It bills itself as a family network, but an investigation into Channel Seven has revealed it to be a "second chance club" for senior men, with allegations of bullying, sexism, assault and exploitation that have left staff hospitalised, unable to work and attempting suicide.

In one case, a young female journalist became so distressed at her treatment, she ran in front of a car outside a Seven office.

The Four Corners team has spoken to more than 200 people for this story, including current staff who have spoken out because they believe there is a desperate need for change at both Seven and in the broader commercial television industry.

Legal complaints currently lodged with the network allege sexual discrimination, breaches of workplace laws and disability discrimination. There are three with the Sydney news division alone.

Warning: This story contains coarse language and a description of a suicide attempt.

Many former on and off-air staff who allege sexual harassment and bullying have been required to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that have silenced their right to tell their story.

"They're trying to present an illusion of being robust, happy workplaces, performing a public interest in cutting-edge journalism," says solicitor Josh Bornstein, who has multiple clients at Seven and Nine.

"What the NDAs do is mask the reality of a brutal workplace culture in which women particularly are mistreated very badly and routinely.

"It's an unusually brutal culture. I haven't actually seen anything like it."

'Your job is to get this bitch's story'

One of Josh Bornstein's clients, who is suing the network for sexual discrimination, worked in Sydney as a journalist on Seven's Spotlight program. She describes it as a profoundly sexist workplace.

Her legal claim cites one example in 2022 of entering an edit suite and seeing a pornographic picture on the wall.

"It was of a woman with her legs spread and there was a very detailed drawing of a vagina and it was dripping," the woman says.

"I just found that completely inappropriate and gross."

She does not suggest that the executive producer was aware of it.

It was revealed in April that Spotlight paid accused rapist Bruce Lehrmann's rent for a year and there was also an allegation — denied by Mr Lehrmann and Seven — that the network covered the costs of sex workers and cocaine.

The Federal Court of Australia heard that Spotlight's male producers were living large, going on a golfing holiday to Tasmania with Mr Lehrmann, eating in expensive restaurants, including, famously, ordering a $361 tomahawk steak.

That wasn't the experience of their female colleague — she consistently worked, her legal letter to Seven says, "10 to 12 hour days, 7 days a week".

The letter said her senior male colleagues "left the office for hours at a time, to dine and consume alcohol at various restaurants in Martin Place … upon their return to the office, they frequently appeared significantly affected by alcohol."

She says one male colleague — not the executive producer — blew the production budget on an overseas trip, drank so much he was "lying … on the ground, in the gutter" and, referring to a victim of sexual assault, told her: "Hey, hey, your job is to just to get this bitch's story."

She says she had to spend her own money to finish the story, leaving her with no money for rent while waiting for Seven to reimburse her.

"[It was] incredibly stressful".

Things got so bad, the journalist says she became extremely unwell with a respiratory illness and was coughing up blood.

She says her doctor found her oxygen levels were dangerously low and told her she needed to go home.

"I just started sobbing because the pressure of going home and not going back to the office and what the retribution would be if I did that was so great," she says.

"[The doctor] said, 'If you don't go home now, you're going to be in bed with pneumonia for six weeks … I'll call an ambulance to your office if I have to.'"

The journalist says her superiors expected her to keep working at home.

"I got to the point where I was suicidal, and I remember in one particularly dark moment where I'd worked all weekend," she says.

"I rang Lifeline, and I made a doctor's appointment because I knew I was so close to taking my own life. And I had a child that I couldn't do that to because I was a single parent."

The woman isn't the only Seven journalist who has contemplated suicide.

'I just spiralled'

In a disturbing incident in March this year, a young journalist ran in front of a car outside the network's Brisbane office at Mt Coot-tha and then threw herself down a hill because of her treatment there.

She says she was working extremely long hours, including weekends, for a base salary just above the minimum wage. She was suffering from crippling anxiety and decided to look for other work.

When the woman told Seven that she was leaving, she says she was told the company would not allow it — she would have to remain at the network for another six months.

"The only way I can describe it is I felt like I had a noose around my neck," the young woman told Four Corners.

She says she felt like she was "in a committed domestic violence relationship with [Seven News]".

On March 8, the young woman's shaken colleague made contemporaneous notes of what he just witnessed happen to her. Four Corners has those notes.

1045 — received call from [my colleague]. Wailing, hysterical, incredibly emotional. Couldn't understand what she was saying apart from "they won't let me go", "i've f**ked up my career", "I want to be hit by a car".

Two minutes later, the young woman hung up and management was informed.

"I just spiralled," the young woman told Four Corners.

"I saw a car driving towards me up the road, I ran in front of it and hoped it would hit me.

"It stopped. I kept running to find another car. I saw the edge of the cliff at Mt Coot-tha and I jumped. I tumbled down the hill, through the bush."

At 10:50am, her colleague took a call from another Seven employee, who had just seen what had happened.

He says [she] tried to jump in front of his car.. and he was now following her into bushland on the other side of studios.

The men ran towards the bushland where she'd thrown herself down the hill.

11.10 — 2 x [Queensland Ambulance Service] teams arrive

The young woman was taken to hospital. She never returned to Seven.

Seven declined to comment on the woman's case but said in a general statement that it had taken action to address issues that had been raised by Four Corners.

"We are currently undertaking a reset of the culture," it said.

"[We] want to be clear that the actions of some individuals do not reflect the values, behaviour and attitudes of the network as a whole."

'Soul crushing'

Reporter Olivia Babb is shaken, hearing what happened to her Brisbane colleague.

"How do they sleep at night?" she says.

"That's your work, that's where you spend all of your days and time and that's how they make you feel, that you have to end it?

"They shouldn't be in business if that's what they're doing to young women."

When we speak, the 36-year-old is working at Seven in regional Queensland, struggling to make ends meet on less than $60,000 a year.

"It is one of the most degrading, soul-crushing places you can work," Babb says.

She says her colleagues, who have tertiary journalism qualifications, need second jobs to pay their bills.

"We did a story the other day and one of my [interview subjects] said, 'We're all one or two pay cheques away from homelessness.' That's me."

She says she was "mortified, angry and embarrassed" by the allegations made in the Lehrmann defamation hearing that Spotlight covered the cost of sex workers and cocaine. These allegations were denied by Mr Lehrmann and the network.

Babb, who has previously worked for the ABC for five months, says she has been harassed and bullied while working for Seven. She believes the public championing of men like Bruce Lehrmann is symptomatic of the way the network treats women behind closed doors.

"You really think #MeToo has made any difference to Seven?" she asks. "I have never seen anything come through that makes us think that it even happened, that Seven even knew about #MeToo."

'That f**ker scares me'

Four Corners knows of other women who have ended up in hospital because of their treatment at Seven. One of them, a journalist who worked in Sydney, is also suing the network.

The complaints in her chronology for her lawyer include:

• Persistent sexual harassment by a cameraman, which led her to text her then-boss: "That f**ker scares me and is most uncomfortable to work with … he's creepy and inappropriate."
• Her boss banned her from wearing glasses on camera because he said the network news director told him they make her "look like f**king Buddy Holly, don't f**king wear them again". Two male reporters in the newsroom wore glasses.
• When she refused to try to secure an interview with the husband of a woman who jumped off a cliff with her toddler, a manager threatened to send a reporter who was seven months pregnant.
• On 23 occasions she was forced to hand her story to a male reporter, often on traumatic stories including fatalities of children where she had worked late into the night.

Seven did not comment on this woman's case but her lawyer, Josh Bornstein, says he has seen numerous examples of young women being routinely expected to give up their stories to men.

His explanation for this and other patterns of behaviour he sees towards women journalists is "misogyny".

"There's enormous hostility to women," Mr Bornstein says.

Mr Bornstein is calling for the Human Rights Commission, as the "cop on the beat", to intervene and conduct an inquiry into commercial television.

"It's unlike any industry I've encountered in over 25 years of legal practice," he says.

These issues are not confined to commercial TV. There have been allegations of sexual harassment at other media organisations too, including the ABC.

Targeting women who complain

Some staff who have complained to Seven management about their treatment have watched the company turn on them.

One former Seven human resources (HR) worker, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was instructed to go through the emails of staff members who management had decided they wanted to get rid of, and construct false or misleading cases against them in order to terminate their contracts.

"This was a tool. This was a widely used tool, a tactic, an approach, internally," she says. She is not the only former Seven HR staffer who has volunteered to us that this practice took place.

"I feel sick to my stomach and I feel like it's a gross misuse of internal policies that are intended to be there for ethical reasons and a warping of those policies to suit … an orchestrated end result," she says.

She says she also witnessed a sexist culture at Seven.

"There appeared to be … a real disregard for any type of workplace policy or process or practice that supported gender equality. There was a real sexualisation of women, definitely, in the newsroom."

She heard senior men in the news division commenting on women's appearance in an inappropriate and sexualised way.

"There was very strong commentary and ongoing commentary around the size of a woman's breasts," she says, adding that the men were referring to an on-air presenter.

One former news director remembers similar commentary, telling Four Corners he was blasted by a senior person in the company because a fill-in updates presenter had "no tits".

"[It would be] stuff like, 'Who is this dog? She's got no tits,'" the former news director remembers.

"It would be awful, awful deeply misogynistic texts."

Seven declined repeated requests from Four Corners for an interview but said in a statement: "Individuals who have displayed behaviour not reflective of Seven's values have been removed from the organisation.

"Under new management, we have refreshed and recommunicated our policies and procedures and we encourage all Seven team members to call out any behaviour that does not reflect the values of Seven."

The second-chance club

For former Seven Perth star, Mark Gibson, there is a disconnect between how the network presents itself to the world and how it actually operates behind the scenes.

"It often uses the phrase, 'It's the Sunrise family, it's the Telethon family, it's the Seven News family,'" Gibson says.

"It's a very dysfunctional family."

Gibson says he is speaking out because "these sorts of toxic workplace behaviours can't be allowed to flourish anymore".

Our investigation has exposed many instances where Seven management has ignored repeated complaints about senior men's behaviour towards staff.

More often than not, those men kept their jobs. If they did not, they would later be given a second chance.

A striking example is Mark Llewellyn. Ten years ago he was stood aside as executive producer of Seven's Sunday Night after he assaulted a male producer, ripping the front of his shirt.

He was later brought back to run Seven's Spotlight where Four Corners has revealed he sent a Jewish producer anti-Semitic and offensive text messages.

Llewellyn was forced to resign in April after Spotlight became embroiled in the Bruce Lehrmann scandal.

Llewellyn said in a statement: "I categorically deny engaging in any conduct that is anti-Semitic or which constitutes bullying, discrimination or misconduct," he said.

"A narrative has been created that it is simply untrue. That narrative has now been accepted by many as fact."

The network did not answer specific questions about Llewellyn.

The pattern of rehabilitating men can be traced back to at least the 2000s.

In 2008, Mark Gibson was one of multiple Seven Perth staff who complained about the behaviour of former WA news director Shaun Menegola.

Gibson says he witnessed him being "very irrational, often aggressive, verbally abusive, bullying, harassing, belittling".

"I witnessed on two occasions him punching the wall in his office in absolute anger."

Seven Perth's then-managing director Chris Wharton took staff concerns to management.

The employees expected that Menegola would be sacked. He was not.

"Chris Wharton rang me emotionally and said, 'I'm so sorry. I feel like I've failed you,'" Gibson recalls.

"'I'm so sorry … he can retain his job.'"

Three years later, in the face of persistent complaints, Menegola's contract as news director was not renewed.

In a statement, Menegola acknowledged there were staff complaints which were "addressed and resolved years earlier", but said "my departure from 7 Perth in 2011 was in no way related" to those complaints.

"It's true to say that I have always pushed teams and individuals to deliver the best results but it's not true to say that I would yell, scream and bully to get it done," he said.

He went on to be news director at Channel Nine. Four Corners has spoken to multiple Nine staff who encountered similar behaviour to what Gibson says Menegola displayed at Seven.

Former Nine reporter Mia Brankov was one of them.

"The stories were rife of people saying how he's difficult to be around. He's an angry man, all sorts of stuff," Brankov says.

"Some of these people … it's such a dark, dark time in their lives."

When she decided it was too much and went to resign, Menegola refused to accept her resignation and "exploded" at her.

"He said, 'You f***ing young journos, you sign these contracts and you think you can just walk away from them'," Brankov recalls.

Brankov says she was in tears, angry and upset.

"I just called him a c**t."

Menegola eventually left Nine. He said he "achieved an enormous amount at 9 Perth in a short time" and he "enjoyed working with the team".

Mark Gibson says he and his Perth colleagues were astonished when, at the end of 2018, Menegola was hired as Seven Melbourne news director.

"How on earth could he be rehired? He had a litany of complaints against him. It is beyond belief."

"It's one thing to be treated badly," Gibson says, "It's another thing to see perpetrators of bad behaviour getting away with it … being promoted.

"It's crushing, it's soul destroying."

By the accounts of some in the Melbourne newsroom, Menegola's behaviour mellowed during his tenure there. Some staff there have told Four Corners they liked him as a boss.

Menegola left Seven Melbourne in the wash-up of management resignations in April this year. He said he left "newsrooms with many lasting relationships".

"I'm proud of what we achieved as a team," Menegola says.

Olivia Babb has now resigned from Seven.

She says she wants to be the type of journalist who speaks out and fights for young women.

"I will never be able to work at Seven again. But I don't want to work at Seven," she says.

"They know what they're doing to us — they know everything. They don't care.

"It's all just a big boys club."

Note: Louise Milligan and Nick Farrow previously worked for Channel Seven.

Additional reporting by Katri Uibu and Isobel Roe

Watch the full Four Corners investigation into Channel Seven tonight from 8:30 on ABC TV and ABC iview.

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