Everybody Knows: A five-part investigation into Australia’s toxic music industry launches

The rise and fall of the Me Too movement in Australia and the culture of cover-ups and complicity in the local music industry will be placed under the spotlight in a new investigation, Everybody Knows.

Everybody Knows will be a five-part podcast fronted by journalist Ruby Jones, who said she wanted to discover how it is that everybody knows about the crimes being committed, and yet nothing changes.

“I want to know why, four years on from Me Too, so little has changed for women in Australia. How the law, journalistic failures and a culture of ‘boys will be boys’ has combined to make speaking about abuse so impossible,” she said.

“This series is an investigation into the underbelly of the Australian music industry, the harassment, abuse and misogyny that’s been allowed to flourish there for years.”

Schwartz Media, the company behind the podcast, said Everybody Knows will uncover how a culture of secrecy, where men protect men, works in lock step with the media and archaic laws to protect abusers.

The investigation will feature in-depth interviews with a suite of figures central to the movement including Jen Robinson, a human rights lawyer who acted for Amber Herd and Rose McGowan, and Bruce McClintock, who represented Geoffrey Rush. Jones will also speak to investigative journalist Kate McClymont, whose work has been central to uncovering systemic abuse, as well as survivors.

Osman Faruqi, Schwartz Media’s newly promoted head of audio, said the series will set a new benchmark for quality audio journalism in Australia.

“Ruby is a brilliant host of 7am, but she’d also an extraordinary journalist in her own right,” he said. “We’d been looking for the right opportunity to unleash some of those skills, and Everybody Knows is it.”

The podcast will be distributed by Acast with the first episode available from September 1.