ABC cleared of asylum seekers bias despite report with ‘sole purpose’ to get sympathy for people smugglers
An independent editorial audit reviewing the ABC’s coverage of asylum seekers has found four out of 97 reports on the issue could be perceived as biased, including a television report said to have the “sole purpose” of eliciting sympathy for people smugglers.
Another review into the treatment of Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott during the election campaign last year has also come back to say there were no concerns over their treatment by the ABC.
They are part of a regular series of reviews set up following criticism of the public broadcaster from media outlets and the government about a perceived bias in its journalism.
Former 60 Minutes executive producer Gerald Stone led the audit on asylum seeker reporting and cleared the ABC of systematic bias in its reporting on the subject, saying 93 of the 97 stories under review raised no concerns.
However, in his review of the ABC’s 7.30 and Lateline programs between August 2012 and December last year, he found a segment in Lateline from 2012 he found concerning.
In the segement the reporter visits an impoverished fishing village in Indonesia with a lawyer, whose client is from the village, and insists her client had no knowledge he was being asked to commit an illegal act when he agreed to serve as crewman on a boat smuggling asylum seekers.
“The segment appeared to have only one purpose –to exploit the bias of imagery to evoke sympathy for crew members of people- smuggling vessels,” Stone concluded.
Additional reports Stone said could have been perceived as biased include a Lateline story about Australia’s treatment of Tamil refugees, which he said would lead viewers to believe was so inhumane Australia should not sit on the UN Security Council.
He also found a 7.30 program in which a report featuring a Tamil asylum seeker who claimed he had been tortured by Sri Lankan intelligence officers contained a “fatal flaw” by failing to establish the identity of the torturers.
“This segment, as it went to air, appeared to have misrepresented the testimony given to it by the torture victim, who effectively admitted he had no way of knowing the true identity of his tormentors,” Stone reported.
However in his conclusion he said the report was still an important contribution to the asylum seeker debate as he wrote: “His ordeal clearly challenges the claims of both of Australia’s major political parties that Tamils are no longer subject to persecution in Sri Lanka.”
The audit also found a Lateline report featuring three Tamil men accepted as refugees in Australia who claim they were wrongly branded as security threats by ASIO and were detained without the opportunity for legal appeal. Stone said the report “failed to apply the required degree of scrutiny to them as well to the expert witness, thus weakening the impact of an otherwise compelling story by tainting it with suspicion of bias.”
In the audit ABC chairman James Spigelman is said to have acknowledged, “the network’s news or current affairs programs might occasionally fail to meet the required standards of impartiality” in a speech to the National Press Club in December. However in his opinion, “those instances did not constitute evidence of systematic bias and should only be regarded as stand-alone examples of ‘the imperfection of the human endeavour”, the report said.
ANNNNDD… the release was actualy covered in The Australian… mind. blown.
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Your excellent headline underlines how laughable this ‘finding’ is.
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So an “independent” review (carried out by the ABC) has found no bias in ABC programs. Fancy that!
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@Aussie_Austridge imagine what the findings would be if the commercial networks were reviewed
Today tonight
ACA
Bolt Report
Richo
… I would say a bias rate of more than 4.1%
also commercial networks still need to apply to the television code of practice
This Section is intended to ensure that:
4.1.1 news and current affairs programs are presented accurately and fairly;
4.1.2 news and current affairs programs are presented with care, having regard to the
likely composition of the viewing audience and, in particular, the presence of
children;
4.1.3 news and current affairs take account of personal privacy and of cultural
differences in the community;
4.1.4 news is presented impartially.
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AndrewL you know that code of conduct is a joke. ACMA is a toothless tiger. Very few complaints to the ACMA actually finds in favour of the complainant, and when they do the station does nothing more than respond “we’ll train our staff over this matter”. The whole system is biased in favour of the commercial tv stations.
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I completely agree, just shows how much of a witch hunt the attack on the ABC is.
When the commercial networks/radio stations/newspapers do it there is nothing more than a slap on the wrist (maybe with the exception of Hinch who has done jail time)
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