ABC admits torture reports error

THE ABC has admitted its initial reports about claims made by asylum-seekers against Navy personnel "needed to be more precise".

THE ABC has admitted that the wording of the broadcaster's initial reports about claims made by asylum-seekers against Australian Navy personnel "needed to be more precise" and has apologised to anyone who thought it supported the claims as a result.

But ABC managing director Mark Scott and director of news Kate Torney have stopped short of fully apologising for the reports or retracting them in a statement yesterday.

The statement says the ABC's initial reports on the video footage containing claims by asylum-seekers that members of the navy had forced them to hold hot engine pipes - claims that have since been widely shown to be false - "said that the vision appeared to support the asylum-seekers' claims".

"That's because it was the first concrete evidence that the injuries had occurred," Mr Scott and Ms Torney argue in their statement. "What the video did not do was establish how those injuries occurred. The wording around the ABC's initial reporting needed to be more precise on that point. We regret if our reporting led anyone to mistakenly assume that the ABC supported the asylum-seekers' claims. The ABC has always presented the allegations as just that - claims worthy of further investigation."

The statement follows ongoing criticism of the initial reporting by Jakarta correspondent George Roberts and the ABC's refusal to back away from the reports. That criticism includes a report on Monday night by its own Media Watch program where host Paul Barry concluded that the ABC reporting had "overreached", and that it should admit it has made a mistake. "We believe the ABC should have been far more cautious, given the evidence it had and given it was making such a big call against the navy," Barry told his audience.

"We believe ABC news got it wrong and if so, it needs to admit it, to find out how the mistake was made and to make sure it won't happen again."

So far Mr Scott has refused to apologise or retract the reporting in anyway.

This week he told The Australian: "I don't think there should be any attempt to somehow suggest that because the ABC raises those allegations, the ABC are advocates for those allegations, that the ABC has acted as judge and jury on those allegations.

"We have raised them because they are serious, they are important and they raise questions that need to be answered, and we have put those questions."

The statement said the release of the video footage "and asking further questions in the light of it, was in the public interest and remains so. Our journalists will continue to investigate and cover this story, and we will continue to urge Australian authorities and the government to disclose more to the Australian public about the events on board those boats. Our intention is clear: to seek the truth on a matter of public importance, not to prejudge any matters."

The ABC did not respond to the question why Michele Fonseca, head of the broadcaster's news strategy, told Media Watch the claims made by an asylum-seeker at the centre of the "torture" allegations were initially "treated with caution and not reported by the ABC on the 8th (of January)".