The ABC will re-air its Four Corners investigation into Fox News and its coverage of former US president Donald Trump on the heels of Fox’s settlement with Dominion, despite adverse findings on the program from Australia’s media regulator late last year.
The two-part story “Fox and the Big Lie” will go to air for the second time on Monday April 24, the ABC said on Friday, less than one week after Fox News abruptly agreed to pay US$787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems as part of a defamation settlement agreement, thwarting a weeks-long blockbuster trial that threatened to put high-profile executives on the stand.
“This case is just one of many launched against Fox and its friends,” the ABC said on Friday. “Two years ago, reporter Sarah Ferguson investigated how Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News promoted Donald Trump’s propaganda and helped destabilise democracy in America.
“This week Four Corners has decided to re-air that special investigation in light of the Dominion settlement. Fox will no longer be scrutinised through a trial, so this is the complete story.”
The program, which was first aired in 2021, drew criticism from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) last year when the regulator found that the ABC had omitted key information “in a way that materially misled the audience”.
On Friday, an ABC spokesperson said the package would be broadcast again as a “stand-alone program” and has been edited to include “the latest developments”.
“It abides by the highest editorial standards,” the spokesperson told Crikey.
In late December, ABC News analysis and investigations director Justin Stevens took to the broadcaster’s PM radio show to defend what he called an “outstanding piece of journalism”, and query the “subjective” nature of ACMA’s findings after it handed down a 65-page report detailing its findings.
“We think it sets a precedent which could place undue pressure on content makers when selecting an editorial focus for fear of potential breach,” he said at the time.
“The ACMA effectively criticise the ABC with a subjective view of what they believe we ought to have published editorially, and the things they imply ought to have been included would not have been good journalism in our view, and nor is it their role to express a subjective view of what we publish editorially.”
In its report, the regulator concluded that one interview subject wasn’t properly informed about the way she’d later be framed.
The report also found that the series had left out key information in two instances: first, in relation to the role social media played in the January 6 Capitol riots; and second, by omitting Fox’s censure of two presenters who appeared at a Trump rally in 2018.
The third breach of the broadcaster’s code of conduct came when Fox host Jeanine Pirro was approached for an interview outside Fox News headquarters in New York without giving her the appropriate context.
“By omitting key information, the ABC did not give its audience the opportunity to make up their own minds about Fox News,” ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said.
The investigation also found the program’s host, Sarah Ferguson, had used “emotive and strident language” to describe rioters at the US Capitol, who she called a “mob”. On other occasions, the watchdog found it inappropriate to describe Fox News hosts as “outrage generators” or the network as a “propaganda vehicle”.
Stevens stood by the language, which had also been adopted by major news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and even the BBC throughout their coverage of the riots.
