ABC ‘sorry’ for fake gunshot scandal

The public broadcaster has apologised for publishing multiple stories with errors in relation to a military operation by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.

ABC acting managing director Melanie Kleyn. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

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The ABC has apologised for “inadvertently” including additional audio of gunshots in a series of stories about an Australian military operation in Afghanistan in 2012.

ABC news director Justin Stevens told Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday that the issues with the audio “shouldn’t have occurred” but he refused to name any employees involved in the stories that ran on the 7.30 program and on the public broadcaster’s website.

In September, Channel 7’s Spotlight program revealed additional gunshots – purportedly fired by an Australian soldier from a helicopter – had been inserted into stories about the military operation, thus giving a false impression of the circumstances of the skirmish.

The ABC managing director David Anderson subsequently launched a review into the matter, to be conducted by the organisation’s former editorial chief Alan Sunderland.

In commissioning the review, Mr Anderson said he was, to that point, unaware the ABC’s legal department had received a letter raising concerns about the audio editing but hadn’t passed it on to the organisation’s news division.

Mr Sunderland’s interim report, tabled on Tuesday afternoon, found there was “no evidence of any intention to mislead by any ABC employee”, and cleared the broadcaster and the journalists involved in the stories of having “deliberately doctored, falsified, manipulated or distorted information, material or evidence in order to mislead audiences”.

“I have found no evidence to support the conclusion that any of this was done at the direction of the journalists involved or on the initiative of the video editor in order to doctor or deliberately distort the depiction of the events that occurred,” the interim review states.

“On the contrary, what evidence there is suggests it was not a deliberate editorial decision to include additional gunshot audio in order to mislead or deceive.”

In a statement posted on the ABC’s website on Tuesday, Mr Stevens said: “The ABC sincerely regrets and apologises for the editing errors in the video clips, including to members of the 2nd Commando Regiment. The video has been removed.”

ABC news director Justin Stevens. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Last year, one of the soldiers involved in the 2012 military operation in Afghanistan, Special Forces commando Heston Russell, successfully sued the ABC for defamation over the stories, which were led by reporter Mark Willacy.

Russell was awarded $390,000 in damages, plus legal costs.

Mr Russell told The Australian on Tuesday that the interim review showed the mistakes of “adding gun shots and enhancing footage of Australian soldiers in combat to paint a negative picture” appeared to be an “acceptable standard” at the ABC.

During the Senate hearing Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson asked ABC acting managing director Melanie Kleyn: “On what basis did the ABC not respond (to the letter) and correct these terrible injustices that we now know about? Did ABC lawyers inform anyone else at the ABC? Who was instructing ABC lawyers?”

Ms Kleyn said she “didn’t know” if anyone in the organisation’s news division had received the letter that had been sent by Mr Russell’s lawyers to the ABC legal department in 2022.

“The exact circumstances surrounding exactly what happened at that date, and why, and then what will we do differently, is the outstanding element of Mr Sunderland’s review,” Ms Kleyn said.

Mr Stevens said the video editor who worked on the stories in question was no longer employed by the ABC.

The Senate hearing continues.

Originally published as ABC ‘sorry’ for fake gunshot scandal