Row over ‘activist’ ABC and euthanasia footage

The ABC has come under fire for showing footage of a man euthan­asing himself.

Sally Neighbour took over as executive producer of the Four Corners prog­ram 18 months ago.

The ABC has come under fire for showing footage of a man euthan­asing himself, as Immigration Minister Peter Dutton accused the public broadcaster of being “taken over” by political activists.

The 7.30 program last night broadcast the confronting footage of pain-stricken Max Bromson taking a fatal dose of illegal euthan­asia drug Nembutal in July 2014, triggering accusations from ­former prime minister Tony ­Abbott that the ABC was engaged in “death voyeurism”.

“Surely not even the ABC is so irresponsible, I am simply ­appalled,” Mr Abbott told The Australian last night.

“Regardless of where you stand on the issue, there have to be standards of reporting. This is death voyeurism, not journalism.”

Former Liberal minister Kevin Andrews, a senior conservative who led the fight to overturn the Northern Territory’s ­assisted dying laws two decades ago, also told The Australian anything that promoted suicide in the ­community was “inappropriate and irresponsible”.

Bromson had suffered from bone cancer for the five years leading up to his death at the age of 66, which was filmed by his ­sister Kerry in a small hotel room. In 2012, he told the ABC his pain was “excruciating” and that he had been told in 2009 that he had months to live.

He approached Philip Nitschke’s euthanasia advocacy group, Exit International, and secretly arranged to get some Nembutal from overseas. “It’s bloody bitter,” he said minutes before falling unconscious in the video shown last night. He died not long after.

The Bromson family filmed his death, with his permission, to protect themselves from the police and coronial investigations that followed. “The reason we filmed it was probably for legal reasons, to show that we had nothing to do with assisting him, that it was his choice,” Kerry Bromson told 7.30.

Conservative Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz said it was a ­“matter of regret” that the national broadcaster was “portraying suicide in such a light which ­undermines the community’s ­efforts to value every life.”

The fresh criticism of the ABC came after senior media figures came to the defence of its flagship Four Corners program, after an episode detailing conditions for children on Nauru was slammed as one-sided by Mr Dutton.

Mr Dutton said he would write to ABC managing director Mich­elle Guthrie to lodge a formal complaint about what he claims is a political crusade being waged by the ABC while its former chairman, Maurice Newman, warned that Four Corners was at risk of becoming a platform for advocacy groups.

Sally Neighbour took over as executive producer of the prog­ram 18 months ago and Sarah Ferguson replaced Kerry O’Brien as the host this year.

Following The Australian’s ­report confirming that Monday night’s episode featured old photographs of facilities no longer in use and random footage of brawling adults sourced from YouTube, Mr Dutton told Sydney radio station 2GB yesterday there was a “significant network” of activ­ist reporters at the ABC, although he declined to name them.

“There’s no question that they have completely taken over and they own and operate the place,” Mr Dutton said.

“We had offered to provide ­information to Four Corners, to the ABC. They didn’t run it. We had offered to provide answers to questions, and to ­provide them with information that they could use as part of their program. They didn’t take up the offer.”

Mr Dutton said his offer to do a live interview on the program was declined.

The criticism was strongly ­denied by the ABC, whose director of news Gaven Morris issued a statement this week clarifying that Four Corners verified the ­veracity of all footage used and confirmed that the stories from asylum-seeker children were subjected to the “usual rigorous fact-checking processes”.

While Mr Dutton requested a live interview, Mr Morris said this was not part of the Four Corners format and noted Mr Dutton turned down a live interview on Lateline after the program and on the AM radio program next day.

Senior media figures approached by The Australian — including previous Media Watch hosts Jonathan Holmes and Monica Attard — defended Four Corners. They argued that the debate about the program’s reliance on unoriginal footage, including clips sourced from YouTube, formed a powerful argument for opening up the Pacific island ­nation to greater media access.

“In general I think the program did a good, an important job,” Holmes said. “There’s all this rubbish about them not shooting their own footage. Of course they didn’t shoot their own footage. They’re not allowed there.”

Attard, who previously worked for Four Corners, said Monday’s program was “solid” and “beautifully put together”. She said the subsequent debate about the program’s content was a “salutary lesson to government” that if it, “with the authorities in Nauru, come to some agreement as to allow journalists’ access, we wouldn’t face these problems”.

“There is a potent case for transparency given the persistency of the claims and the seriousness of the allegations,” Attard said. “So open it up.”

Mr Newman said the difficulty of obtaining access to Nauru was no excuse to run material from unreliable sources and told The Australian it was a “shame to see the Four Corners brand being ­tarnished in this way”.

“That suggests that upward ­referral is not working because clearly it’s sloppy journalism,” he said. “If you can’t verify the inform­ation, you couldn’t run it.”

Mr Newman said the use of supplied footage was a common feature between Monday’s program on Nauru and previous exposes on live baiting in the greyhound industry, the treatment of Australian cattle in Indonesian abattoirs and conditions in the Don Dale youth detention centre in the Northern Territory.

“The common thread is ­advocacy. It’s not objective independent reporting; it’s advocacy.”

Former deputy editor of The Australian and former editor-in-chief and publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald Peter Fraysaid Australian journalists should have more access to Nauru but ­argued that it was reasonable to question whether Four Corners had taken footage out of context to create the impression of a ­society where “no one is safe.”

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said the ABC had undertaken to examine any ­complaints it received about the program — a matter of standard practice — and defended Mr ­Dutton’s choice to write to Ms Guthrie detailing his concerns.

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