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Nine News breaches Code with inaccurate, unfair report.

Nine News presented an unfair, unbalanced report when it claimed a blackspot could have been fixed and prevented a fatal road accident.

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Nine-owned NBN Newcastle has breached the Code of Practice over a News story in January following the death of a ute driver and an 11 year old boy on a stretch of the Pacific Highway.

Reporter Kevin Wilde said, “Nine News has obtained damning evidence that the death of an 11-year-old boy in a crash at Urunga could have been prevented. Documents show that the Federal Government rejected advice to upgrade the dangerous section of the Pacific Highway in favour of road works in the electorate of key independent Rob Oakeshott.”

It claimed the Federal Government ignored expert advice to fix the blackspot.

“Unfortunately, the Federal Government chose another project in the electorate of independent Rob Oakeshott’. That upgrade project is the Oxley Highway. It has far less traffic, yet work is already underway. Local MP Andrew Fraser has campaigned for 20 years for the Urunga upgrade to four lanes,” said NBN.

But the Australian Communications and Media Authority has found that the proposed diversion of funds was from one section of the Pacific Highway to another. It said Nine News had no such evidence to support its claims.

It also ruled that the item was unfair to the Federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Anthony Albanese, in that it asserted that he had done something which he had not done, ie. diverted funds from the Pacific Highway to the Oxley Highway. It was also unfair to independent Rob Oakeshott, in that it strongly suggested that he had influenced Minister Albanese to make such a decision.

ACMA also found NBN did not correct the core inaccuracy of the report the next night, leaving viewers with unfair impressions of Ministers Albanese and Oakeshott.

A second broadcast showed the reporter shouting over the Minister at a press conference:

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Lack of attention to detail was put into this story.

REPORTER: With respect, Minister, if you’re going to criticise Nine News –

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No, no –

REPORTER: If you’re going to criticise Nine News, will I get a chance to ask you a question, too, about this?

ACMA ruled NBN breached the accuracy and fairness provisions of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice.

Nine has apologised to Minister Albanese and taken remedial actions:

removed the item from the licensee’s website
cautioned and provided training to relevant Nine staff
written to Mr Oakeshott, acknowledging his concerns and the errors in the broadcast.
In addition, Nine has agreed to post a statement on its website acknowledging the findings and giving a link to the ACMA’s investigation report.

Updated.

9 Responses

  1. Agree this was a blatant falsehood and should have received stronger treatment by ACMA. But…the question remains – did TCN9/WIN NSW run the same piece or did only NBN use it? NBN produce their own news program using TCN9 feeds, but not “off-air”.

  2. Seven’s and Nine’s so-called journalists must be the most-trained people in the work-force. I don’t see how even more “training” is going to prevent poor research, distortions, and falsehoods from being presented as fact in the future.

  3. Utterly useless.

    The “news” should be forced to apologise on air during news time as well.

    Anytime a mistake is made, then the acknowledgement of that mistake should be in the same form under the same conditions.

  5. @chadsterboi – No they don’t. NBN has always produced their own news hour. They get news content/items from Nine (national and international). Did Nine Sydney run the item? If so, WIN would be affected as WIN takes a feed of Nine Sydney’s half-hour. If Nine didn’t run it, then….

  7. 8 months to “investigate”. The punishment? Nothing. What about something like the ACCC? Large adverts in newspapers correcting the errors, lengthy scripted pieces that have to be broadcast on the station?
    This item was produced by Nine News Sydney it would seem. Did Nine & WIN NSW not run it?

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