The ABC is investigating one of its reporters after it was revealed he received $16,000 in travel costs from a weapons company he covered in one of his stories.
Andrew Greene travelled from Sydney to Germany on business class flights worth about $16,000, and was put up in hotels in Hamburg and Kiel to attend a press event for the German weapons company TKMS. The company paid for his trip.
The senior defence correspondent for the ABC later filed a segment for The World Today about TKMS including quotes from its CEO Oliver Burkhard. After revelations of Greene’s junket came to light, the story was removed from the ABC website.
‘We know what we’re doing,’ Mr Burkhard told Greene in the report.
‘I know our competitors, they never have been exported in the past.’
Greene did not disclose the trip to either his ABC audience or his bosses, according to Media Watch.
As far as the ABC knew, he was on personal leave and had obtained audio of Mr Burkhard’s press conference by email, rather than travelling to Germany in person.
Media Watch host Linton Besser was highly critical of the veteran reporter, saying that ‘while Andrew Greene might have a long history as a news breaker, he’s now been brought undone by weakness before temptation’.
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