Outrage over ABC story inviting readers to vote on removing kids from distressed families
A CHARITY and the NSW government have launched a stinging attack on the ABC over a bizarre online story in which readers were asked to vote on whether children in distressed families should be placed into state care.
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THE Benevolent Society has lashed the ABC over an online story that uses one of the charity’s real-life case studies on distressed families to ask readers to vote on whether the children should be removed.
The interactive story headed “You decide: Would you remove these children from their families?” was also criticised by Federal Communications Minister Mitch Fifield and NSW Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward — a former ABC journalist — who warned: “Vulnerable children are not clickbait.”
While the online feature claims to feature real-life cases from charities including The Benevolent Society, the organisation yesterday said it did not co-operate with the national broadcaster for the story and had no knowledge of where the case study sourced to it had come from.
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The story presents six cases of “real situations where child protection workers had to decide whether to remove a child from their family”.
Readers were then invited to “Make your choice, then see if the experts agree” by voting yes or no.
Ms Goward slammed the story.
“As a former ABC journalist I am disappointed by this story,” she said.
“Serious issues like child protection should not be subjected to a yes-or-no vote from readers,” she said.
Mr Fifield was also scathing: “To reduce real and complex family and child welfare situations to a few sentences and then to ask for a thumbs-up or thumbs-down is neither appropriate nor worthy of the ABC.”
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The Benevolent Society said it had no idea where the story had come from.
“None of us has heard of this; we are trying to contact the ABC to find out,” a charity spokeswoman said.
“I am surprised that this important public conversation is being managed in this way.”
Society executive director of child and family services Matt Gardiner said the ABC had “trivialised a complex issue”.
“You need a whole lot more information than they provided to make informed decisions on these things,” he said.
“This (ABC story) was not done with the co-operation of the Benevolent Society.”
Mr Gardiner also said it was easy to “demonise” parents when situations were presented around the need to remove children.
However, the ABC last night denied the story was “clickbait”.
“We often see public outcries about oversights in the child protection system asking, ‘Why didn’t they remove this child?’ and similar case studies are used regularly in the media,” an ABC spokeswoman said.
“We wanted to find a way to put the reader into the situation.
“The interactive element does that effectively, in an innovative, thoughtful way.”
The spokeswoman said the case studies were “carefully anonymised to ensure there was no risk of negative impact” and the piece included nuanced discussion from experts in the area.
“The case study referred to as sourced to The Benevolent Society came from one of the Society’s Resilience Practice Framework guides which are posted on its website.
“In addition, an ABC journalist spoke with an authorised representative of the organisation.”