Critics of ABC tax coverage ‘vindicated’, says Mitch Fifield

Those concerned about the ABC’s coverage of company tax policy had been “thoroughly vindicated’’, Mitch Fifield says.

ABC chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici.

Those concerned about the ABC’s coverage of company tax policy had been “thoroughly vindicated”, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said yesterday.

He made the comment after ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie told a Senate estimates committee that inadequate editorial resources were to blame for the publication of the articles, written by chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici.

The articles were rewritten after the ABC decided they contained errors of fact and omission, and breached impartiality guidelines.

“We absolutely take collective responsibility for the failure of our processes to catch the errors ­before the articles were published,” Ms Guthrie said.

The managing director said the ABC had moved resources to be as technology and platform agnostic as possible.

“As we made those changes I very much take responsibility that we did not put ­adequate resources in places to maintain the editorial quality we needed across all our platforms,’’ she said.

“We have really made those changes in a rapid fashion.”

Senator Fifield said the ABC was right to apologise.

“The government’s concerns about company tax policy reporting by the ABC have been thoroughly vindicated,” Senator Fifield said.

“It’s good that the ABC have accepted responsibility for these errors and have made internal changes to improve their editorial processes.”

In response to the minister the ABC said late yesterday it was “satisfied” that the public record “now accurately reflects how it managed reporting of the corporate tax debate”.

“Both the news report and analysis by ABC Chief Economics Correspondent Emma Alberici remain available on the ABC website providing audiences with critical information about both sides of this important debate,” an ABC spokesman said.

“The ABC is also satisfied it has met its responsibilities to provide independent and accurate information after identifying editorial issues with the original reports.”

After publication in February the ABC received complaints from the government and business leaders.

ABC Managing Director Michelle Guthrie speaks during Senate Estimates at Parliament House in Canberra yesterday.

The ABC is still working through complaints from the Prime Minister’s office and business leaders.

ABC director of editorial policy Alan Sunderland said he expected some of those would be upheld and some dismissed.

The ABC had told the senators that problems with the articles were not detected before publication.

“It is not at all uncommon for stories to be written and an editing process to go through,” Mr ­Sunderland said.

“What’s unusual is that it slipped through our process before it was published and we had to do it full public glare.”

But he defended the stories as being important and significant, while Ms Guthrie reaffirmed her support of Alberici.

ABC management spoke to ­Alberici about her use of social media after she retweeted and “liked” a tweet from Bill Shorten praising her contentious articles on corporate tax rates.

Alberici retweeted the tweet after she had agreed with ABC management there were problems with the articles and that they needed to be rewritten, the Senate estimates hearing was told yesterday. “Yes, she has been spoken to about a tweet,” Mr Sunderland said.

“It is generally considered that retweets are not taken to be ­endorsements, but quite often be perceived as such. It is understandable but nevertheless she was spoken to about it.”

The Opposition Leader had linked to the article and said it showed the “real story” about corporate tax rates in Australia.

Yesterday Coalition senator Eric Abetz criticised the ­action. “Ms Alberici was aware of those concerns yet retweets this tweet from Mr Shorten pointing to this fatally flawed article,” he said.

Later the Prime Minister’s ­office questioned if the retweet was “appropriate for a ‘fair and balanced’ ABC journalist”.

Additional reporting: AAP