Hugh Marks is the new managing director of the ABC. Is he the right person for the job?

Aspects of Hugh Marks’s record as chief executive of the Nine Entertainment Company raise questions about his suitability for the position of managing director of the ABC, to which he has just been appointed.

Those aspects concern political independence, internal culture and news leadership, all issues of pressing concern at the ABC.

On political independence, during Marks’s tenure as chief of Nine he hosted a $10,000-a-head fundraising dinner^[1] for the Liberal Party at which the guests of honour were the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, and communications minister Paul Fletcher. The event was organised by the Liberal Party’s fundraising arm, the Australian Business Network.

This came as a shock to journalists at the three major newspapers owned by Nine: The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review. They protested, and Marks admitted^[2] hosting the dinner was a mistake.

On culture, in May 2024 allegations came to light^[3] that Nine’s long-time news director, Darren Wick, had for decades got away with drunkenly groping women. This unleashed a cascade of allegations by women about the culture inside Nine that had existed for many years, including the period when Marks was chief executive. He has said^[4] he didn’t know anything about it and was shocked by what was revealed.

By the time these allegations emerged, Marks had been gone for four years, having abruptly left the company after The Australian newspaper reported^[5] that as chief executive he was in a sexual relationship with a subordinate.

Now he is to find himself leading an organisation that is in the midst of developing a response to an external review of its own culture, which found systemic racism across the ABC.

On news leadership, like his predecessors David Anderson and Michelle Guthrie, Marks does not have a background in journalism, yet becomes ex officio editor-in-chief of the ABC.

That has proved a weakness in the past – Guthrie once said publicly she was not responsible for every story that appeared on the ABC.

The appointment of Marks seems unlikely to remedy this weakness, which has laid the ABC open to accusations^[6] it fails to adequately protect its journalists from external attack.

Other aspects of Marks’s career, however, clearly carried decisive weight with the ABC board.

A graduate in law and finance from the University of New South Wales, Marks joined Nine as legal counsel in 1995. Two years later, he became director of film and television for the network and was recognised internally for his work on audience measurement.

In 2003 he left Nine to head a television distribution company, Southern Star Group. Under his leadership it produced hit shows^[7] such as Big Brother for Ten and Deal or No Deal for Seven.

A decade later he returned to the Nine network as a non-executive director, and was appointed chief executive in 2015.

In 2018, he engineered Nine’s takeover of the Fairfax media empire, creating Australia’s largest commercial media group with major interests in newspapers, radio, television and streaming services.

Nine’s takeover of Fairfax provided a lifeline for those three big mastheads, which had been caught utterly unprepared by the onslaught on their advertising revenues from internet platforms in areas such as real estate, employment and motor vehicles.

Those mastheads have continued to assert their editorial independence despite Nine’s questionable corporate-level management of political relationships and internal culture. However, the editorial content of the Herald and The Age, taken as a whole, has drifted downstream since the takeover.

Excellent pockets of public interest journalism remain, notably in their political analysis and the incomparable work of their investigative teams. However, soft news and lifestyle content have grown at the expense of broader coverage of political issues, leaving that territory more open to the propagandising of News Corp than is good for Australian democracy.

Given the repeated assertions^[8] by the ABC chair, Kim Williams, that the ABC needs to strike a better balance between lifestyle content and public-interest journalism, it is an open question how well-equipped Marks is to achieve this shift.

After his departure from Nine in 2020, Marks founded Dreamchaser, a successful television content production and distribution studio.

It is these business credentials that are clearly attractive to the ABC. In a statement announcing his appointment, the ABC said he was a standout candidate with a strong track record of leading media organisations and driving substantial and sustained audience engagement.

This might indicate a desire on the part of the ABC board to inject a more popularising approach to its entertainment content.

Williams has shown himself to be an activist chair, particularly in editorial matters, so perhaps there is an understanding that Marks will focus primarily on wider content strategy and corporate management. But the fact remains that when he takes over in March 2025, Marks will become the ABC’s editor-in-chief.

From the outside it looks like an odd appointment. But Williams is a change agent, and it may be safely assumed this is part of the new direction he has sketched out for the ABC, the ultimate destination of which remains difficult to discern.

References

1. ^{^} $10,000-a-head fundraising dinner (www.theguardian.com)
2. ^{^} Marks admitted (www.abc.net.au)
3. ^{^} allegations came to light (www.abc.net.au)
4. ^{^} has said (www.smh.com.au)
5. ^{^} The Australian newspaper reported (www.theaustralian.com.au)
6. ^{^} accusations (www.skynews.com.au)
7. ^{^} produced hit shows (www.smh.com.au)
8. ^{^} repeated assertions (theconversation.com)