Did the ABC commit the same editing sins as the BBC on Trump speech?
Editors beware: A screenshot of Donald Trump's January 6 address
This week, News Corp commentators have criticised the ABC’s Four Corners for editing Donald Trump’s January 6 2021 speech in a similar way to the BBC.
The BBC’s director general and CEO of news resigned over a Panaroma edit that spliced together disparate parts of the speech.
Mumbrella has viewed the full Four Corners episode. The relevant portion of Trump’s speech covered by the ABC is below. The bold text was edited from the Four Corners broadcast.
And we’re going to have to fight much harder. And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn’t, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our Constitution.
Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.
Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
The ABC did not broadcast the emphasised part of the speech above. Unlike the BBC, however, the Australian public broadcaster did not splice together segments of the speech which were 50 minutes apart.
In response to News Corp’s criticisms — led by Sky presenter Chris Kenny — the ABC backed its program.
ABC’s managing director Hugh Marks issued a further lengthy statement on Wednesday afternoon.
“Comparing the BBC’s Panorama program to the ABC’s Four Corners program is opportunistic and false,” he said.
“The BBC program spliced together two separate grabs from different sections of the speech that occurred about 54 minutes apart, leading to criticism that the program was misleading.
“The grab on Four Corners, taken from the speech President Trump made during that day, was used accurately by the program. The editing did not change the meaning of that section of the speech and did not mislead the audience. The program was consistent with the ABC’s high standards of factual, accurate and impartial storytelling.”
Chris Kenny says the ABC has committed the same ‘journalistic sin’ as the BBC (Sky News)
Kenny did not accept this position, calling the editing “an explicit example of ABC bias and deception”.
He said it was “an almost identical act of deception involving editing of the very same Donald Trump speech and presented in the same way to fit him up for the January the 6th Capitol Hill riot in Washington in 2021”.
News Corp was approached for further comment.
