ANALYSIS

In telling other peoples' stories, 60 Minutes prides itself on being on the front foot.

But in telling its own story, Channel Nine's flagship current affairs program should take a step back, crisis management expert Mark Rudder argues.

Tara Brown and Sally Faulkner leaving the Beirut jail. Photo: Nine Network

The jubilation and tears reported at Nine headquarters over the release of reporter Tara Brown, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson, sound recordist David Ballment and mother Sally Faulkner from a Lebanese jail, are understandable.

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The smiles on the faces and the drinks in the hands of the liberated crew on their way home, in a photo tweeted by Channel Nine, are understandable too.

Those images feed the story of the moment - of how the 60 Minutes crew came to be jailed in Lebanon, with the mother whose children they helped try to abduct. The story has become how they came to be freed, with the mother reportedly agreeing to relinquish custody as a condition for her release.

The 60 Minutes crew celebrate their freedom in an image tweeted by Channel Nine on Thursday. Photo: Channel Nine

But the story needs to be about the children, Lahala 6, and Noah, 4, said Mr Rudder, founding partner of GRACosway with long experience in providing public relations crisis advice to large corporations, including the late Kerry Packer's PBL.

"To me, the central issue here is the rights of children to be safe and to have access to their parents.

"It would be very tempting to just focus on the return of those journalists who have had a truly awful time of things," Mr Rudder said.

Mark Rudder of GRACosway says 60 Minutes needs to keep the story's focus on the wellbeing of the children. Photo: GRACosway

Channel Nine will be "very tempted to get out there and try and prove that somebody is right or wrong", and to "justify their actions", he said.

But with a legal process under way, it's imperative that Channel Nine and 60 Minutes do nothing that might jeopardise the children's safety or their right of access to their parents.

"It is so easy within that legal process to create unintended consequences," he said.

The journalists who are on their way home are now the best "assets" for communicating the story, Mr Rudder said.

But he advised that their comments be limited along the lines of, "It is good to be back but our concern always has been and remains, these children, who have been deprived of their access to their parents."

"That is a big issue in this country, it happens quite a lot, and they were shining a light on that for us," Mr Rudder said.

"A good strong argument" would be to say, "We had this good strong cause. OK we stuffed up, but that noble cause still remains," he said.

He would "probably" advise against a 60 Minutes episode focusing on the journalists' experience any time soon, to avoid risk both to the children's and the crew's wellbeing.

With complicated issues around who paid who for what, how the crew was treated in Lebanon, and how they might feel about how the situation was handled, "that is pretty dangerous territory for someone who has been in extreme stress".

"If you roll out those assets now and something happens later, that can lead to another disaster," Mr Rudder said.

Bottom line? "Don't do anything to stuff up those kids, the rights of those kids. If they do that, it will be a much bigger disaster. They think it is bad now but it [could] get a lot worse."

Nine Network chief executive Hugh Marks said in a statement that Nine would conduct a full review headed by the respected veteran newsman and inaugural 60 Minutes executive producer Gerald Stone, with David Hurley and general counsel Rachel Launders, to ascertain "what went wrong and why our systems, designed to protect staff, failed to do so in this case".