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ABC News breached code

An ABC News story was accused of going beyond reporting news and editorialising.

abcid1A story on ABC News in 2007 has been found to have breached the ABC Code of Practice after being found to lack balance.

The story, ‘Running Wild’, looked at the brumby population in Kosciuszko National Park, and referred to a NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service draft plan to reduce brumby numbers.

A complaint was received that suggested the ABC story went beyond reporting the news and editorialised in favour of the NPWS plan.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority found the story did lack balance with its viewpoints presented and identified a significant error in its introduction.

In response to the ACMA’s finding the ABC published a statement on its online Corrections and Clarifications page: ‘On December 6, 2007, the introduction to a story about brumbies in Kosciuszko National Park said “the wild horse population there is getting out of control”. This was not accurate; the introduction should have said “the wild horse population there is increasing”. ‘

The ABC says the findings have been brought to the attention of senior management and is developing training messages for relevant staff.

ACMA says it considers the ABC response proportionate and will not take further action at this time.

Source: ACMA

7 Responses

  1. Pietro (7:44pm), you’re the only one that cares about that.

    Mikeys (12:59pm), for all of its 20 years on-air, Media Watch has never gone easy with ABC News.

  2. @ GuanoLad, if you’d actually bothered reading the report you’d realise that ACMA didn’t receive a complaint until 19 December 2008, and given that this is a decision which may set significant precedent, 10 months seems to be an entirely reasonable amount of time.

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