“Faith on Trial: Hillsong”- a children’s level sensationalist podcast for the masses

This News Corp “Faith on Trial: Hillsong” podcast has come up with nothing new. It is just a sensationalist and shallow regurgitation of some of what has been known about the Houstons and Hillsong, most of it for a very long time.

One of the journalists involved in this News Corp podcast, a young lady from Finland, approached me at court and asked me for an interview. She told me what they were doing.

News Corp is a global media company owned by the Murdochs who live in New York City. Rupert Murdoch, now in his 90s, was an Australian who took up American citizenship over fifty years ago. One of his sons Lachlan now runs it. Lachlan used to live in Bronte Beach. For a time at the end of my street. I never approached him or spoke to him. Later he moved to a nice ocean view house near Bronte shops. Then he moved to America to help his dad. Recently he bought the most expensive house in America.

Surely the Murdochs could afford to pay someone knowledgeable and a real investigative journalist to research and dismantle Hillsong.

These New Corp journalists are mainly Gen Y and Gen X airheads.

I pointed her in the right direction and gave her a long interview. She has ignored my advice and they have done what I warned her not to do. That is, not to do a podcast just covering recent sensationalist events. I’m talking from Carl Lentz on.

I’m not helping these Australian media airheads any more. All lightweights. Not one Australian media has ever done an in-depth documentary on Hillsong.

I hope that this female journalist and News Corp journalist Stephen Drill don’t get any awards for this pathetic podcast series. It is so lightweight it makes me want to puke.

In this podcast Stephen Drill talks like he is reading a children’s book to dummies. He probably is. It’s that bad.

A whole team from News Corp spent five months on this topic since Brian’s court in December last year and this is all they could come up with.

Australian journalists from News Corp to Fairfax have told me they lack the time and funding to do a proper investigative work on the Houstons and Hillsong. They say this is because of editors having strict budgets and wanting quick news. They are all scrambling to be the first to reveal some random piece of “news” that would have come out within 24 hours anyway. This is not investigative journalism.

What New Corp has done in this podcast is to marry together known facts about the Houstons and Hillsong revealed by others and put them together in a children’s level podcast. That’s all.

The eight-part podcast explores the story of Hillsong’s founder, Brian Houston

True Crime Australia’s Faith on Trial: Hillsong has hit number one in Australia and NZ on Apple Podcasts weeks after release.

The podcast is expected to have an increase in traffic in its international audience when homepage promotions begin across the platform in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and South Africa.

The podcast, which shines a light on the multi-million dollar Christian phenomenon that grew from humble beginnings in a Sydney warehouse, has sparked widespread investigations probing the Church’s activities.

The eight-part podcast explores how Hillsong’s founder, Brian Houston, became a religious rockstar and how he now faces court over allegations he concealed his father’s child sex crimes.

Throughout the podcast, reporter Stephen Drill tries to answer, how did the church get here?

It has prompted Federal MP Andrew Wilke to call for a NSW Police investigation into Hillsong over allegations uncovered in the podcast that some female students at Hillsong College in Sydney have been taught to physically ‘submit’ to their husbands.

He has also tabled leaked documents to allege Hillsong Church broke financial laws in Australia and around the world.

The unfolding scandal has been followed en-masse by Australia’s media, including the Nine Entertainment Company’s tabloids The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the Seven Network, The Guardian as well as News Corp Australia’s state-based mastheads such as the Herald Sun, The Daily Telegraph and national broadsheet, The Australian.

News Corp Australia’s general manager commercial networks Ainslee Horstman said the podcast reflected the company’s commitment to telling the stories that matter most to audiences, both in Australia and internationally via Apple’s platform.

“Faith on Trial: Hillsong has hit a raw nerve with audiences because it is a totally fascinating, absorbing yarn which also reflects a deep public interest,” Horstman said

“It is exactly the type of story we specialise in and is the reason why our brands are among the most trusted in the market.”

The podcast has also led to new witnesses and informants coming forward, prompting lead reporter Stephen Drill and producer, Andrea Thiis-Evenson, to continue their investigations while still in production. 

On the back of the podcast, The Australian Skills Quality Authority and Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency have also both said they are looking into the same allegations, while the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission has also confirmed it is investigating Hillsong, following the leak of more than 10,000 Hillsong financial documents, which have been tabled in federal parliament since the podcast series started.