appears to be millions of dollars in debt, documents show. In December last year he took out a ******* mortgage on his ********** with ***********.
His ************ mansion had a ********* mortgage registered with the ******* in **********.
(The details edited out of that blockquote should never have been reported and I’m not repeating them here.)
Who the hell gave those “documents” to Holly Byrnes and Ben Butler? And what made them think they had any right to publish them?
What they were right to publish was the desertion of 2DayFM’s former (and probably future) collaborators American Express, Optus, Qantas and Channel 10, now pulling advertising dollars from Sandilands’ Austereo program. Because none of those advertisers gave a damn about any of the previous appalling conduct, such as the sheer sadism of a fortnight ago reported by Media Watch on Monday night, where they pulled this on a 19 year old they were flying from California to meet her long-lost aunt:
Jackie O: Now, if you don’t pick the right door, if Dana’s not the door you pick, Dana flies straight home. No meeting.
Kyle Sandilands: So she flies over here, 15 hours. She stands behind the door. If you pick the wrong door Dana gets back on the plane, flies home, 15 hours.
— Radio 2DayFM, The Kyle and Jackie O Show, 17th July, 2009
She did pick the wrong door, and they made the women believe – for eight agonising minutes – that they were going to force the niece back on the plane. And they milked the women’s suffering for all it was worth.
There’s something very wrong about everyone involved in that program, from the cruel hosts and producers, to the sadistic listeners, to the indifferent advertisers. What a pity no consequences will flow to most of them, particularly the ones funding this nasty little party. Let’s hope the “recess” continues indefinitely.
As for News Ltd – let’s hope there are some consequences for what appears on first glance to be an outrageous breach of privacy. Sure, Sandilands is clearly a nasty piece of work who deserves to pay a price for what he’s done – but that’s not the point at which to forgive other media their transgressions. They might start with the cruel and gittish, but if they get away with it, that won’t be where it ends.
UPDATE: “Quisling” wasn’t exactly the right word to describe the advertisers, although “collaborators” will do quite nicely.
UPDATE #2: Apparently both the house and the car are owned by Sandilands’ company, so the information is on the public record. The material obtained by Ben Butler is easily available “to anyone who’s willing to cough up the piratical fees charged” by the information holders to release it.
As to whether that information should be published, as to whether it’s in the public interest, well, that’s another question entirely.
NOTE: A minor amendment to the post was made to reflect the update.
24 Comments
Agree with you entirely Jeremy, I’m pretty sure banks have rules about employees divulging private information under their code of conduct rules as well — I would expect someone to be looking for a new job.
I hadn’t heard about the other stunt you refer to — truly disgusting, and probably pretty close to the same level of shame that we saw with that young girl….the mental anguish those two poor women must have endured for those 8 minutes must have been unbearable.
I can’t believe anyone could consider this sort of stuff entertaining. Just sick.
Well said jeremy, there is definately a line and these 2 clowns crossed it.
“…the quisling behaviour of American Express, Optus, Qantas and Channel 10″
It’s perfectly understandable. Sponsors are driven my consumers, not ethics. The advertising was pulled because consumers complained both directly to them and through the media. They just mirror the concerns of their customers. Considering most consumers don’t tune in, it only gains traction when the stunt is considered so appalling that it becomes newsworthy. I wonder many complaints to sponsors were by people who never listen to their radio show?
There may not have been an invasion of privacy. If assets are held in a company name, the company has no privacy to protect.
Jeremy,
The information regarding the sale price of the land, and the amount and nature of the mortgage over the land are all available from the NSW Department of Lands and the information is available to the public. One can just search their records for a small fee.
As far as mortgages on chattels goes, if the item belongs to a company than a company search may reveal any charges on that item (or at least would reveal the charge). However, if it belongs to an individual, then I do not know how the authors of that article would be able to get that information.
I think it’s a sad state of affairs that people actually get their jollies listening to this muck. I’m afraid I’d have pulled the plug on the program long before this if half of what I read about it is true. I’ve never listened to them so can’t comment on the accuracy but these sort of stunts as reported leave me sick to the stomach. It seems dumbing down is not confined to the UK – eg the Ross/Brand affair – or the US. Whatever happened to quality radio? Lost in the mists of time obviously. Shame!
As for News Ltd – well they are mostly just crap journalists. News Ltd and journalism in the same sentence is an oxymoron and to think that Rupert M actually wants to charge for his on-line junk. Yeah right! I’d pay for that. NOT!
exactly. It’s all very well to be pious after the event…..
I’m not sure ‘quisling’ is being used in the right context here, but very good points nonetheless. Not only is publishing the financial documents an invasion of privacy, but to me at least, it seems incredibly irrelevant to what amounts to a very simply story about standards in radio broadcasting. Surely the public humiliation of a 14 year old rape victim is scandal enough?
That’s an interesting point, and of course I have no idea if Sandilands did purchase those things through his company rather than personally. It would be ironic if the well-to-do people who arrange their affairs those ways suddenly found that they’d cleverly deprived themselves of basic privacy protections that ordinary people enjoy.
You are quite right, Daniel. Post amended. Who knew Quisling was actually the name of a real person?
(Resolves to throw away the Paul Keating insult dictionary.)
Have you seen the Daily Tele online page. Not a touch of news on it.
Just out of curiosity are there any remotely equivalent shows to this on Melbourne radio or is this air-wave voyeurism only a Sydney thing ?
I don’t listen to the radio all that much and when I do its usually either SEN or the ABC.
The information could also have been gathered by tried and true tabloid journalism method of digging through his trash. You’d be amazed at how many people don’t shred important documents before throwing them in the bin.
The information regarding the sale price of the land, and the amount and nature of the mortgage over the land are all available from the NSW Department of Lands and the information is available to the public.
my concern is Sandilands financial details are not in the public interest when it comes to reports about his and JackieO radio show and what are acceptable standards of decency for radio broadcast. Those are the pertinent issues relevent to the story of his being stood down, his private monetary matters are not.
And for mine, it doesn’t matter whether the information is publicly available (the electoral roll with all our addresses is publicly available as well), the issue is the newspaper believed that revealling private financial concerns of an individual was somehow in the public interest: the man has been held in contempt for his role in nasty radio stunts, not for defrauding the public. In reality telling readers about his debts and stuff was just a cheap way of ensuring news ltd scooped its opponents in keeping the Kyle and JackieO saga going.
Gavin: you can watch the mediawatch clip of the event jeremy refers to here. Watch for the unknown employee shoving the microphone in the distraught woman’s face and trying to capture as much of her crying and anguish as possible. I can’t imagine who gets off on that stuff.
I agree with Chris’s comments above. This information was probably obtained legitimately – through the land registry you can find out the details of a mortgage and how much it is (you can find the current balance you can find out how much it was for when it was first taken out). And I notice this is what they’ve quoted here, the starting balance of the mortgage, which indicates it was not from secret bank documents but publicly lodged docs.
As to the car, if its owned by a company you might be able to do a corporate search to find out a charge on it. I also think that the vehicle securities register stores details of loans on cars, and I believe this is also searcheable.
So I think on this occasion both sets of data were obtained legitimately; I dont think there was any skulduggery going on.
Uphold the law.
But no sympathy. From anyone. Not a bit.
My concern wasn’t so much the possibility of “skulduggery” but what kind of precedent it sets to be publishing someone’s private details in this way. Butler confirms that all he did was use a commercial search service to find the material, which was available because it was registered to Sandilands’ company.
Nonetheless, I’m still not comfortable with those details being reported, and it looks to me like the extent of the “public interest” in knowing them is little more than titillating our schadenfreude. Might as well have reported that Kyle’s wife says that since losing his contract with Channel 10 he’s become, say, impotent. (Note: I’m making that up.)
Didn’t this post read differently originally?
>Who knew Quisling was actually the name of a real person?
Erm, anybody who chose to use the term? Kinda should know that I would have thought, if you’re going to use it remotely accurately.
I agree with confessions — the defence that the information is publicly available from various agencies/rubbish bins isn’t the point. Information may be “available” at a registry but you have to seek it out. It’s a different matter when the info is plastered all over a wbesite or newspaper page where it reaches a much wider audience of people who weren’t necessarily looking for it. In that case the information is being used for a purpose other than the purpose of recording the details in the registry.
I could find someone’s name and address in a publicly available phone book, look up their house on publicly available Google maps and then peer into their windows with publicly available binoculars … I would still be a creepy weirdo.
Didn’t this post read differently originally?
didn’t you throw a hissy fit and recover your bat and ball for the long, martyred march home?
Hi confessions,
Thanks for that link to the Media Watch site — I can’t watch the video yet because I’m at work, but I have read the transcript below — that was painful enough, I’m not sure I want to see the video — I really am shocked that any presenter could justify broadcasting such disgraceful radio, how any radio station could believe it is in any way acceptable, how any person listening could find it entertaining and how the broadcasting commission hasn’t already hit this station with a penalty.
Not only were these 2 women emotionally abused, but it appears to me that Dana was blackmailed as well.
“On air they asked Dana if she wanted to pull out. Off-air, beforehand, Dana says she was told:
Once we’ve booked the flight you can’t back out. If you agree to this your name’s on the ticket. It’s a commitment.
— Statement from Dana Vann”
I also note that they changed Saveth’s name to Sally because “2DayFM said that name was too complicated for their listeners, so they foisted the name Sally on her.” I guess that single sentence probably speaks volumes about the listeners this show is aimed at and therefore I probably shouldn’t be as shocked as I am — truly lowest common denominator stuff.
On another, hopefully happier note, I’ve got a big decision to make tonight — the Blues are on TV and the cricket is too…How do you think we’ll go ?
“Erm, anybody who chose to use the term? Kinda should know that I would have thought, if you’re going to use it remotely accurately.”
Well, depends on how “remote” you mean – it is a term used for a collaborator. But, it turns out, a more limited form of collaborator than I’d realised.
You learn something every day.
Let’s not quibble over quislings.