ABC trust on the line over Four Corners footage, says climate activists

Any decision by the ABC to hand over footage to WA police would mean the national broadcaster could never be trusted again, climate activists say.

Disrupt Burrup Hub protesters talking to the ABC outside Meg O'Neill's home. Picture: Disrupt Burrup Hub

Any decision by the ABC and its flagship current affairs program Four Corners to hand over footage to West Australian police would mean the national broadcaster could never be trusted again, climate activists say.

Disrupt Burrup Hub media adviser Jesse Noakes, who will appear in court in November on four counts of refusing to obey a data access order, said he has been told the ABC had made a decision to release footage captured by the broadcaster as part of a recent Four Corners report.

It is understood ABC lawyers wrote to Mr Noakes on Tuesday, urgently seeking any extra information relevant to their decision.

The ABC has been under pressure to hand over hours of footage to police as part of an investi­gation into an attempted protest at the City Beach home of Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill in August.

The protesters were accompanied by a film crew from Four Corners working on a report that went to air earlier this month.

Mr Noakes said handing over the footage would breach undertakings given by the ABC to protect multiple sources who participated in the Four Corners program.

“All of Four Corners’ access to the Disrupt Burrup Hub campaign was the product of numerous conversations over several months in the course of which agreements over access and exposure were continually negotiated. Dozens of people consented to be filmed for a Four Corners investigation. No one ever consented to be filmed for a WA police investigation,” Mr Noakes said in a statement to The Australian.

“If the ABC release Four Corners footage to WA police, who would ever trust the ABC to tell their story again?”

The ABC denied it had disclosed, or would disclose, material in breach of any undertaking to confidential sources. “Like other media organisations, the ABC from time to time receives compulsory legal processes seeking access to material,” an ABC spokeswoman said. “As ABC managing director David Anderson has previously stated ‘We don’t reveal our sources, we never have and never will’.”

The activists estimate up to 50 hours of footage were filmed as part of the program.

One activist who agreed to participate in the program, Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigner and deputy chair of the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee Desmond Blurton, said he feared releasing the ABC footage could lead to the imprisonment of vulnerable people. Mr Blurton has not been charged over the incident at Ms O’Neill’s home.

“Given I work on a number of other social issues affecting my First Nations community with other campaigners involved with Disrupt Burrup Hub, it is quite possible that confidential discussions that have no relevance to the Four Corners story were captured by the ABC,” he said.

“I do not consent to WA police being given any of this footage, and if the ABC hands over any footage, it will be a deep betrayal of people who trusted the ABC to give them a voice.”

The latest legal correspondence to the activists from the ABC lawyers was sent on the same day Mr Anderson was grilled over the incident at a parliamentary hearing.

Mr Anderson at the time said the ABC was still in discussions with police over the footage. “We have been seeking to get constraints to produce such that we can protect confidential sources,” he said.

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance has previously urged the ABC not to hand over the footage, noting that revealing sources was contrary to the journalist code of ethics.

Four protesters were arrested over the attempted action at Ms O’Neill’s home.

The incident and the ABC’s role in accompanying protesters drew condemnation.

WA Premier Roger Cook wrote to ABC chair Ita Buttrose at the time, saying the ABC crew’s attendance was of “great concern and morally wrong”.

The incident was one of a string of increasingly disruptive tactics employed by the activists.