TV presenter Karl Stefanovic will leave Nine and is negotiating the terms of his exit after his podcast interview with an anti-immigration activist sparked a full day of executive crisis talks.<\/p>\n
The network decided to cut ties with its long-standing breakfast show presenter on Wednesday, Nine newspapers report, following the release of a now-deleted interview with British anti-Islam figure Tommy Robinson that landed Stefanovic in hot water with his employer.<\/p>\n
The host of the Nine Network’s flagship Today show interviewed Robinson in an almost-hour-long episode of The Karl Stefanovic Show, which is run independently of Nine, saying he admired his guest’s “tenacity” and “courage”.<\/p>\n
Stefanovic introduced Robinson in the interview as “one of Britain’s most controversial figures”.<\/p>\n
The podcast episode was published on Tuesday evening but was pulled down by the following morning.<\/p>\n
The episode was resurrected on YouTube by Pauline Hanson, who Robinson praises several times during the interview.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Wednesday, Nine made its strongest statement about Stefanovic’s contentious foray into podcasting, saying it was taking his most recent episode “seriously”.<\/p>\n
“The Karl Stefanovic Show is a completely independent production,” a Nine spokesperson told AAP earlier on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“Nine has no involvement, including in the guest selection and other editorial processes.<\/p>\n
“However, Nine is taking this matter seriously.”<\/p>\n
Why the episode was taken down or who made the call is not yet known, though it has been removed from Stefanovic’s YouTube channel, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.<\/p>\n
Senator Hanson posted the video on her YouTube channel on Wednesday morning, claiming Nine was “trying to sack my good friend Karl Stefanovic”.<\/p>\n
She told Sky News that Nine would be “bloody stupid” to sack Stefanovic, offering him a job with One Nation.<\/p>\n
“They’ve gone so far to the left, Channel Nine, they’re making a big mistake,” Senator Hanson said on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
“Hey, guess what, Karl? I’m looking for someone in my office. I want some advisers in my office. So, Karl, come and apply for a job with me. We’ll have a great time. We’ll put them all on notice and we’ll get the country back on track.”<\/p>\n
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was a co-founder of the now-defunct anti-Islam English Defence League movement.<\/p>\n
He has been banned from several social media platforms for violating rules on hateful conduct and hate speech and has multiple criminal convictions.<\/p>\n
“I really do admire your tenacity and the courage that you’re showing in trying to stand up for what you believe is right,” Stefanovic said during the interview.<\/p>\n
Stefanovic and Robinson discussed populist politics in the United Kingdom, the United States and abroad.<\/p>\n
“I love her, Pauline,” Robinson said of the One Nation leader, the first guest to be featured in the inaugural episode of Stefanovic’s podcast.<\/p>\n
“She’s been through what I’ve been through: she’s been condemned, attacked, battered, every name under the sun.<\/p>\n
“And here she is, she’s carried on against all of that backlash.”<\/p>\n
A promotional clip and an interview snippet of the interview remain active on Stefanovic’s X account.<\/p>\n
In one clip, Robinson speaks to the costs of speaking out about immigration and Islam, touting his own experience being deplatformed from social media.<\/p>\n
Stefanovic opened the interview by saying: “I’m surprised you’re not dead yet”.<\/p>\n
The pair are seen walking side by side, Robinson wearing a “unite the kingdom” T-shirt, the name given to a series of large-scale anti-immigration rallies in London.<\/p>\n
Prompted to finish Robinson’s sentence, Stefanovic describes Keir Starmer, the outgoing UK Labour prime minister, as a “wanker”.<\/p>\n
Stefanovic has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n
The morning headlines including an unwelcome passenger hitches a ride on a prison van\u2026 a plan to rescue crew stranded in the strait of Hormuz.. and a baby goat named after the football goat Lionel Messi. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TV presenter Karl Stefanovic will leave Nine and is negotiating the terms of his exit after his podcast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,67,42,917,1073,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-493806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-immigration","tag-media","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}