Upholding journalistic ethics

Former attorney-general Christian Porter no longer has a political career to protect. But, like any citizen, he is entitled to the presumption of innocence and to defend his reputation. On Friday, Mr Porter lodged an editorial complaint to the ABC’s audience and consumer affairs department, and to ABC managing director David Anderson, over the March 2021 Four Corners episode, “Bursting the Canberra Bubble”. Presented by reporter Louise Milligan, it aired claims he allegedly raped a 16-year-old girl, Kate, in January 1988 when they were attending a school debating competition in Sydney. Kate died by suicide in Adelaide in June 2020. Mr Porter has vehemently denied the alleged rape ever took place.

On the basis of information reported by The Weekend Australian on Saturday, an inquiry is warranted to determine whether the program met recognised ethical standards of journalism. In the interests of fairness – to Mr Porter, Ms Milligan, the program’s executive producer, Sally Neighbour, and to taxpayers who fund the national broadcaster, any inquiry must be thorough, objective and independent.

In Inquirer on Saturday, The Weekend Australian detailed the central issue of Kate’s original 88-page signed statement. In his complaint, Mr Porter claimed the program failed to meet recognised journalistic standards by not mentioning it had that document. The program presented edited parts of the document to suit its narrative, he complained, but it suppressed large parts of the statement that undermined the credibility of Kate’s allegations. For example, Kate’s original statement included claims she suffered from bruising and anal bleeding in late 2019 as she was writing the 88-page document. She said these were caused by recovered memories of the rape she alleged occurred about three decades earlier. Parts of the document were “incredible, implausible, fanciful, demonstrably incorrect or inconsistent”, Mr Porter said. A later 25-page document prepared by Kate with her lawyers and sent by her friends to Scott Morrison in February last year was a “selective editing down of the original 88-page document”, Mr Porter said.

Kate withdrew her complaint a few days before she took her own life, and police later concluded there was insufficient admissible evidence to proceed with an investigation against him. He has made a good case for an independent review of the Four Corners program. It would throw light on important issues, especially ABC journalistic ethics.