Lisa Wilkinson has lodged an official complaint with the Seven Network about a program that featured an interview with Bruce Lehrmann and about a separate segment on morning television.
Wilkinson lodged the complaint on Tuesday alleging the broadcasts breached commercial television standards, and can escalate the complaint to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) if it is not resolved, her lawyers confirmed.
The complaint relates to the Spotlight program shown on 4 June featuring an interview with Lehrmann, and a segment on Sunrise two days later which referred to a letter allegedly sent to Wilkinson by Brittany Higgins.
The contents of the complaint are unclear, but lawyers for Network Ten, Wilkinson and Higgins, who alleges she was raped by Lehrmann, have raised serious concerns that Seven appeared to have improperly used evidence from Lehrmann’s trial in the Spotlight program.
The lawyers have raised these concerns with the network, the ACT DPP, the ACT supreme court and the Australian federal police, court documents show.
The AFP are considering a complaint lodged by Ten last week, but the ACT supreme court confirmed on Wednesday that no application had been made regarding the concerns.
Lawyers for Network Ten and Wilkinson made explosive allegations in the federal court last week that a “calculated” and “concerted” media campaign using restricted court material was being waged to pressure and dissuade witnesses from giving evidence in the defamation trial brought by Lehrmann.
Lehrmann is suing Ten and Wilkinson over their initial reporting of Higgins’s rape allegation, which he denies. The rape trial was aborted due to juror misconduct and a second trial was abandoned due to concerns about the risk it posed to Higgins’s life.
Lehrmann has also commenced defamation proceedings against the ABC for broadcasting a live address by Higgins to the National Press Club.
A complaint to Acma is mentioned in the 307-page federal court affidavit filed by Marlia Saunders, a lawyer representing Network Ten.
It is one of several developments outlined in the affidavit, which was filed as part of the defamation case Lehrmann is pursuing against Ten, its journalist Wilkinson, and the ABC.
According to an email sent by lawyers for Wilkinson to Spotlight’s executive producer Mark Llewellyn on 8 June, which is included in the Saunders affidavit, they had viewed a document described as Ten’s Acma complaint, agreed with it and endorsed it, and “will be making a separate complaint on behalf of Ms Wilkinson and Mr [Peter] Fitzsimons”.
It is understood Ten’s complaint is yet to be lodged.
Separately, the Ten affidavit also reveals that lawyers representing Ten, Wilkinson and Brittany Higgins believe the extent of evidence leaked from Lehrmann’s trial is not limited to Higgins’s text messages and audio of…
2023-06-14 10:00:08
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