Much room for mushrooms
SHAUN MICALLEF: Ok. Thank you very much.
SONIA KRUGER: As Shaun takes the stairs …
SONG: Come fly with me …
BREAKING NEWS STING
MIKE AMOR: Good afternoon I'm Mike Amor, we've just learned the jury has reached a verdict in the mushroom cook murder trial …
- Seven News, 7 July 2025
Hello, I'm Linton Besser, and welcome to Mushroom Watch.
Because we open tonight, as you might have predicted we would, with the case that has turned into a cult-like obsession and the verdict millions across the globe were waiting for:
ABBY DINHAM: … we've got two reporters inside the courtroom as we speak who are going to text me the verdicts …
ABBY DINHAM: … guilty to attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, guilty of the murder of Heather Wilkinson, guilty of the murder of Gail Patterson and guilty of the murder of Don Patterson.
- Ten News, 7 July 2025
First to broadcast the verdict last Monday was not either of the dedicated news channels Sky and the ABC, but channels Seven, Nine and Ten, before they shifted into rolling and somewhat intense coverage:
PENNY LIERSCH: Wadda you think she would wanna say to the families? To her extended family that have lost their lives?
ALISON PRIOR: If I could just get to my car, guys, that would be really good now, thank you.
COURT SECURITY: Come on guys, enough now …
- Nine News, 7 July 2025
The overseas networks weren't far behind, with CNN and the BBC among the very many which brought the mushroom murders to loungerooms across the world.
With viewers in France of course being assured wild mushrooms can still be safe to eat:
SOLANGE MOUGIN: … with the proper knowledge, mushroom hunting is a magical thing …
- France 24 English, 8 July 2025
Online 'Evil Erin' and her 'Mushroom Murder' knocked just about everything else off the top of news sites across the nation.
Back on Seven, after 186 minutes of rolling coverage through the afternoon, it published an extended package in its venerable 6pm news bulletin, as many as 17 minutes on the mushroom plot, before later that evening 'The Mushroom Murder Trial - Justice Served', an hour-long news special hosted by Michael Usher.
Nine News took a similar approach, its journos digging deep for something, anything, to fill 75 minutes of non-stop coverage:
GILLIAN LANTOURIS: Did you ever speak to Erin herself?
KYLE: No …
GILLIAN LANTOURIS: No …
- Nine News, 7 July 2025
Before bringing us 'Murder by Mushroom', and a camera attached to a fork:
VOICEOVER: Inside the trial of the world's most infamous feast
- Murder Down Under: Murder by Mushroom Promo, Nine Network, 8 July 2025
Auntie jumped on the bandwagon too.
Hours of live coverage on its news channel, as many as eight minutes in its 7pm bulletins, and a wrap of the verdict on its nightly current affairs program 7.30.
The following day the newspapers let loose serving up the headlines they had in the oven for weeks.
KILLER IN THE KITCHEN
- The Australian, 8 July 2025
DEATH CAP STARE
- The Age, 8 July 2025
FUNGI FATALE
- The West Australian, 8 July 2025
COOKED
- Herald Sun, 8 July 2025
The Age dedicated its first seven pages to coverage of the guilty verdict.
While The Herald Sun's 12-page special wrap concluded with a plug for its 'MUST WATCH DOCO' and 'HIT PODCAST SERIES' which has had oh just a little competition:
THE MUSHROOM COOK
- News Corp Podcast
MUSHROOM CASE DAILY
- ABC Listen
THE MUSHROOM TRIAL
SAY GRACE
- Nine Podcast
MUSHROOM MURDER TRIAL
- Podcast
THE DEATH CAP MURDERS
- Podcast
THE TRIAL OF ERIN PATTERSON
- Daily Mail Podcast
But wait, there's more. More television specials, more docos, more books:
RECIPE FOR MURDER
- Dominic McNab, 2025
And of course Toxic, Aunty's newest scripted drama.
The guilty verdict was only the dramatic final scene of what has been the biggest press bonanza in living memory, as a veritable legion of journalists and documentary-makers, presenters and podcasters descended on the regional Victorian town of Morwell.
The Victorian Supreme Court was issuing daily alerts and information to no fewer than 252 separate email addresses during the case including for 15 overseas outlets, nine authors and seven documentary crews, while accrediting for the case's audio stream, 190 individual journalists.
For some, it was an arduous and charged nine-week assignment, which one reporter discovered would change the course of his life:
The grind and my absence had made my partner of 24 years come to realise she no longer needed me in her life …
… I was discarded like yesterday's newspaper …
Perhaps the last sad victim of Erin Patterson.
- Daily Mail Australia, 7 July 2025
The media hordes provided the town of Morwell a wonderful bump in local coffee, and no doubt beer sales, but also the occasional snafu like when a clutch of journos, police and prosecutors were briefly accommodated in the same country hotel as, would you believe it, the jury.
In shambolic scenes … people [were] hiding in doorways to avoid contact, and skipping breakfast and residents … forced to move rooms to avoid disturbing jury members …
- The Age, 9 July 2025
Or more gravely when some overexcited members of the media grappled a little clumsily with that most antiquated tenet of criminal justice, a fair trial.
Last week, the Victorian Supreme Court said it was:
… concerning to see some media outlets, commentators, and individuals on social media purporting to cover the case and have 'updates' on the hearing, despite having no direct contact with the trial and no understanding of their legal responsibilities …
- Email, Supreme Court of Victoria Spokesperson, 9 July 2025
At the apex of those responsibilities is to not publish anything which hasn't been put before the jury or which presupposes a defendant's guilt, a potential criminal offence known by the latin term sub judice or contempt of court.
And in this hotly reported trial, its functionaries were indeed watching closely:
Sixteen directions to remove content were sent – including four against individuals on social media – mostly for breaches of sub judice …
- Email, Supreme Court of Victoria Spokesperson, 9 July 2025
With nearly every major media house flying close to the sun, including Melbourne's two metro newspapers which printed photographs so close to the trial's commencement of Patterson in custody.
The Herald Sun's daily blog published the name of Erin Patterson's child, a breach of a suppression order, a similar bungle also made by online publication Crikey and ABC podcast Mushroom Case Daily, which we have bleeped:
STEPHEN STOCKWELL: … we've heard stories from her children, that night and the following day about how she visited the bathroom, but she also drove [beep] out to a flying lesson ...
- Mushroom Case Daily, ABC Listen, 4 June 2025
Network Ten also received a rap over the knuckles for allowing this clanger to go to air:
JENNIFER KYTE: … it followed another day of damning evidence about her mobile phone data …
- Ten News First (Melbourne), 20 May 2025
No, there is no evidence in the world that is allowed to be described as 'damning' while a jury ponders whether to send someone down potentially for the remainder of her natural life.
One publication in hot water was the wildly popular podcast published by Mamamia:
JESSIE STEPHENS: … it's the premeditated, it's the planning that's being alleged that a lot of people are looking at that they're going, oh, this is kind of so, so highly unusual.
- Grab A Plate: The Twist in The Mushroom Trial, Mamamia Out Loud, 4 June 2025
An episode which drew an ominous rebuke from Justice Christopher Beale, who's still thinking about whether the podcasters should be referred to the DPP:
Whether there are proceedings against Mamamia for sub judice contempt is a matter I will consider at a more convenient time.
- Supreme Court of Victoria Transcript of Proceedings, 5 June 2025
Mamamia was one of two outlets put on-notice by the court, the other being our most hallowed broadcasters Kyle and Jackie O:
BROOKLYN ROSS: Erin Patterson denies deliberately poisoning her family …
KYLE SANDILANDS: Is this big lump still getting around, this big lump …
KYLE SANDILANDS: … she do it or not?
JACKIE 'O' HENDERSON: Yeah, like what what does the evidence point to? How-how …
BROOKLYN ROSS: Well, you'll have to wait for the jury to make a decision …
JACKIE 'O' HENDERSON: My question is how strong is her case?
KYLE SANDILANDS: Not strong …
JACKIE 'O' HENDERSON: … not strong?
KYLE SANDILANDS: not strong for her …
- Kyle & Jackie O, KIIS, 16 June 2025
With their trademark expertise, the great minds at KIIS FM flouted every rule in the book, the radio show's official censor finally catching up:
KYLE SANDILANDS: But the rest of us already know, yeah you [beep], come on bro, you can tell by looking at her, lock that bitch up [beep]
BROOKLYN ROSS: Wait until … [beep]
KYLE SANDILANDS: [beep] her up [beep]
BROOKLYN ROSS: It's done … [beep]
KYLE SANDILANDS: … it takes too long …
JACKIE 'O' HENDERSON: Well until it's your turn one day where you're accused …
KYLE SANDILANDS: What am I going to get accused of?
- Kyle & Jackie O, KIIS, 16 June 2025
Kyle, I'm glad you asked:
I will be referring this morning's matter to the Office of Public Prosecutions for contempt proceedings.
- Justice Beale, Supreme Court of Victoria Transcript of Proceedings, 16 June 2025
In sending off to prosecutors Kyle and Jackie O's most clever on-air contributions, Justice Beale offered a piece of advice for all:
I encourage all commentators to engage their brains before they open their mouths …
- Supreme Court of Victoria Transcript of Proceedings, 16 June 2025
The last time media houses grappled with the need for this kind of self-discipline was the prosecution of Cardinal George Pell where the media eventually pleaded guilty to breaching suppression orders and forked out more than $1 million in fines.
But at least the media's obsession with the ultimately unsuccessful case against George Pell for child sex abuse was grounded in significant public interest, his church having covered up a wave of crimes against children across the world.
Erin Patterson's sordid case the treacherous premeditated murder of three elderly relatives may have had its own public interest justifications but it was never going to shine a light on abuses of power or institutional failings.
Rather, this was a case in which the media had lit upon the ultimate gold seam, mining a rapacious appetite for true-crime bizarre.
Imagine for a moment what might be done for the world should the press devote such resources to a misery which could actually be fixed?
Multinationals dodging tax political donations corrupting Parliament or dare I say it, deaths in custody?
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