Channel Nine recently interviewed longtime Ku Klux Klan leader Thomas Robb as part of its Trump’s America: The Divided States report.
According to reporting on the program, Robb mentioned Hanson before Nine correspondent Reid Butler followed up by asking whether it was “heartening” for him to see an anti-immigration politician like Hanson doing well in Australia. Robb said it was and went on to claim Hanson was being demonised by the same people who demonised his organisation. Hanson subsequently rejected any association between One Nation and the KKK as offensive and absurd.
Whether you love Pauline Hanson, hate Pauline Hanson or couldn't give a rat's arse about Pauline Hanson is almost beside the point.
Why does an Australian television network believe Australians need to know what the Ku Klux Klan thinks about an Australian political party?
What exactly was achieved?
Was Australia better informed?
Did we uncover some previously hidden connection between the KKK and One Nation?
Or did an American white supremacist organisation get Australian prime-time exposure while an Australian political party had its name placed alongside it?
This isn't some edgy bloke on a podcast with controversial opinions. This is the Ku Klux Klan. An organisation whose history isn't merely offensive speech or politically incorrect opinions. The FBI's own historical records describe crimes committed in the name of the Klan including hangings, floggings, kidnappings, mutilations and murders. Klan members were involved in some of the most notorious racial violence of the American civil-rights era.
And Nine thought: Yeah. Let's talk about Pauline Hanson.
REMEMBER KARL?
This becomes even harder to understand when you remember what happened inside the same media network only three months ago. Karl Stefanovic interviewed British activist Tommy Robinson on his independent podcast.
The interview caused a shitstorm. It was criticised for being too friendly and insufficiently challenging. Stefanovic told Robinson he admired his tenacity and courage and at one stage said, “God, I love ya.”
Within days, Nine announced Stefanovic would leave the network immediately. The network said it had become impossible for Stefanovic to continue presenting Today while simultaneously running his independent podcast. But the Robinson interview was plainly the event immediately preceding the split and was at the centre of the controversy.
Nine's own news and current-affairs chief Fiona Dear defended the principle of interviewing controversial people during that saga, saying journalists have an obligation to question, challenge and hold people to account, regardless of their politics or views.
But what is Nine's editorial threshold, when one of its own journalists puts Australian domestic politics to a representative of the Ku Klux Klan.
If the problem with Stefanovic was the way an extremist or highly controversial figure was platformed, then the important distinction cannot simply be who conducted the interview. It has to be how, why and for what legitimate journalistic purpose.
THEN THERE'S THE MONEY
Interestingly, Nine has recently been a significant recipient of federal media assistance.
In July, AdNews reported that Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment Co received approximately $16.1 million combined through the Albanese government's Journalism Assistance Fund, roughly $8.16 million through Fairfax and another $7.96 million through Nine Entertainment Co of taxpayer funded money.
The federal government suspended commercial broadcasting taxes through a 100 per cent rebate from 9 June 2025, with that suspension subsequently extended through to 8 June 2028.
Once a major media organisation is accepting millions of dollars through a government journalism fund, I'd argue the expectation of transparency, editorial independence and quality of journalism should go up, not down. We should not be spending taxpayer dollars on interviewing known vile organisations.
WHAT HAPPENED TO CHASING ACTUAL STORIES?
This is the part that frustrates me most. Journalism used to carry a romantic ideal with it. Go somewhere nobody else wants to go. Find the document somebody doesn't want you to find.
Ask the politician the question they don't want answered - Latika Bourke did a great job at this.
Expose corruption. Follow the money. Find the victim nobody listened to. Hold governments, all of them, accountable. Come back with something Australians genuinely needed to know.
Instead, we now have Australian journalists interviewing the Ku Klux Klan about Pauline Hanson.
Seriously?
Australia has a housing crisis.
Australians are getting smashed by the cost of living.
Government spending is measured in hundreds of billions.
Families can't find rentals.
Small businesses are drowning in costs.
There are enormous questions around migration, energy, crime, infrastructure, government waste and the direction of this country.
Whatever your politics, there is no shortage of serious journalism waiting to be done.
Yet somehow we've found ourselves asking a KKK leader for commentary on Australian politics.
That's not courageous investigative journalism, it’s culture-war content and the biggest problem with this sort of journalism isn't even which side it attacks.
It's what it does to everyone watching. Everything becomes left versus right, more divided rather than uniting a country. Every issue gets squeezed through the same exhausted political meat grinder until Australians hate each other a little bit more and understand the actual issue a little bit less.
Maybe instead of constantly searching for the most inflammatory person available to comment on Australian politics, the media could try something radical.
Talk to Australians.
Investigate their problems.
Challenge their politicians.
Follow their money.
Expose bullshit wherever you find it.
That's journalism worth funding and it’s journalism worth defending, something Australians desperately need more of.
As for asking the Ku Klux Klan what they think about Pauline Hanson? I’m actually not even shocked Nine have stooped this low, but surely we are better than this.
