ABC faces fresh scrutiny over cuts to Trump January 6 speech, coverage of Middle East
The national broadcaster faces fresh criticism after it followed in the footsteps of the BBC in doctoring a Trump speech, a move that claimed the scalps of the UK broadcaster’s two senior executives.
The ABC has been accused of failing to ensure its own impartial journalism following the resignation of senior BBC executives over a doctored speech by Donald Trump, amid revelations the Australian broadcaster’s flagship program similarly cut up the US President’s address on January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot.
BBC director-general Tim Davie and news chief executive Deborah Turness both announced their resignation after the network’s Panorama program edited a Trump speech to make it appear as though he was encouraging a riot at the Capitol.
The speech spliced two segments of the President’s address together that were uttered almost an hour apart, a decision a BBC internal memo concedes was “completely misleading”.
Revelations the ABC’s Four Corners program similarly edited the address have fuelled concerns over the public broadcaster’s ability to meet its own impartiality standards.
The section when the President encouraged his supporters to “cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women” was cut from the Sarah Ferguson-led program, Chris Kenny revealed on Sky News.
Prior to her analysis of the final days of the Trump administration, Ferguson on the same program took aim at Mr Trump’s links with Russia, ties she hypothesised delivered him the White House in 2016. That thesis was discredited by successive US Special Counsel investigations.
The public broadcaster has seen a collapse in the public perception of its accuracy and impartiality, according to its most recent annual report, having been plagued with a series of editorial failings over recent years.
A 19-page dossier sent to the BBC board that accused the broadcaster of doctoring Trump’s speech, failing to effectively prosecute Hamas propaganda, and presenting one-sided pro-trans arguments to its viewers is similar to criticisms levelled against the ABC in recent years.
Last year, its managing director was forced to apologise to former commando Heston Russell and members of the 2nd Commando Regiment after extra gunshots were edited into a news report claiming to show an Australian soldier firing at unarmed civilians.
An inquiry into the altered audio, conducted by the broadcaster’s former editorial policy director Alan Sunderland, found “no evidence of any intent to mislead”, instead pinning blame on lawyers.
Aunty sat on that report for at least five weeks, and declined to answer questions put by The Australian at the time as to why.
The former commando, who successfully sued the broadcaster for defamation over separate stories that included allegations relating to the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan, said the ABC “tied ribbons around bad behaviour”.
“For the first time in our nation’s history, any media, let alone the Australian broadcaster, was found to doctor footage of Australian troops in combat,” he said.
“We see Justin Stevens, the head of news, receive a 20 per cent pay rise … show me any other taxpayer-funded job that has had such an incredibly dismal track record and then is rewarded with a 20 per cent salary increase.”
Liberal senator Sarah Henderson, in light of the resignations at the BBC, called for an overhaul of the legislation governing the ABC.
“I’m a strong advocate for a rewrite of the ABC Act to hold the ABC to account because I don’t think the legislation governing the ABC is fit for purpose,” she said.
Analogous to the critique of their British colleagues, the ABC’s coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas – and by extension its treatment of the anti-Semitism crisis domestically – has also consistently come under fire.
In May, it followed the BBC in reporting the claim of a UN spokesman that “14,000 babies would be at risk of dying in Gaza within a 48-hour period due to starvation”. The British broadcaster, just hours afterwards, clarified the claim was wrong, and actually referred to the projections of severe acute malnutrition in Gaza over the next year. It took the ABC a week to admit its reporting was wrong.
Former ABC director Joe Gersh, who has claimed the public broadcaster was “always lagging behind” other media outlets when it came to the issue of anti-Semitism, said the parallels between Aunty and the BBC were clear.
“The BBC has owned up to its failure to meet its impartiality obligations, with some significant consequences. That’s something I’m sure the ABC should pay attention to,” he said. “It’s necessary for the ABC to have a careful look at what it’s done in relation to Israel and Gaza reporting and put deep thought into how it’s covered anti-Semitism.
“It must ask whether the criticisms that have been levelled at the BBC could fairly also be levelled at the ABC, and take action to ensure that the consequences are not the same.”
The broadcaster’s staff, in an internal meeting in 2023, claimed its coverage was too pro-Israel, and took issue with the ABC’s refusal to use words like genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
It was Aunty’s own media watchdog that took issue with its reporting of gender transitions and puberty blockers, claiming the broadcaster’s ties with the trans lobby were clouding its judgment.
In 2022, then Media Watch host Paul Barry claimed the organisations close ties to ACON could “lead to perceptions of bias in coverage or to bias itself”.
The segment followed concessions made by then ABC chair Ita Buttrose, that there were “serious editorial lapses” in a story about trans women in sport.
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