Civil society groups have accused Western Australia police of undermining press freedom by demanding the ABC hand over Four Corners footage of climate protesters, and urged the broadcaster to protect its journalists’ sources.
In response to the police demand the ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, has said the broadcaster would never reveal its sources, but he did not rule out handing over the vision.
WA police have applied through the courts for all footage shot in the preparation of a program about climate protesters. The program, titled Escalation and due to air on Monday, investigates the battle between climate activists, the government and energy companies over the massive gas project on the Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara.
More than 40 civil society groups joined the journalists’ union – the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance – in calling on the ABC not to comply with the police order.
The groups, including Amnesty International Australia, the Human Rights Law Centre, the Australian Democracy Network and several climate and environment organisations, said it was “shocking” that the ABC had been ordered to hand over footage of “peaceful protesters”.
“It is an alarming overreach and undermines press freedom. Protecting sources is an ethical obligation of journalists and must be respected,” they said.
“We stand with ABC journalists, and urge the ABC to protect its sources and continue its public interest journalism on the climate crisis and the role of peaceful protests in calling for change.”
The union said the point was not that the footage would necessarily reveal confidential sources but that it was unethical to hand to authorities raw footage of anyone journalists filmed.
Anderson said: “We don’t reveal our sources, we never have and never will.” He made no further comment and did not explicitly rule out handing the vision to police.
The Four Corners program received national attention in August when a crew was present as activists were arrested outside the home of Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill in Perth.
The police order relates to all footage shot by the Four Corners crew over several months, and not just on the day of the protest.
“The MEAA House Committee calls on the ABC not to hand over the Four Corners footage of the climate protest and to resist all efforts by the WA Police Force to obtain the footage,” the union said on Friday morning.
“To be seen to be cooperating with the release of footage would not only be morally and ethically wrong; it would seriously damage the ABC’s reputation for creating valuable, public interest journalism and make the position of ABC journalists much more difficult.
“Journalism has a long and storied history of resisting legal compulsion when it is against the public interest.
“We demand immediate assurances that the ABC executive will not hand the vision to WA authorities.”
The activist group Disrupt Burrup Hub, whose members were filmed for the program, said it feared the ABC management would comply with the police order.
Disrupt Burrup Hub’s media adviser, Jesse Noakes, who faces trial next month on charges that he refused to obey a WA police data access order, said on Friday there was no way the ABC could release the footage “without betraying confidential sources who were given specific, explicit undertakings they would remain anonymous as a precondition for their participation”.
He said Four Corners was given access to two Disrupt Burrup Hub events – a public meeting and a training session - on the proviso that any sources needing to remain anonymous would not feature the program. “At least three people requested and received that specific undertaking in advance of Four Corners filming their participation in these events,” he said.
WA police said on Thursday it would not comment on a specific case but “orders to produce are routinely used to gather materials for investigations and are issued to people and businesses including news organisations”.
The WA police minister, Paul Papalia, supported the order, saying it was “pretty disgraceful behaviour” if the Four Corners team knew about protest plans and did not notify the police.
An internal ABC inquiry concluded the Four Corners crew did not collude with or encourage the the protesters or trespass on O’Neill’s family property.
At the time, Anderson said the investigation would proceed despite the crew being criticised by Woodside, the WA government and Perth’s sole daily newspaper, the West Australian.
Activists in WA have launched increasingly publicly disruptive actions – interrupting major sport and art exhibitions and releasing a stink bomb that caused an evacuation at Woodside headquarters – as part of a campaign against plans to significantly expand operations in the Pilbara, including extending the life of a major gas processing facility until 2070.
