- 20 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00This was the video edit that set these events into motion.
00:22Donald Trump's speech in 2021 ahead of the Capitol Hill riots,
00:26cut for a panorama documentary in a way now found to have misled viewers,
00:32made to look like he was explicitly inciting the violence.
00:36An apology from the BBC was expected tomorrow,
00:39but instead this evening a shock announcement.
00:42Tim Davey, who's been at the organisation for 20 years,
00:45headed it for five, was stepping down.
00:48Hello, I'm Linton Besser, welcome to Media Watch.
00:52And tonight we're going to examine the crisis
00:54engulfing one of the world's most venerated news organisations.
00:58The resignations of its most senior officials
01:01and a grovelling apology to the US president
01:04after the leak of a damaging internal memo.
01:07The misleading edit was one of a number of issues
01:09raised in a leaked internal BBC report.
01:13The memo, written by Michael Prescott,
01:15a former veteran political journalist
01:16and independent external adviser to the BBC
01:19was leaked to London's The Daily Telegraph,
01:23which mounted a full-throated case
01:25against Britain's public broadcaster,
01:28printing the dossier in full
01:30and splashing its scoop across page one,
01:33six days on the trot.
01:34Heads should roll over BBC bias.
01:38Davey must explain or quit, says Johnson.
01:42The campaign did indeed force the departure
01:44not just of Tim Davey, the BBC Director-General,
01:48but also Deborah Turness, the head of news.
01:52Prescott's letter identified four broad areas
01:55which concerned him,
01:56including a reluctance within the BBC
01:58to file reports critical of a so-called trans agenda,
02:03the reporting of false allegations of racism
02:06and a stinging critique of how the war in Gaza
02:10was covered by the BBC's Specialist Arabic Language Service,
02:15including the claim that...
02:16The BBC's main news website posted 19 separate stories
02:21about the hostages taken by Hamas.
02:23On BBC Arabic, there were none.
02:26Although archive searches confirm BBC Arabic
02:30did indeed report the seizing of Israeli hostages
02:33by Hamas militants.
02:35Prescott also criticised the extensive use
02:38of three Ghazan journalists by BBC Arabic,
02:42not just because of anti-Semitic remarks
02:44they made on social media,
02:46but because the BBC had tried to downplay their role
02:50even after hundreds of appearances on the Arabic news service.
02:54But it was Prescott's allegation
02:56that the BBC's flagship television program, Panorama,
03:00had improperly edited Donald Trump's infamous January 6th speech,
03:05which was the tipping point.
03:06Here's what the documentary showed.
03:08We're going to walk down to the Capitol
03:11and I'll be there with you and we fight.
03:15We fight like hell.
03:17And if you don't fight like hell,
03:18you're not going to have a country anymore.
03:20And here's the original, starting off the same.
03:23We're going to walk down to the Capitol
03:26and we're going to cheer on
03:30our brave senators and congressmen and women.
03:35But the next part of the speech
03:36was actually almost an hour later.
03:39The editing of speech for brevity
03:41is a routine duty of journalists the world over.
03:44But dangers abound
03:46and vital context must not be stripped away,
03:49not least when dealing with a vengeful US president
03:52who swiftly demanded restitution
03:55to the tune of billions of dollars.
03:58On Friday, the BBC delivered him an apology,
04:01though declined to offer compensation,
04:04disputing there were grounds for a defamation claim.
04:07Some in Britain, including The Observer,
04:09saw other forces at play
04:11and found the departures of Davey and Ternes were the...
04:15Results of a political attack
04:16that exposes structural flaws in the BBC's independence.
04:20A process of intimidation is now unfolding in plain sight.
04:25At the centre of this analysis
04:27are the activities of Robbie Gibb,
04:29formerly a BBC reporter,
04:31advisor to right-wing GB News
04:33and chief spinner for Tory PM, Theresa May,
04:37who was appointed to the BBC board
04:39by May's successor,
04:41the arch-conservative Boris Johnson.
04:44The BBC fiasco received wide coverage across Australia,
04:47with several commentators
04:49alleging the same problems exist here at the ABC.
04:52The Australian, for example,
04:55even went so far as to illustrate a story
04:57about the BBC crisis with the ABC logo,
05:02while running hard with critics of the organisation
05:05and printing an editorial calling
05:07for an examination at the ABC of the same issues,
05:12including the ABC's treatment of the war in Gaza
05:15and transgender care for children.
05:18The paper has also printed allegations
05:20an ABC Four Corners program reported by Sarah Ferguson
05:24was guilty of similarly improper editing
05:27of the very same Trump speech in this 2021 doco.
05:33And after this, we're going to walk down
05:35and I'll be there with you.
05:37Yeah!
05:39Because you'll never take back our country with weakness.
05:43You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
05:46The claim first made by Sky News host Chris Kenny.
05:51Just like the BBC,
05:53they cut out what he said after he said he was going down there.
05:56They cut out the stuff about going down and cheering senators.
06:00They have clipped up the speech
06:02to suit their narrative rather than reality
06:05and the true meaning of what Donald Trump was saying that day.
06:09In response, the ABC's managing director, Hugh Marks,
06:13came out swinging, describing the accusation as...
06:16Opportunistic and false.
06:19The grab on Four Corners was used accurately
06:22and did not mislead the audience.
06:24Peter Meakin, who spent decades
06:26as the director of news and current affairs
06:28variously for channels 7, 9 and 10,
06:31said the two edits were different.
06:33I don't think Four Corners is guilty of too much at all, actually.
06:36The bottom line is that it was indeed a rabble-rousing speech.
06:41As none other than Chris Kenny wrote at the time...
06:45Such lawlessness is inexcusable.
06:48Worst of all, that it was fermented and encouraged
06:51by the Commander-in-Chief and Chief Executive is frightening.
06:55Sarah Ferguson told us this very story by Kenny...
06:58..underlines the hypocrisy of the attacks on our reporting.
07:02The story he's criticising reached the same conclusions as him
07:06about Donald Trump's culpability.
07:08Chris Kenny said...
07:08I have long been critical of Donald Trump's refusal
07:12to offer his losers consent after the 2020 election,
07:16but I believe deceptively editing his words
07:20in order to buttress that view is unethical.
07:23Journalist and academic Margaret Simons said vested interests...
07:26..predictably are trying to make the BBC crisis
07:30a strike against the ABC.
07:32They should chill.
07:33The ABC is certainly not perfect,
07:35but it has clean hands in this case.
07:38The same critics have also hauled back into the spotlight
07:41another Sarah Ferguson, Four Corners,
07:44about Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections,
07:48picking up accusations made by columnist Chris Mitchell
07:51that the doco was discredited because it featured...
07:54..democrats' intelligence sources
07:57who knew they were perjuring themselves
07:59because they had already told secret congressional hearings
08:02they had no evidence linking Trump to Putin.
08:05But we failed to find a single such source
08:08appearing in the more than two-hour-long documentary.
08:11So we asked Chris Mitchell and The Australian
08:14to explain who these people were.
08:17A spokesperson for the paper told us we were...
08:19..cherry-picking a defence for the ABC
08:21that ignores the broader issues of concern
08:24around the ABC's failure
08:25to meet its obligations of impartiality and accuracy.
08:29And when Chris Mitchell himself responded,
08:32he identified not sources plural, but just a one.
08:37Former US intelligence boss James Clapper.
08:40Clapper admitted in secret testimony
08:42and public interviews back in early 2017
08:45he had seen no evidence President Trump
08:47colluded with Russia or Putin.
08:50But neither Clapper nor Sarah Ferguson
08:52ever claimed that Trump had colluded with the Kremlin.
08:57Rather, her program's reporting
08:58about the existence of a Russian influence campaign in 2016
09:02was in line with the findings of the US intelligence community.
09:07And as for Chris Mitchell's allegations of perjury,
09:10James Clapper's remarks to the ABC
09:13were entirely in keeping
09:15with what he has always said about Russian meddling.
09:19But what of the other two major ways
09:21in which the ABC, according to its critics,
09:24must be held to account like the BBC?
09:27Firstly, has the ABC really failed to examine possible bias
09:31in its reporting of the war in Gaza?
09:34In fact, in 2023, a music program on Triple J
09:38was indeed pinged for failing the ABC standard on impartiality.
09:44And the ABC News division has been found
09:46to have made serious errors,
09:48such as not reporting important context
09:51about the firing of Hamas rockets,
09:53or, most egregiously,
09:55when ABC television news programs
09:57reported an already retracted UN claim
10:00that 14,000 Ghazan babies would die of starvation
10:04in the following 48 hours.
10:06But after thousands of complaints,
10:10the ABC's independent ombudsman
10:12has not identified a single occasion
10:15on which its news coverage breached
10:17the ABC's specific impartiality obligation,
10:21reporting a roughly equal number of complaints
10:23from both sides in the past two years.
10:27The ABC has not always got it right,
10:29but mistakes have been few
10:31when considering the comprehensive coverage
10:33provided across multiple channels.
10:35But as for that third major criticism
10:37that the ABC, like the BBC,
10:40is failing to report critically on transgender issues,
10:44we fear there may indeed be grounds for concern.
10:47Because despite some coverage in recent years,
10:50like this Four Corners,
10:52about the debate over youth gender care,
10:55and these online stories,
10:57all of which have included criticisms
10:59of the gender-affirming approach to care,
11:01there have also been significant gaps,
11:05beginning three years ago with dramatic news
11:07that the prominent Tavistock clinic in London
11:09was to be shuttered.
11:11Despite Australian physicians mirroring
11:13some of Tavistock's gender-affirming approach,
11:17this news was not reported by the ABC
11:19for three weeks after the event.
11:21Since then, a number of significant developments
11:24have played out,
11:25like this one in an Australian court reported in June.
11:29Renowned professor revealed a subject of judges' criticism.
11:33National guidelines questioned.
11:36That story revealed that Michelle Telfer,
11:38Australia's experienced gender medicine expert,
11:41was identified as having given misleading evidence
11:44in a family court case involving a mother
11:46wanting puberty blockers for her 12-year-old child.
11:50The judge in that case questioned claims
11:52puberty blockers were fully reversible
11:55and relatively risk-free,
11:56as well as what he described as the...
11:59..oddly binary approach in relation to children
12:02to affirm unreservedly
12:05those who present with concerns regarding their gender.
12:08The story of obvious significance
12:10was covered by the law report on ABC Radio National.
12:14But even though the ABC News Division
12:17had previously shown great interest in Telfer's work,
12:20including in this 2021 doco,
12:22it published not a single story about the case,
12:26which might have also canvassed criticisms of the judgement.
12:30In 2014, Four Corners produced this intimate
12:34and important portrait of two children
12:36seeking to change gender
12:38and a landmark family court ruling
12:41which eased the availability of puberty blockers,
12:44interviewing its then Chief Justice, Diana Bryant,
12:47who wrote the decision.
12:48Last week, however, Diana Bryant revealed
12:51she would not find the same way now.
12:54If I were deciding the case now
12:56and had the evidence that's now becoming available,
12:59I certainly doubt that I would have come to the conclusion
13:01that court approval wasn't needed for puberty blockers.
13:05Which, a week on, has yet to be reported by the ABC.
13:10Meanwhile, Aunty has also failed to tell its audience
13:13about an appeal of a federal court decision
13:16which ruled for the first time that a trans woman
13:18must be granted access to a women-only online space
13:22under the Sex Discrimination Act.
13:25Nor, as far as we can tell,
13:27has the ABC interviewed Sal Grover,
13:30the woman running that appeal,
13:31despite her appearing regularly in other parts of the media.
13:35We asked the ABC if those stories
13:38should have been covered or covered more extensively.
13:41A spokesperson told us...
13:43We're always open to feedback
13:44if there are significant gaps in news coverage
13:47or we could do more.
13:48Adding...
13:49The ABC takes no position on gender-affirming care
13:52but seeks to adequately cover this issue,
13:54keeping in mind its obligation to not unduly cause harm.
13:58Over time, the ABC has covered this issue from many angles
14:01and given voice to both opponents
14:03and proponents of gender-affirming care.
14:05There are, I am sure,
14:07several reasons for these gaps in the ABC's coverage.
14:10And I suspect one of them is how clamorous the blowback can be
14:14reporting this very difficult story
14:17about a very vulnerable community.
14:19But the ABC and its journalists have a duty to the public
14:23to find the courage to do so
14:25with just as much dispassion as compassion.
14:29So what of the bigger picture?
14:32What lesson might Australia draw from the BBC crisis?
14:35Margaret Simons says it's about protecting the ABC's independence
14:40and not allowing its board to be stacked by ideologues.
14:45There have also been times in the ABC's past
14:47when its board has included political activists
14:50hostile to the ABC.
14:52Public broadcasters deserve scrutiny
14:54but should also be treated as a key national asset.
14:58After the usual critics used the BBC blow-up
15:01to turn their blow-torches on the ABC,
15:04we at Media Watch have not been able to forensically examine
15:07the entire output of the organisation
15:10on these three very big and very tricky areas of reporting.
15:15But notwithstanding the gaps in transgender coverage,
15:19from what we found,
15:20there was nothing which might suggest,
15:22as the Australian did,
15:23that resignations might be called for at the ABC,
15:26not even close.
15:28Rather, it seems this was a naked attempt
15:31to draw the ABC into a public broadcasting crisis
15:3517,000 kilometres away,
15:38which smeared without foundation
15:40some of the ABC's finest reporting.
15:44And that's all from us tonight.
15:45Be sure to check us out on ABC iview
15:47as well as YouTube, Facebook and X.
15:50You can find full statements on our website
15:52and don't forget to send us your tips.
15:54See you next week for our final episode of the year.
15:58We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:01We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:03We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:04We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:05We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:06We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:07We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:08We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:09We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:10We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:11We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:12We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
16:13We'll see you next week for our final episode of the year.
Be the first to comment