How can we trust Tara Brown now? How can we trust 60 Minutes?

Channel Nine has handled this appallingly. Even now, they're stuffing things up.

To see how far everyone in this saga has fallen, let's compare the botched Beirut kidnapping to an earlier 60 Minutes case.

You couldn't make this up. Barely three years ago, Tara Brown stared down the barrel of the camera – then slammed those who "knowingly aided and abetted an international kidnap". Oh, the irony.

Between 2012 and 2015, Brown presented three reports on a bitter custody dispute between an Italian husband and his Australian ex-wife. In her view, the Australian woman had committed "nothing less than an international child abduction".

But last month, Brown let herself off the hook in a soft-pedal interview with 60 Minutes colleague Michael Usher. Fresh from jail over her alleged involvement in a failed Beirut child snatch, Brown criticised Lebanese authorities. "I thought, 'We're journalists, we're doing our job – and they will see reason, they will understand that'," she said.

This raises the question: which Tara Brown will viewers see now?

The one who condemns international child kidnappers? Or the one who suggests authorities are unreasonable to abort foreigners' harebrained abduction schemes?

Nine is urging journalists not to judge Brown and her colleagues too harshly, lest we prejudice any future criminal proceedings in the Lebanese courts.

But what about Stephen Rice, the producer of this story? On Friday, Nine ignored the advice of its own internal review and sacked him. In doing so, it made Rice a marked man. This won't help his chances in any potential criminal case.

Having just terminated one of their own (so much for "the Channel Nine family") it's a bit rich to ask others to tone it down.

A spokeswoman says Nine will continue to offer Rice legal representation. She insists: "We are confident nothing we have revealed in the release or summary [of the internal review] will prejudice those serious matters." (On Tuesday, it was reported Rice is fighting his sacking, hiring top lawyer John Laxon.)

Nine insiders speculate Rice was fired because the network needed a head on a platter – and stars such as Brown are "too big to fail".

Except Nine has created another PR headache for itself. By disregarding key advice – "[no] staff member should be singled out for dismissal" – management has hardly inspired confidence it will implement the review's other tough recommendations.

Back when she presented her Italian custody stories, Brown was unambiguous. The law must be obeyed. She accused the Australian mother of breaching the Hague Convention – and manipulating authorities – to "kidnap" her four daughters from Tuscany.

Brown says this happened because Australian government officials did not "make any serious attempt to independently verify" the mother's false allegations against her ex-husband. People failed to do their jobs, Brown suggests, because they didn't ask the right questions. (A response from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is below.*)

You already know what I'm about to ask. Did Brown ask the right questions during her Beirut kidnapping story?

People who've worked with Brown assure me she is the most hands-on of all 60 Minutes' reporters. Unlike the show-ponies who let producers do all the work, Brown is "super intelligent", "very-level headed" and "wants to go through every single little detail".

In its damning internal review, delivered on Friday, Nine found systemic failures at every level. This makes it harder for Brown and her colleagues to excuse their actions. She and others have been formally "censured". But is that enough?

Recently, 60 Minutes presented a tribute to its late reporter, Richard Carleton. Literally until he dropped, Carleton aggressively challenged spin and double-speak.

Imagine if he were around to grill his bosses about this debacle.

"Many people, at many levels, made many bad decisions," he might say.

"And you're keeping all of them – except one sacrificial lamb – to run the show?"

At this point, he'd peer over his glasses: "How do you think that looks?"

This is the nub of the problem. Since it launched 37 years ago, 60 Minutes has traded on its fearless, no-bullshit reputation. Now, viewers can smell the cowpats.

On one hand, they see a report identifying systemic failures. On the other, they see Stephen Rice being made a scapegoat.

They've seen Tara Brown, diligent journalist, lashing those who arranged an "international kidnapping". Now they see Tara Brown excusing her own poor behaviour – and escaping the kind of grilling she's built her career on.

Ratings are down. They've been falling for a while. Nine cannot spin its way out of this one.

This isn't a glossy, vapid morning show. Viewers will not accept a scripted apology over Channel Nine-branded mugs of coffee. And the network cannot hide Brown and her colleagues from other media forever.

This is 60 Minutes.

You created the template, guys. Now you have to live up to it.

Know more? Email mlallo@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Twitter: @Michael_Lallo

*NOTE: When asked to respond to Tara Brown's characterisation of the dispute between the Australian mother and Italian father as "an extraordinary conspiracy to remove the children illegally" and "nothing less than an international child abduction", a spokesman from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told Fairfax Media:

This claim is false. In his decision in Department of Community Services (Child Safety Services) & Garning [2011] FamCA 485 (23 June 2011), Family Court Justice Forrest said:

"I… have found nothing that supports a finding that any Australian Government official somehow knowingly assisted the mother to do something that was wrong … I do not find … that any Australian Embassy officials who helped the mother did so knowing that the mother did not have the father's consent to remove the girls permanently from Italy".

These findings were subsequently referred to in the Family Court Full Court decision in Garning & Director-General, Department of Community Services (Child Safety Services) [2012] FamCAFC 35 (9 March 2012), which upheld the Family Court's decision.