If you missed last night’s ep of ’60 Minutes’ – the first since the return of Tara Brown and three of her colleagues from Beirut, Lebanon, where they spent two weeks in jail – it addressed the botched kidnapping attempt head-on.
Brown’s colleague, reporter Michael Usher, introduced the segment by stating, “There’s one thing we want to state very clearly from the outset: we made mistakes” in chasing the story of Brisbane mum Sally Faulkner’s failed attempt to snatch children Lahela, 5, and Noah, 3, back from their dad Ali Elamine.
He called the story “a failure which ended very badly for everyone involved”, after Faulkner returned to Australia a free woman but without her two kids, and said a “a lot of soul searching” was being done as part of an internal review into the chain of events.
Brown, on the other hand, is sticking by her team’s pursuance of the story, stating that “We’re journalists, we’re doing our jobs”.
Sitting down with Usher shortly after touching down in Sydney, she admitted to being shocked by the course of action taken by Lebanese authorities.
“I thought when we presented ourselves [in court] and were being questioned, I really thought: ‘We’re journalists, we’re doing our jobs’- they will see reason, they’ll understand that, you know, that we are here just to do a story on a very, very desperate mother,” she said. “And I just thought that reason would prevail, and it didn’t.”
Brown also spoke for Faulkner, who she says did what she had to do.
“Despite how terribly it’s gone, she [Faulkner] knows in her heart that she’s tried everything to get them back,” Brown said.
“That’s in her opinion that she had no choice but to do this, and that ultimately she’ll be able to tell them that she tried everything.”
The internal review into the operation continues.
Source and photo: 60 Minutes.
