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Media bias takes many forms. At its most benign, it’s simple ‘news values’: what makes one story newsworthy and others not. This inevitably varies from publisher to publisher: Good Oil readers would likely be little interested in a car crash in rural Tasmania; Launceston Examiner readers likewise not particularly interested in a dairy robbery in Hamilton.
At its worst, media bias leads to outright lying: the Hunter Biden laptop, for instance, or ‘Russian collusion’.
Even when biased media aren’t outright lying, bias can lead them to uncritically amplify stories that should have been better treated with deep scepticism, and to overlook obvious errors in reporting. Consider, for instance, the speed with which the mainstream media readily accepted Hamas’ lying claim that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital. Or its readiness to use the confused early reporting of 40 beheaded babies on October 7 as an excuse to outright deny that any were beheaded, despite ample evidence that at least some were.
Australia’s [taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda unit] public broadcaster is as biased as they come. Hence their readiness to believe the most outlandish claims by illegal immigrants and people smugglers – especially if it allows them to believe the worst about Australia’s armed forces.
In 2014, for example, the ABC breathlessly trumpeted claims from Sudanese illegal immigrants that sailors from the Australian Navy deliberately burned their hands after the boat they were travelling on from Indonesia was intercepted and towed back. The story fell apart within days. It was a complete fabrication. The ABC never apologised, only issuing a mealy-mouthed statement, acknowledging that its ‘initial reporting needed to be more precise’.
The ABC’s bias struck again in its reporting of so-called ‘war crimes’ by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. At least one former Army officer is suing the broadcaster for defamation.
The ABC was notified multiple times – not just once, as it has claimed – about serious errors in its coverage of a military operation involving Australian soldiers in Afghanistan in 2012 but failed to address the problems, raising fresh concerns about the editorial rigour of the broadcaster’s news and current affairs division.
On Friday, ABC managing director David Anderson issued a public statement in which he made the extraordinary admission that the organisation’s legal team did not pass on information relating to an audio error that suggested a November platoon soldier fired six shots at unarmed civilians in the course of the battle in the war-torn country in 2012.
The ‘error’ was in fact doctored audio. Instead of a single shot, the footage aired by the ABC purports to show the Australian ‘soldier shooting six shots at an unarmed civilian’. Former platoon commander Heston Russell maintains, in his defamation action, that the footage does not show him shooting from the helicopter.
In addition to the issues with the audio of the gunfight, the ABC was also warned as far back as October 2022 – and then again in November 2022 – that aspects of the video footage used by the public broadcaster in its stories about the military operation were also problematic. A letter (seen by The Australian) sent by Mr Russell’s lawyer Rebekah Giles directly to the ABC’s head of disputes and litigation, Alessandra Steele, on November 29, 2022, outlines issues with both the video and audio footage of Mr Russell’s involvement in the skirmish […]
The same November 29 letter outlines issues with the video content, including that it is “zoomed in, making two people on the ground appear closer to the helicopter”, and requests that the ABC provide “edited versions of the helicopter footage and further helicopter footage.”
During correspondence throughout the defamation action taken by Mr Russell against the ABC, Ms Giles outlined issues with the footage that aired in reports on ABC’s flagship news and current affairs program 7.30 from the 2012 military operation. Ms Giles said in her letter sent on November 29 that the audio accompanying the helicopter footage “appears to have been edited to add additional rounds which are not audible in the post-deployment video”.
The ABC ran the doctored audio on its flagship current affairs program, 7.30pm, over two nights on September 20 and 21, 2022. ABC managing director David Anderson is finally acknowledging the issues with the report, conceding that the ABC’s legal department knew of concerns about the audio editing, but claims that ‘regrettably’ it was never passed on.
“I am now commissioning an independent review of the issues that have been raised with the online and broadcast story to fully understand what has occurred and make any necessary recommendations,” Mr Anderson said […]
The ABC has not yet announced who will conduct the independent review into the matter. On Sunday, federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the ABC is not “beyond scrutiny”.
“It is concerning that this has taken some time to emerge.”
Heston Russell has already received $390,000 in damages plus legal costs over multiple stories that were published by the ABC about his alleged actions in Afghanistan.
As former PM Tony Abbott observed of the ABC, over a decade ago, it ‘instinctively takes everyone’s side but Australia’s’.
