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ACMA rules 7:30 story breaches Code of Practice

Media watchdog rules ABC did not give a business advice company fair opportunity to respond to allegations of mismanagement.

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ABC’s 7.30 has been issued with a rare breach of the ABC Code of Practice following a report aired in December 2013 on personal budgeting business, MyBudget.

7:30 contacted founder and director Tammy May for comments regarding trends on Australians facing financial difficulty but after hearing from two former clients introduced the story by suggesting company practice raised “serious ethical questions and can leave customers even worse off than when they started.”

Media watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority has ruled that the program did not offer MyBudget a fair opportunity to respond to allegations of mismanagement and neglect.

Standard 5.3 of the Code requires reasonable efforts to be made in the circumstances to provide a fair opportunity to respond.

However ACMA also found no breach relating to accuracy, impartiality and informing participants of the general nature of their participation in its story.

The ABC has undertaken to place an Editor’s Note on the segment transcript, acknowledging the breach, as well as on the ABC Corrections and Clarifications webpage.

6 Responses

    1. I remember seeing this article. Only because Mrs Bogues watched some pro My Budget piece (basically an advertorial) on ACA or TT, which was singing their praises. Was nice to see the ‘other side’ of the story.

      What’s absurd about the decision is the item was factually accurate. It seems ACMAs only issue is not giving the company time to respond. This seems a rather bad decision to me. How long should Four Corners wait to get a response from the Greyhound Industry for their story a few weeks ago? or Mediawatch?

      1. The ABC’s Code of Practice requires that they do give people a chance to respond. This is fairly standard practice for quality journalism. They didn’t so it was a breach of their own code.

        The correction should have been read out on air on 7:30pm as well though.

    2. Your point?

      I’ve been accused previously of being an ACMA shill for saying this – but I wish people would read the reports rather than just blindly complaining about how slow ACMA is. To me, ~7 1/2 months doesn’t seem too long to investigate the whole thing.

      (What, you think ACMA dragged it out for the whole 15 months? Go download & read the report from the ACMA website; it’s Report 3214 from 2014…)

  2. ACMA also found no breach relating to accuracy, impartiality…
    On the MyBudget website, click on “as seen on TV” and all you get is a page of their own TV commercials.
    But “Tammy May”was contacted.

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