Fourth Estate

Who gets to defend the public’s right to know—and when do they need permission? After ABC journalist and union president Michael Slezak faced possible disciplinary action over an article opposing restrictions on access to company directors’ information, we revisit a conversation about press freedom with award-winning journalist Peter Greste. Originally broadcast in November 2023, Greste joins then...

One of Australia's most celebrated investigative journalists, Kate McClymont has spent decades exposing corruption, organised crime and the murky relationships between money and political power. In this episode from the Fourth Estate archives, originally broadcast in September 2019, McClymont joins former host, Peter Fray to discuss Dead Man Walking, her book co-written with journalist Vanda Carso...

Donald Trump’s latest battle with the press has seen his White House move to exclude CNN, POLITICO and MS NOW — but this time, rival news organisations are standing together. What could Australia’s media learn from that show of solidarity? Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker and former editor of POLITICO, and former ABC Editorial Director Alan Sunderland join Tina Quinn to examine press...

Australia has changed — but have our politics and media kept up? In his new book Three Shocks: Who We Are Becoming in the 21st Century, journalist and author George Megalogenis charts the demographic, economic and geopolitical forces reshaping the country. Tina Quinn speaks with George about the widening disconnect between Australia and its political class, the media’s enduring obsession with an o...

How should journalists report domestic violence — and what happens when allegations of abuse become content? In this edition of Fourth Estate: One From the Archives, Tina Quinn revisits a 2022 conversation recorded in the aftermath of the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial, when allegations of domestic violence became the subject of an extraordinary global media and social media spectacl...

Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, Fourth Estate returns to the newsrooms and streets where history unfolded in real time. Sandra Sully joins Tina Quinn to reflect on the extraordinary night she became the first Australian journalist to break the news, anchoring live from Network 10 as the scale of the attacks became clear. Former Fourth Estate host Prue Clarke recalls reporting fro...

For more than seven decades, Rupert Murdoch has wielded extaordinary influence over journalism, politics and public debate across Australia, Britain and the United States. But how does that power actually work -- and what happens when the Murdoch media decides to turn its attention on you? Tina Quinn speaks with journalists and academics Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson about their new book, Gett...

When does civility stop being a virtue become a weapon? Recorded live at Gleebooks in Sydney, political journalist and author Amy Remeikis joins Fourth Estate host Tina Quinn to discuss her bestselling new book, Screw Nice, and how demands for politeness and "balance" can silence dissent, sanitise injustice and protect those in power. From media coverage of Gaza and the policing of womne's anger t...

What happens when sex work pays better than journalism? After being made redundant from his job in the media, investigative journalist Bension Siebert began working as a sex worker — and discovered he could earn in five hours what he made in his best-paid week as a journalist. But rather than leaving journalism behind, Siebert is now using sex work to fund his own investigative reporting. This wee...

Walking away from Between the Lines in 1997 meant leaving behind what Caroline Baum considered the high point of her career. But her story was far from over. In the third and final part of our special Fourth Estate profile, we pick up with Caroline back at the ABC, where a hoped-for return to the national broadcaster as Executive Producer of Radio National’s Arts Today instead became another diffi...

In part one of our special profile series, Caroline Baum took us from her unconventional London childhood to the offices of British Vogue, the BBC and eventually Australia—before jumping ahead to reveal publicly for the first time why she walked away from her dream job at the ABC's Between the Lines. Now, we turn the clock back. By the late 1980s, Baum was beginning to make her mark on Australia's...

When Caroline Baum walked through the doors of British Vogue as a young editorial assistant in the mid-1970s, London was at the centre of the fashion, literary and cultural worlds. It was there she encountered some of the era's biggest names—from photographer Helmut Newton to Antony Armstrong-Jones, the Earl of Snowdon—while discovering both the craft of storytelling that would define her career a...

Hannah Ferguson (Cheek Media), Scott Mitchell (Lamestream Media) and Daanyal Saeed (Crikey) join Tina Quinn to unpack another big week in Australian media. This week, the panel examines the future of journalism in the age of artificial intelligence following the Andrew Olle Media Lecture, where Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni argued AI companies should pay for the journalism that powers...

After surviving Jeffrey Epstein and helping expose one of the biggest sexual abuse scandals in modern history, Virginia Giuffre became a global symbol of courage. But her story didn't end there. Award-winning Good Weekend senior writer Melissa Fyfe joins Fourth Estate to discuss her extraordinary investigation into the final months of Giuffre's life — examining allegations of domestic violence, co...

This week on Fourth Estate, we unpack the biggest stories shaping Australian media, politics and journalism. As the Royal Commission into Antisemitism turns its attention to the media, we examine the recommendations aimed at the ABC and SBS, including calls for greater oversight and more "positive" coverage of Israel. What could this mean for editorial independence, public trust and press freedom?...

Karl Stefanovic's dramatic exit from Nine has become one of the biggest Australian media stories of the year. But is this simply the downfall of a television star, or a sign that the media landscape itself is changing? After his podcast interview with far-right activist Tommy Robinson sparked widespread backlash, Nine ended its three-decade relationship with one of its biggest names. Now, as Stefa...

After serving as Prime Minister Bob Hawke's press secretary, Barrie Cassidy returned to journalism with a new perspective on politics and power. Following several years as a correspondent based in the United States with The Australian, an unexpected approach from Network Ten persuaded him to return to Australia to host Meet the Press. In Part Two of our special profile series, Barrie reflects on t...

Thirty years ago, Pauline Hanson exposed a fault line in Australian politics that never really went away. This week, following Hanson's first National Press Club address and amid signs One Nation is enjoying its strongest political moment in years, Fourth Estate asks what the media got right, what it got wrong, and whether we've ever truly understood the Australia that keeps bringing Hanson back....

When Barrie Cassidy arrived in Canberra in 1979, Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister, the political shockwaves of the 1975 dismissal were still reverberating through Australian politics, and Fraser was already fending off the leadership ambitions of a rising Andrew Peacock. The press gallery was smaller, the media landscape less fragmented, and for a young reporter who had discovered a passion for p...

For decades, China was seen in Australia as an opportunity. Today, it's more often described as a threat. But how much of Australia's understanding of China reflects reality — and how much is shaped by the stories we tell ourselves? As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks of an "ideological disagreement" with the United States, and as global tensions expose vulnerabilities in supply chains and e...

Sarah Wilson has lived through almost every era of modern media — from becoming a newspaper columnist in her early 20s, to editing Cosmopolitan magazine and hosting MasterChef Australia, writing bestselling books, podcasting and independent publishing. But in recent years, her focus has shifted toward much bigger questions: how do we live meaningfully in an age of ecological crisis, political inst...

As the war in Gaza continues — and journalists covering the conflict are being killed at unprecedented rates — we return to the Fourth Estate archives for a conversation that now feels more urgent than ever. In this 2020 interview, former ABC Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeill joins then-Fourth Estate host Sharon Davis to discuss McNeill’s book We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know: Dispatches From An...

From accusations of “broken promises” to cries of socialism, class warfare and even communism, the media reaction to the Albanese Government’s federal budget has been fierce. But how radical are the reforms actually being proposed? This week, Tina Quinn examines the political and media framing surrounding the budget — from the rhetoric around debt, aspiration and intergenerational burden, to the b...

Are we asking enough questions about the way Australia manages inflation, and the way the media reports on it? Every Reserve Bank decision is treated like a national event. Interest rates rise, borrowers brace, and economists debate whether inflation expectations remain “anchored”. But has economic journalism become too narrowly framed around the logic of the Reserve Bank? And are governments esca...

In December 2023, Australia’s national broadcaster made the decision to dismiss one of its radio presenters, claiming she had brought the Australian Broadcasting Corporation into disrepute after sharing a social media post from Human Rights Watch highlighting atrocities in Gaza. Within hours, The Australian had reported on her removal. But it was her decision to challenge the dismissal in court th...