The five-year quest to uncover the truth about Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith is the focus of the seventh title under Stan’s Revealed documentary banner.
Dora Weekley’s Ben Roberts-Smith Truth On Trial traces the origins of journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters’ reports in 2018 that Australia’s most decorated living soldier committed war crimes in Afghanistan, through to the subsequent stories on 60 Minutes and Roberts-Smith taking them to court in a defamation trial that ended in 2023.
Created in collaboration with 60 Minutes, The Age, and The Sydney Morning Herald, the feature-length documentary is produced by Weekley, with Cailah Scobie and Amanda Duthie executive producing for Stan.
McKenzie, who has previously contributed to Revealed documentaries Amongst Us: Neo-Nazi Australia and Trafficked, said the documentary was designed to give Australians the inside story into the “fight by brave SAS soldiers to have the truth about Roberts-Smith revealed”, while also delving into his and Masters’ “struggle as journalists to ensure the public learned the facts, not the myth, about Roberts-Smith”.
Masters said he thought of the Ben Roberts-Smith saga as “a bundle of stories”.
“We have two journalists inside the assignment of their lives; the elite SAS at war over one of their own; a courtroom drama for the ages, and behind it all, an extraordinary murder mystery,” he said.
Ben Roberts-Smith Truth On Trial follows previous Stan Revealed documentaries Danielle Laidley: Two Tribes, The Cape, Reefshot, Trafficked, Amongst Us – Neo Nazi Australia and No Mercy, No Remorse.
It will premiere December 10 on Stan.