The Australian's Margin Call column has taken a swing at Karl Stefanovic for interviewing James, Emma and Matteo Salerno, the siblings behind country clothing giant Ringers Western and the anchor sponsor of his podcast. Columnist Will Glasgow wrote that the Salernos "clearly aren't helping his journalistic credibility" and spent most of the column on the family's past rather than the business they built.
It's the latest swing from a media establishment that's spent three weeks trying to pull Stefanovic down for going out on his own. There's a pattern here, and it deserves a name. Call it KSDS, Karl Stefanovic Derangement Syndrome. The symptoms present most strongly in newsrooms he now beats in the ratings.
Video: The Karl Stefanovic Show, via Youtube. The Salerno siblings tell Karl Stefanovic why Ringers Western puts family above the business.
Businesses can be rebuilt, families can't
The interview, released on Monday evening, runs for 45 minutes on how three siblings took a workwear label from the cattle yards to one of the biggest country brands in Australia. Stefanovic put the point of it plainly on X.
"Businesses can be rebuilt. Families can't," he wrote. "Through success, setbacks and years of public scrutiny, James, Emma and Matteo Salerno refused to walk away from each other. They say that's the real reason Ringers Western became one of Australia's biggest country brands." — Karl Stefanovic, 13 July 2026
On the episode, the family put their success down to exactly that, a motto of Stickin Together that they say outranks the business itself.
It's not just a motto... we put that above everything else.
That's the story The Australian decided needed a takedown.
Video: Ringers Western, via YouTube. The brand's country workwear in one of its New Arrivals campaign videos.
A Weet-Bix packet, a bull called Skippy and a chopper rescue: the story Glasgow skipped
The interview Glasgow reduced to a conflict of interest is one of the better business yarns going around. The first Ringers Western shirt was sketched on the back of a Weet-Bix packet around a campfire in 2012, in crayon, "like a child's drawing", after one too many shirts ripped open in the cattle yards. The first orders went out of their auntie's garage on the Gold Coast, and she slipped handwritten notes into the parcels.
The family only ended up in the Kimberley because their father, pulling up carpet at another property, found an old newspaper underneath with an ad for a station he'd never heard of. He rang the agent, bought a million acres for around $459,000, and celebrated by jumping into water nobody had told him was full of crocodiles.
Emma Salerno once took a feral bull's horn straight through her leg while mustering, five hours from the nearest town. The bull flipped her quad bike, her brother flew in on the station chopper to pull her out, and her first words when he landed were "No, I'm fine. I'm fine." The jeans she was wearing, their own gear, didn't even rip.
Even the logo has a story. It's a real bull the family caught on the station, an athlete that could clear eight feet "like a deer", so they named him Skippy. A cousin in the stock camp drew him by hand, and he still works at the company today.
That's the material Glasgow had in front of him when he decided the real story was the family's past.
Nine, ARN, The Conversation and now News Corp: three weeks of tearing Karl down
Stefanovic was let go from Nine in late June after the network decided it couldn't live with his independent podcast, which had just aired an interview with British activist Tommy Robinson. Within a week, ARN cut him from his radio show. The Conversation branded his new venture "journalistic laundering". Now the country's national masthead is running columns about the ethics of him being nice to a clothing brand.
Meanwhile, the audience keeps voting the other way. His podcast is already pulling a bigger audience than the Today show he left behind. Tall poppy syndrome used to be a national affliction. In Stefanovic's case it's become a content strategy.
Will Glasgow's complaint: Stefanovic was upfront about a sponsor he likes
Strip the sneer out of the Margin Call piece and the complaint is this: a podcaster was friendly to his sponsor. Stefanovic doesn't hide the relationship. He told the Salernos on air, "You give me credibility in the country," a line Glasgow quotes as if he'd caught someone out. Sponsors are how podcasts get made. The host reads the ads out loud, so listeners know exactly who's paying the bills. The newspapers attacking Karl run paid ads and sponsored content on the same pages themselves.
On the episode itself, Stefanovic said out loud the thing the column pretends to expose. "When we set out, we really wanted to represent great Australian companies. And I desperately wanted clothing."
He then challenged his own sponsor on tape: "A lot of advertisers get nervous and scared off, but I wanted to say to you guys, hang on, are we in this for shits and giggles or are we going to have a go?" He pressed them on whether they'd bolt "as soon as the first bit of trouble comes along". That's the opposite of a host protecting a cheque.
James Salerno Jnr's answer on why the family backs him is the part that should worry the knockers most.
"It's very important to us that we partner with people who are good people... You represent a voice in Australia for the common person. I don't think our voice is being heard enough, and I think it's good that you keep that going, because it's what we need here."
The double standard has form. As One News reported, Bonds kept Adam Hyde as a face of the brand after he told Australians to die, while Stefanovic lost his job for doing an interview. Nobody at Margin Call or even The Australian wrote a column about that sponsorship.
The court case Margin Call dug up ended with the charges dropped
The column also dug up the siblings' father, James Salerno Snr, and a court case that finished three years ago. The Australian's own piece admits how it ended. The 2019 conviction was thrown out on appeal and prosecutors dropped the charges in 2023. He maintained his innocence the whole way through. The case is closed, and dragging it back out to spice up a column about a clothing sponsorship is a choice someone made on deadline.
James, Emma and Matteo weren't accused of anything, then or now. They went on a podcast to talk about shirts. For that, a national masthead went back through their father's old court file. The column is meant to frighten every other business out of backing anyone the press doesn't approve of. Good luck with that. The Salernos built Ringers Western through the worst the media could throw at them, and a family raised on crocodiles and cattle stations was never going to be scared of a few gossip columnists.
Australia is meant to be the country of the fair go. Three kids who grew up on a cattle station in the Kimberley had a go and built one of the biggest country brands in the nation. Stefanovic is also having a go, walking away from one of the biggest chairs in television to back himself. And the grandest masthead in the country responded by having a go at him instead. You can't get less Australian than that.
Ringers Western dresses the Canterbury Bulldogs until 2027, the Penrith Panthers this season and the Queensland Reds since 2021 and it's been suiting up the South Sydney Rabbitohs as their official corporate outfitter since 2023, a partnership built on the brand's relationship with Latrell Mitchell. Nine happily banks the ratings from broadcasting those same clubs without a word of complaint from anyone. The pearl clutching only started when the family's money began backing a broadcaster the left-wing press can't control.
Emma Salerno: "freedom of speech is essential to any free and fair democracy"
When the Robinson storm hit in June and the networks ran for cover, Ringers Western didn't move. Executive director Emma Salerno told Yahoo Lifestyle the brand would keep sponsoring the show.
"From what we can see, Karl is giving a voice to people from all spectrums and freedom of speech is essential to any free and fair democracy," she said. "The motto of Ringers Western is 'Stickin Together', and we live by it."
That's the loyalty Stefanovic was returning this week. The media class calls it a conflict of interest. Most Australians would call it sticking together.
The podcast Nine couldn't live with keeps growing, and the columns keep coming. On the numbers, only one of those things is working.
