ABC managing director David Anderson has been questioned about the welfare of a radio journalist whose work was the subject of a recent ABC ombudsman review — and the centre of a subsequent media storm — amid fears competing news outlets are “misreporting” the national broadcaster’s coverage.
In the face of questioning during Senate estimates on Tuesday, Anderson addressed the findings of an ABC ombudsman report that found ABC News breached editorial guidelines on accuracy and impartiality in a radio report on a community meeting in Alice Springs.
It included comment from one attendee who described it as a “total white supremacist fest”.
The report, which was the independent ombudsman’s first since she was appointed in September last year, found that the AM radio report published on January 30 “should not have gone to air” because it “unduly” favoured “one perspective over all others”, and inaccurately reported the number of people at the event.
The editorial error caused a storm of media coverage, in no small part led by titles across the News Corp stable. Anderson said the media response forced the broadcaster to release clarifying statements to combat misinformation.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked Anderson if “media pile-ons” like the one that followed this reporting could have a “chilling” effect on the work of ABC journalists, after one of their reporters became the “scapegoat” for “culture war” rhetoric.
Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson agreed: “It seems that she was grossly let down by ABC News management. Can you explain exactly what happened? How did that occur?”
“We do need to make sure we put the right support” around the reporter, Anderson said, and leadership has “attempted to do that”. He said the ABC otherwise thinks highly of the reporter’s work, who is considered by leadership to be an “experienced Indigenous journalist and specialist”.
“The misreporting of our reporting — that’s the bit that worries me,” Anderson said.
“When it is stated in other media that we’ve done something, which is a distortion of what we’re actually reporting — but is done for reasons of heightening community concern — that is something that we deal with quite often.”
But Anderson did not reveal takeaways from internal investigations into what exactly went wrong in the lead-up to the publication of the one-sided radio report, which was eventually amended for publication on two further occasions later in the day.
He said he couldn’t comment on whether the package went to air with approval, if it was green-lit with concerns, or if any other prepublication advice was given to the reporter before the package went to air. He said on Tuesday that he hasn’t yet been in contact with the journalist.
“You are the editor-in-chief, the buck stops with you,” Henderson said. “Surely by now you would have established what happened on that day. I called for an investigation within days of this report going to air.”
Anderson said he was still getting a “complete picture” of “precisely what happened” to allow for the failing in an “otherwise good system of editorial checks and measures” in place.
The ABC ombudsman, former ACMA executive Fiona Cameron, said she received 19 complaints related to the report. Most were concerned that the package only reported the views of those at the meeting who thought it had been racist, “despite a range of different perspectives being expressed at the event”.
“Some complainants who said they attended the meeting were concerned that the introduction to the report inaccurately stated that hundreds of people were at the town meeting when thousands were reported to have been present,” Cameron wrote.
Cameron considered the number of community members present at the meeting as “material to the story”, given Alice Springs’ relatively small population of “some 32,000” people. The original report put attendance in the “hundreds”, when many reports put the attendance at over 3000.
ABC News accepted the report’s findings, saying it “ought to have included further perspectives and context”, and that it took measures throughout the day to have them included.
“ABC News management takes responsibility for the AM story going to air in that form and stands by the reporter, who provided important perspectives on complicated issues,” the ABC said.
