News

ABC cleared of asylum seekers bias despite report with ‘sole purpose’ to get sympathy for people smugglers

ABCAn 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.

ADVERTISEMENT

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

 

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.