Protesters gathered at ABC studios in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth on Thursday morning amid fears the broadcaster would reveal its confidential sources for a Four Corners program.
An episode of the investigative program that aired earlier this month featured Disrupt Burrup Hub as they planned a protest against Woodside Energy’s enormous gas project on the Pilbara’s Burrup peninsula.
The ABC crew was present when activists were arrested outside the chief executive of Woodside, Meg O’Neill’s, home in Perth. The crew was later cleared by an internal ABC inquiry of colluding with the protesters or trespassing on O’Neill’s property.
WA police demanded the ABC provide them with all footage shot for the program, which dozens of organisations declared an “alarming overreach” that undermined press freedom.
Disrupt Burrup Hub says it understands that the ABC will hand over footage to WA police, but the ABC has not confirmed that and it is not clear what such footage might contain.
The ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, said they “never have and never will” reveal their sources. He said in estimates this week the broadcaster was in negotiations with the police about what they might give them while still protecting those sources.
Disrupt Burrup Hub’s media adviser, Jesse Noakes, said dozens of people had consented to be filmed for the Four Corners investigation, but none had consented to be filmed for a police investigation.
“I personally received undertakings from the ABC in relation to multiple sources who requested and received specific guarantees they would not be identified as a precondition for their participation in events filmed by Four Corners,” he said.
“Should the ABC surrender any Four Corners footage to WA police, if any of these people face legal liability or criminal prosecution that will be entirely on the ABC – I hope the ABC management appreciate the full implications of that.”
Noakes will face trial on 6 November for refusing to hand over material. The lawyer Zarah Burgess said the ABC could use a similar defence to that Noakes will use, one of “reasonable excuse”.
WA police referred inquiries to the ABC.
“Like other media organisations, the ABC from time to time receives compulsory legal processes seeking access to material,” an ABC spokesperson said.
“Any suggestion that the ABC has disclosed or will disclose material in breach of any undertaking to a confidential source is incorrect.
“As ABC managing director David Anderson has previously stated: ‘We don’t reveal our sources, we never have and never will’.”
A Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigner, Ballardong Noongar man Desmond Blurton, said as someone with lived experience of incarceration he was “deeply concerned that the ABC may cause the imprisonment of vulnerable people by surrendering source material to police”.
On the weekend, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s federal president, Karen Percy, told the Queensland Clarion Awards that the MEAA was “working with members in the interests of the whole industry to fight this dreadful overreach”.
The police’s actions were designed to “intimidate and interfere”, she said.
“Legal strong-arming of this kind undermines press freedom, despite the commitment to freedom of the media that police and others say they have.”
