By Calum Jaspan
The ABC’s managing director and news boss have denounced “opportunistic” attempts by News Corp and Sky News to conflate its own Four Corners report on Donald Trump and the January 6 Capitol riots with the saga engulfing British public broadcaster the BBC, which has claimed the scalps of its two most senior executives.
Hugh Marks backed the 2021 Four Corners investigation led by 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson, Downfall, which used footage from Trump’s address on January 6, saying its investigation and use of the footage was consistent with the ABC’s high standards of factual, accurate and impartial storytelling.
Hugh Marks has hit out at the “opportunistic” attempts to bring the ABC into the BBC, Trump saga.Credit: Nathan Perri
The BBC’s top executive, director general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness both resigned this week after an internal memo was leaked to London’s Telegraph, criticising the splicing of two grabs from Trump’s January 6 address by its flagship investigative program Panorama.
“Comparing the BBC’s Panorama program to the ABC’s Four Corners program is opportunistic and false,” Marks said.
“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 ABC’s news boss, Justin Stevens, similarly criticised coverage by both The Australian and Sky News Australia in their attempts to conflate the programs.
“The opportunistic attempt to seek to engineer a similar crisis here to the BBC’s is transparent and doesn’t stack up,” Stevens said in an internal email on Wednesday afternoon, seen by this masthead. Stevens did not mention News Corp or Sky News by name.
“Alongside legitimate criticism, both organisations are subjected to sustained and inaccurate campaigns that seek to chip away at the public’s belief and trust in what we provide as a public service,” Stevens continued.
“Independent media represents a threat to commercial media and our journalism causes grief for powerful and vested interests.”
Sky News’ Chris Kenny claimed Four Corners had manipulated Trump’s speech during a broadcast this week, a claim that was then republished by The Australian in two stories, including one on the front page of Tuesday’s print edition, suggesting it raised new questions over the ABC’s impartiality.
The Australian has sought to question the ABC’s impartiality over the BBC saga.Credit: The Australian
Kenny called the ABC’s program an “almost identical act of deception” during his Monday night show, with Liberal senator Sarah Henderson calling for a Senate inquiry into the ABC over the program on Tuesday.
But the way the ABC’s program presented the comments did not alter the factual meaning of the content, or misrepresent Trump’s intent, Marks said in response.
“The edited segment retains the essential factual elements of the speech, namely, the call for supporters to ‘walk down to the Capitol’ and to ‘show strength’,” he said.
In a statement on Tuesday, Henderson said the ABC must be held to account for allegedly doctoring footage of Trump, a direct reference to Kenny’s allegation made on Sky, which the ABC has rejected.
“Like the BBC, the ABC stands accused of deleting key lines in President Trump’s speech which contradicted Four Corners′ narrative alleging the president had implicitly encouraged civil unrest which led to the Capital riots,” the Victorian senator and former ABC employee turned frequent critic said.
In his email to staff, Stevens noted a risk of disregarding legitimate complaints or concerns about the ABC, citing a mistake its Insiders program made this week in editing a photo of a politician without clearly indicating it had done so to its audience while trying to be satirical.
“The politician quite rightly complained to us. We immediately and transparently fixed it, apologised, and [are] discussing as a team how to ensure we don’t do it again,” Stevens said.
The politician in question was Liberal senator Jane Hume.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
