Patrick Abboud: 2020 Inaugural Fellow
Patrick (Pat) Abboud is a Walkley nominated journalist, broadcaster and award winning documentary maker. He is currently reporting and guest hosting for The Project on Network 10, and directing innovative interactive documentary projects with SBS Digital Labs and Google Labs. Pat is the founder of SBS VICELAND’s irreverent program The Feed. Pat has also reported for Dateline, and has co-hosted the annual SBS Mardi Gras live TV broadcast for the past 5 years. In 2019 Pat won the Kennedy Award for outstanding nightly TV current affairs reporting. In 2017 Cosmopolitan magazine named Pat one of the most 50 influential LGBTQI+ voices. In 2016 he won the ACON Media Journalist of the Year Award. He’s lived in Lebanon, Palestine, Morocco and Germany. When he’s not making media, you’ll find Pat in the kitchen cooking up a feast with his Middle Eastern family.
Pat was the inaugural Jesse Cox Audio Fellow, and at the core of Pat’s fellowship application was to develop a new audio series, The Greatest Menace. We set about to provide him with support from ourselves and our partners Unison Sound, Audiocraft, ABC and Audible amongst others. We (and Pat) were thrilled that the series was then commissioned by Audible and gained further support from the Walkley Foundation.
Of the experience Pat says:
‘The fellowship has allowed me to create something on my own terms without having to meet a strict deadline. I’ve had time to try things out, make mistakes, learn from those mishaps, all while building an incredible sonic toolkit to keep making original audio content. The JCAF committee has buoyed me with unwavering support and guidance... Winning the fellowship put me in front of some of the best audio brains in Australia.’
The Greatest Menace
When Pat unlocked the story of the world’s only gay prison, he had no idea what he’d stumbled into or that it would set him off on an investigation that would take over 3 years of his life. Trying to solve the mystery of the gay prison would find him entangled in a police cover up, a case of wrongful conviction and a human experiment that didn’t go to plan. At the centre of all this - a secretive government operation to eradicate homosexuality. And it all happened in a tiny Australian town with a big secret. A world first queer true crime show, The Greatest Menace is a collaboration with co-producer Simon Cunich, commissioned by Amazon, supported by The Walkley Foundation and made possible with the support of the Jesse Cox Audio Fellowship.