National Broadcaster to Re-Train Journalists on Impartiality After Pressure Over “Inaccurate” Alice Springs Report

An employee walks past the logo of the ABC located at the main entrance to the ABC building located at Ultimo in Sydney, Australia, on June 5, 2019. AAP/David Gray

Reporters from Australia’s national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), will undergo impartiality training when covering news about the controversial Indigenous Voice proposal.

The move comes after the country’s largest taxpayer-funded media outline faced heavy backlash for its reports on the Alice Springs community meeting in January, which its Ombudsman office has ruled as “not impartial” and “not accurate.”

According to an internal email to staff on Monday obtained by The Australian, journalists will be attending a “deep-dive” session into impartiality to make sure a diversity of views are presented in the report.

The guidelines warned reporters against favouring one opinion over another while at the same time avoiding the “unjustified use of stereotypes or discriminatory content.”

The email also stated that the ABC takes “no editorial stance other than its commitment to fundamental democratic principles including the rule of law, freedom of speech and religion, parliamentary democracy and equality of opportunity.”

Editorial policy manager Mark Male and editorial policy adviser Bridget Caldwell-Bright will chair the session.

It was, however, unclear whether the impartiality training also covered other issues or only focused on the Voice.

ABC’s editorial policies stated that the media outlet aims to “present, over time, content that addresses a broad range of subjects from a diversity of perspectives reflecting a diversity of experiences, presented in a diversity of ways from a diversity of sources.”

“Impartiality does not require that every perspective receives equal time, nor that every facet of every argument is presented,” the ABC notes.

Past Accusation Of Impartiality

Despite its stated commitment to accurate and unbiased reporting, the ABC has come under pressure over the past few years for its coverage of controversial topics such as climate change, Indigenous affairs, religious discrimination or gender identity.

In late January, ABC apologised for its “incomplete” coverage of an Alice Springs town meeting, in which locals worried about escalating crime rates in the community were accused of being “racist.”

The ABC’s flagship radio program AM on Jan. 31 featured interviews of people criticising the meeting as a “white supremacist fest” and describing the vibe as “scary.”

In a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday, ABC managing director David Anderson admitted there were mistakes in the AM report and that it “should not have gone to air.”

“I do think that the systems and processes we have in place did not pick up the issue with that story before it was included in the AM package,” he said.

Liberal Senator and Shadow Minister for Communications Sarah Henderson, a former ABC journalist, said she would proceed to ask the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to investigate the ABC over its Alice Springs coverage.

Reports by ABC Were “Materially Misleading”

In December 2022, the taxpayer-funded company was also accused by the ACMA of “materially misleading” audiences and inaccurately reporting on Fox News and its relationship with former U.S. President Donald Trump.

ABC described their report, titled “Fox and the Big Lie”—which aired on its Four Corner program—as a “special investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and how the network promoted Donald Trump’s propaganda and helped destabilise democracy in America.”

However, in one case, ACMA found that ABC did not report on the role that social media played in inciting the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol.

ACMA also discovered that one Fox News interviewee was not adequately informed about the way ABC’s show would be presented.

Further,  the broadcaster’s journalistic standards have also come under criticism from ex-soldier Heston Russell and Senator Jacinta Price, who have both claimed they were defamed in programs by the outlet.

In July 2020, the public broadcaster also ran an in-depth program on the Falun Dafa Association of Australia—a spiritual group severely persecuted and defamed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) due to its popularity.

Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong,  is a spiritual practice consisting of moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, along with a set of meditative exercises.

Since its introduction in China in 1992, the practice has attracted individuals from all walks of life—from high-ranking communist officials to rural villagers—leading to an estimated 70 million to 100 million adherents across the country by the end of the decade.

Its surging popularity, however, was deemed by the communist regime as a threat to its control over society. In 1999, then-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin ordered a sweeping campaign to eradicate Falun Gong, resulting in millions of practitioners being thrown in detention facilities, where they are subjected to brainwashing, torture, or even killed for their organs under the CCP’s prisoner organ harvesting regime.

After the ABC’s report was broadcasted, the Chinese government’s 610 Office quickly jumped on to promote the program on its website. The 610 Office is a Gestapo-like agency set up by former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin in 1999 as an “extra-legal” body to specifically target adherents of Falun Gong.

While very little public information is available about the office, including its chain of command, what is clear is that its activities aren’t confined to China’s borders, according to a French think tank, the Institute for Strategic Studies of Military Schools.

Jessie Zhang and Frank Fang contributed to this report.