Janet Albrechtsen. Photo: Janet Albrechtsen Twitter/X.
Here’s how privilege and influence plays out.
As the nation’s media fixated on the Lehrmann matter, and the subsequent Board of Inquiry into actions taken by the ACT’s top prosecutor, Shane Drumgold, we now know Walter Sofronoff KC exchanged many hundreds of messages with The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen.
Over several months the exchange averaged 1.6 emails per day, from Ms Albrechtsen’s first contact with the distinguished former judge to the time he handed in the report commissioned and paid for by the ACT Government (which he’d given to Ms Albrechtsen some time earlier).
Mr Drumgold wants either Mr Sofronoff’s report into the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann, or the findings it made about him, to be declared invalid or unlawful after his career was effectively destroyed by them. A substantial part of his case is that Mr Sofronoff had an established bias against him.
The court heard Ms Albrechtsen, primarily an opinion columnist rather than a court reporter, had persistently written adverse articles about Mr Drumgold. A reasonable observer could decide her extensive contact with Mr Sofronoff throughout the course of the inquiry, had “infected” him with her opinions, influencing adverse findings against Mr Drumgold, his lawyers said.
Make no mistake, Ms Albrechtsen scored a real coup. All credit goes to her initiative in getting the Board of Inquiry head on the hook and keeping him there for months. She did nothing wrong and was perfectly entitled to write up the matter however she chose.
Not so Mr Sofronoff, who was being paid by the ACT Government, not News Corp.
Along with other Canberra news organisations, Region Media covered the Lehrmann trial and the subsequent Board of Inquiry in detail. Three competent and experienced journalists took it in turn to sit through many weeks of evidence either in court or via video link.
We published dozens of stories, read by tens of thousands of people, on the basis of public interest and public responsibility to our readers, the ACT’s taxpayers.
So how much contact did any of our journalists have with Mr Sofronoff?
Zero. Absolutely zero.
Rather than exchanging cheery texts and lengthy phone calls, Region staff and dozens of other journalists had to go through a third party intermediary with any queries.
There was possibly the offer of an explanatory meeting that never materialised. There was no evidence of a proper media strategy, commonly organised to ensure cases of major public interest are reported accurately.
While court and tribunal reporters in the ACT often work collaboratively and with real respect for each other, this time the locals were mostly left out in the cold.
After Mr Sofronoff decided Ms Albrechtsen’s persistence merited receiving the report before the Chief Minister had laid eyes on it I also wrote to him.
“The matters surrounding the Lehrmann case and subsequent Board of Inquiry relate to events wholly within the ACT, involving the ACT’s legal officers and resources, funded by ACT taxpayers. It’s quite extraordinary to have privileged The Australian, in particular, as a commercial media organisation ahead of anyone else in this community,” my email said.
“Surely the proper course of action would have been to inform the ACT Government initially and follow this with a press release distributed simultaneously to all outlets?
“It’s most disappointing that the distribution of these findings was not handled with more respect for the community that’s borne so much of the cost in every way.”
It won’t come as a surprise, dear readers, that this communication was also met with echoing silence.
Ms Albrechtsen can congratulate herself on unprecedented access to one of the hottest news stories in years, however she got it. But Mr Sofronoff behaved more like a bedazzled teenager with a crush than a former judge and Queensland Solicitor General.
This week’s legal proceedings have revealed in some depth just how captured Mr Sofronoff was by the thrill of national attention, and how contemptuous he was of the ACT Government and the ACT taxpayer.
That’s unfortunate because as the whole disastrous mess rolls on, we continue to be the ones who pay for most of it.
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