“Pathetic”: Paul Barry slams ABC News live coverage of Bondi Westfield attacks
ABC host questions whether ABC News channel can justify its existence after live coverage was glaringly upstaged by Nine News.
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ABC has defended its Live news coverage of the Westfield Bondi attacks last month amid a punishing editorial by Media Watch‘s Paul Barry, which argued ABC News channel was grossly under-resourced, and upstaged by Nine News.
Last night Barry told viewers ABC was still struggling to cope, with only one reporter at the scene.
“Lia Harris was not only flat out trying to cover the chaos live, she was also doing a news package for the 7pm bulletin, an impossible task,” said Barry.
In the critical hour between 5 and 6pm, the ABC was twice forced to replay a phone interview with a radio producer. After a second live cross from Harris, ABC was forced to replay that twice as well.
“All up, these replays lasted forty minutes, or two-thirds of the ABC’s output in that crucial hour, which is, frankly, pathetic ”
In contrast Nine News was with Live eyewitness accounts.
Not until 6pm did ABC News have a second reporter, not reporting from Westfield, but from St Vincent’s Hospital. Nine had one reporter at St Vincent’s, one at Prince of Wales Hospital, and four at Westfield plus, back-up from a big team of people who had rushed in on their weekend.
Seven News, which led with Live coverage at 5pm after failing to break into its horse-racing coverage, had four reporters, split between Westfield, St Vincent’s and the children’s hospital.
Paul Barry, in a scathing analysis of ABC News, drew upon ABC contacts and internal unrest.
“Old ABC hands who watched the public broadcaster’s TV coverage were horrified at how thin it was and shocked that the 7pm news in Canberra and Brisbane did not lead their bulletins with the Bondi attacks because they didn’t get the news package in time.
“With one (unnamed) former ABC reporter calling it: ‘Unforgivable. ABC spends five to seven years degrading TV news coverage and that’s what happens. What a disgrace. Aunty embarrassed.'”
Barry laid the blame on ‘a lack of firepower, resourcing and experience’ adding “some news staff (are) furious at a lack of urgency and breaking news culture at the News Channel. And another blaming low morale and skeleton staffing at the weekend.”
In comparison to Nine’s coverage, Barry called ABC News “miles off the pace.”
“In fact, we wonder how the ABC can justify having a dedicated news channel if it can’t do better on breaking stories like this,” he said.
In a statement, ABC said it took an urgent but measured approach to coverage, first alerting viewers just before 4.15pm and broke into Planet America at 4.38pm with continuous coverage until 9.30pm.
In a statement, ABC said, “Lia Harris is the ABC’s Sydney crime reporter and was the main reporter on air as the situation unfolded. Lia and camera operator Marcus Stimson left the newsroom for Bondi Junction around 4pm. Lia was supported by a producer in the newsroom for the 7PM. The second reporter and crew moved between Bondi Junction and Waverley Police station for the police press conferences. The third reporter and crew were based outside St Vincent’s hospital and spoke to family members who had gone to the hospital to check on loved ones. An ABC photographer and another journalist were also at Bondi Junction taking photos and talking to witnesses.”
According to ABC it provided comprehensive rolling coverage for around five hours and provided the video and livestream coverage for the website and app, ABC iview, YouTube and Facebook. “It did exactly what there to do,” it added.
Nine’s own statement on how it leapt to action also makes for interesting reading:
“Our first tip came into the newsroom at 3:34pm from a shopper at Westfield. Within 5 minutes we had confirmation of the attack via the ambulance scanner.
Within 15 minutes of the attack we made the decision to go into rolling coverage and put out a call to all staff who were available to come in.
We had 2 two journos and cameras on the ground outside Westfield, and the chopper overhead within 30 mins of the attack (the helicopter is a 9, 7 and ABC pooled resource but it was dispatched by 9).
After approximately one hour we had 2 additional crews and journos at Randwick Children’s Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital, as well as 2 other journos and a producer (2 from ACA) with a mobile phone at Westfield. These staff were all on days off and rushed to the various scenes.
By 5:30pm we had a total of 7 journos and 7 crews in the field, including one outside Waverly Police Station.
In the office we also scrambled the following teams. Most were in the office within an hour of the attack.
* Sydney Director of News and Executive Producer, A Current Affair.
* 1 Presenter (in addition to the 1 we already had)
* 2 Chief of Staff (in addition to the 2 already in the office)
* 3 Senior Journalists.
* 7 Producers (from News, ACA and Today)
* 3 Social Media Producers
We already had a 6pm Executive Producer, Line up Producer and 3 producers who were in the office already, along with a team of editors and graphic artists and social media producers.
The sports team including the presenter dropped everything to help with the rolling coverage.
Even our weather presenter was producing.
In total, we had approximately 20-25 additional staff come in to help the team that were already working.
We did not even have to ask most of these staff. They rang and volunteered to come in or just turned up at work. Two came directly from weddings.”
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10 Responses
I still don’t get why seven are broadcasting horse racing. From memory, it rates in the low 100k range. Perhaps it’s cheap content – fills several full Saturday afternoons and am guessing production costs are minimal (I think ATC arranges it) and broadcast rights are low – but maybe they are prevented from breaking from the coverage as part of the deal?
I get that Paul is bemoaning how stretched thin the ABC coverage was compared to the commercial networks, but at the same time there was no need to mimic their overzealous wall-to-wall sensationalised coverage either. By the time of airing, the situation was over and contained with the only details to be given about the number of victims and their conditions at the sole discretion of police. There is calm factual reporting and then there is a circus.
In my opinion ABC News channel, despite being “24 hour” new channel produces less news content than Seven or Nine where it should be the other way round – even if you omit the stories about power bills, property prices and supermarket stories. I only ever go to ch 24 if there is breaking news not covered on Seven or Nine, or for an hourly news update during the day if I can’t wait for 4, 5 or 6pm. Always left disappointed though.
That the story happened in what would be considered close to the heart of Sydney (7km from the CBD) means that all of the networks should have been able to rally reporters and camera crews on scene fairly promptly. That the ABC did so poorly and TEN did nothing is an indictment and despite the praise for Nine and Seven they too should have had resources on the ground much quicker.
One can only wonder for example what the response speed would have been had the event occurred in a small country town in South Australia or a remote indigenous community in WA – would there have even been a same day media response?
The old problems of resourcing and the tyranny of distance still impact Australia today.
The ABC news channel is a dismal failure and should be shut down. It’s supposed to provide live news, but it fails at what it was set up to do! What’s the point? Get rid of it. It shows you the difference in culture at 9 and ABC.
It was a savage critique from Paul Barry and Media Watch team, but justifiably so. Hopefully the ABC will learn the lessons for next time – because there will be some kind of next time (in terms of huge, breaking news). Particularly given the Westfield Bondi incident happened in Sydney, not somewhere remote. Sounds like Nine (particularly), and Seven did a good job covering a difficult, fast moving big story.
… in 2010 the ABC rushed into introducing an unbudgeted, unfunded additional news channel which resulted in millions upon millions of dollars being shifted from every other department in the ABC to pay for it … nearly fourteen years later, last time I saw ratings, it was still averaging less than two per cent of the audience … the ABC news department now has way more staff and resources than it had in 2010, but why direct those resources to a virtually unwatched channel when the attitude remains that the 7pm news is king?
ABC News along with Radio is in the process of moving from Ultimo to Parramatta to break up the Ultimo Clique that dominated it for decades. Continuous news coverage for hours is 95% padding and speculation which is demonstrated to false when properly researched news is produced. All that was really known was that there had been knife attack at Westfield Bondi Junction with many wounded, some fatalities, and that the perpetrator had been shot dead by police. The ABC did manage to better than Seven who in their determination to beat Nine with a name, any name, named an innocent uni student that somebody posted about on X the following morning. All people expected from Ten was some coverage on The Project.
It’s a fair point about under-resourcing and morale, which shouldn’t be low. Though the thought of ABC being upstaged by Nine is intriguing. ABC being a public broadcaster shouldn’t feel the need to compete with commercial networks.
I watch Media Watch and ABC, and compared to previous years, some of the focus seems to be about competing with the commercial press or media, and criticising for the sake of demoting other press. Insiders also had a panel discussion about how X/Twitter has changed from five years ago.
I sense an attitude of people should be watching us and not them, and our agenda. The media landscape is broader with Linear Streaming, VOD, and other media. There are more options for viewers, though I think public broadcasting shouldn’t have a competitive focus or agenda. The focus should be about content output and quality. It’s a public service.
Watching in Melbourne that night, I saw 9’s extensive 6pm news coverage, then watched ABC News at 7pm. ABC Victoria had the story first in the bulletin – just a brief package, and that was all. No further mentions. By around 7.03pm they had moved to other stories. Paul Barry was right. It was a pathetic effort.