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Nine News slapped for inaccurate story on NSW council

A Nine News story alleging wasteful spending by Ku-ring-gai Council was inaccurate and not presented fairly or impartially.

Nine News Sydney has been slapped by the media watchdog for an inaccurate story on Ku-ring-gai Council.

TCN9 was found to have breached the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice for a July 2016 news alleging former Ku-ring-gai Mayor, Councillor Cheryl Szatow, and the Ku-ring-gai Council had engaged in wasteful spending, including funding a legal challenge to the NSW Government’s plans to amalgamate Ku-ring-gai and Hornsby councils.

But the The Australian Communications and Media Authority found it was inaccurate and was not presented fairly and impartially.

“The ACMA found that Channel Nine breached the fairness and impartiality requirements of the news provisions of the code by using non-neutral language, unfair juxtapositions of facts, comical graphics and a tone more commonly found in current affairs programming, to which different standards apply,” said acting ACMA Chairman, Richard Bean.

“The code requires that commercial television news programs present factual material accurately, and do so in a fair and impartial way.”

The ACMA also found that the news item contained one factual assertion that was inaccurate—that the Mayor had spent $900 a week on flower deliveries for her office. The licensee has advised the ACMA that this figure in fact referred to the total cost of 30 separate deliveries that had occurred over a nine month period.

Four other allegations of inaccuracy were cleared by the media watchdog.

In response to the ACMA’s findings, Nine has undertaken to:

  • inform relevant staff involved in the production and broadcast of the news item of the ACMA’s reasoning and findings
  • use the matter as an example in future training of all relevant staff.

5 Responses

  1. As I’ll never tire of saying, there’s only so much ACMA can do when successive governments have taken the Carrot of Regulation and the Stick of Penalty away from them in the name of “industry self-regulation”

    1. It’s cool Ted. I’m not really having a go at ACMA per se. Rather the process. I understand that many things affect the amount of time that elapses between the broadcast and the final report.

      It’s just frustrating that many people will have formed a particular view of a subject based upon what they saw and heard, and are unlikely to even know that there has been an adverse finding by ACMA, let alone adjust their position based on new or changed evidence.

      It’s also frustrating that almost the only penalty for a network is to update their staff training yet again (altho’ I take on board what David says about this being their first breach of this type in quite some time).

  2. “Nine News slapped with a wet lettuce leaf for inaccurate story on NSW council”.

    Made it more accurate for you, David. Wouldn’t want ACMA smiting you with their Feather of Punishment and Staff Training in about 9 month’s time.

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