The ABC will review its editorial policies after an independent review found five additional sounds of gunshots were “inadvertently but inaccurately” introduced into footage showing a commando firing from a helicopter.
But the review by the former ABC editorial executive Alan Sunderland said there was no evidence that anyone at Australia’s national broadcaster “deliberately doctored, falsified, manipulated or distorted information, material or evidence in order to mislead audiences”.
It also found that the editing of an interview with the former US Drug Enforcement Administration leader Bret Hamilton was “potentially misleading”.
Sunderland said the gunshot sounds error appeared to be an inadvertent consequence of “attempts to create clean, accurate and effective sequences in the story” and had not been done at the direction of any of the journalists involved.
The review found the video editor was not working with a clean, unedited version of the helicopter footage, instead relying on a heavily-edited compilation video with loud background music.
Sunderland said the editor appeared to have sourced clean audio of gunshots from other source material related to the story, not an outside source.
Complicating matters, the story was edited in Sydney and the reporter was based in Brisbane, the report found.
The director of news, Justin Stevens, said the ABC “sincerely regrets and apologises for the editing errors in the video clips, including to members of the 2nd Commando Regiment”. The video has been removed.
The review was commissioned to examine concerns raised about three related stories published in 2022: one online article and two 7.30 stories known as the Line of Fire stories, which investigated activities by Australian commandos during a 2012 deployment in Afghanistan.
Channel Seven accused the ABC of adding gunshot sounds to a video which accompanied a story produced by the ABC’s special investigations unit, at the time headed by Linton Besser, and the award-winning reporter Mark Willacy.
The allegation was made on Seven’s Spotlight program which broadcast an interview with the former commando Heston Russell about the ABC’s reporting on him.
Russell won a defamation case against the ABC last year and was awarded $390,000 after a federal court judge found the broadcaster did not prove its reporting was in the public interest.
The review found that Hamilton’s final comment in an interview that alleged war crimes should always be investigated had not been presented in its proper context. He was talking about allegations of war crimes in general rather than referring to any specific allegations.
“To be clear, I find no evidence that anybody, at any stage, made a conscious or deliberate decision to introduce additional gunshots,” Sunderland said in the report which was tabled by the ABC during an appearance at senate estimates on Tuesday.
“It appears to be an inadvertent consequence of attempts to create clean, accurate and effective sequences in the story.”
ABC managing director David Anderson was absent from the estimates hearing due to a medical issue but was represented by ABC executives, including Stevens.
In August Anderson announced his intention to resign after almost six years leading the corporation.
Acting managing director and chief financial officer Melanie Kleyn told senators in an opening statement that the ABC acknowledges errors and failures of process that meant some aspects of these stories did not meet our standards.
“The review found no evidence of any intent to mislead by any ABC employee,” Kleyn said.
In his interim review Sunderland said there was no evidence the editing had been done at the direction of the journalists involved or on the initiative of the video editor.
“On the contrary, what evidence there is suggests it was not a deliberate editorial decision to include additional gunshot audio in order to mislead or deceive,” he said.
There was “no evidence that anyone at the ABC … deliberately doctored, falsified, manipulated or distorted information, material or evidence in order to mislead audiences.
“On the contrary, there was significant care taken to ensure the stories were checked, discussed, reviewed and upwardly referred.”
Sunderland rejected complaints about a section of the footage being slowed down, zoomed in and highlighted, saying this wasn’t misleading, inappropriate or problematic.
“To be clear, the only inaccuracy I have found relates to the additional sounds of gunshots,” he said. “I do not consider any other aspects of the way the sequences were depicted to be materially inaccurate.”
Sunderland said Hamilton’s views were otherwise accurately represented.
“ABC News sincerely regrets and apologises to Mr Hamilton as well as our audience members for this,” Stevens said. “That was not the meaning we intended to convey.”
A separate complaint, that a letter sent to ABC legal which raised concerns about the audio editing was not passed on to editorial, is yet to be dealt with.
