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Four Corners breaches Code of Practice over FOX News story

Two breaches on accuracy and fair dealing but 'FOX and the Big Lie' did not breach impartiality standards.

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The Australian Communications and Media Authority has found the ABC breached accuracy and fair and honest dealing requirements of its Code of Practice in its Four Corners double episode program ‘FOX and the Big Lie’.

However, the ACMA’s overall assessment was that the program came close to, but did not breach, the high bar set by the impartiality standards in the ABC’s Code.

The ACMA investigation found the ABC omitted relevant contextual information in the program in a way that materially misled the audience.

In one case, the ABC reported the appearance of two FOX presenters at a 2018 Trump rally without disclosing that Fox had issued a public statement censuring the two presenters. This omission left it open to viewers to conclude that Fox News had either endorsed or at least did not object to the appearances.

In a further omission of relevant facts, the ABC also failed to report on the role social media played in inciting the Capitol Hill riots.

ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the ABC has an obligation to present facts accurately and in context.

“By omitting key information, the ABC did not give its audience the opportunity to make up their own minds about Fox News,” Ms O’Loughlin said.

The ACMA also found that in approaching a FOX News host for an interview, the ABC did not appropriately inform her about the nature of her participation in the program as required by its Code of Practice.

“Both audiences and participants are entitled to the full picture. In this case, by omitting information the ABC did not do justice to the story or provide all relevant facts to its audience,” Ms O’Loughlin said.

In a 60-page report, ACMA rejected six of Fox’s allegations of editorial breaches and upheld two.

The program included a considerable range and number of opinions, several of which were expressed in strong terms and were subjective personal accounts. These expressions of opinion are not subject to code accuracy standards but were considered by the ACMA against the ABC’s impartiality requirements.

“Current affairs programs such as Four Corners are not precluded from presenting a particular perspective on an issue or reaching a particular conclusion. But that needs to be balanced against requirements to gather and present information with due impartiality.

“The ACMA considers that ABC could have taken greater care in striking that balance in this program to avoid perceptions of partiality,” Ms O’Loughlin said.

In a statement a FOX News spokesperson said, “FOX News Media is pleased with the findings of the Australian Communications and Media Authority that the ABC engaged in multiple breaches of its own Code of Practice relating to accuracy and fair and honest dealing. Today’s ruling confirms FOX News Media’s view that the central premise of the Four Corners two-part program was built on a foundation of patent bias and lack of impartiality and was then laden with basic factual errors, uncorrected even after FOX News Media presented contradictory evidence.”

The ABC issued a strong rebuke to the report on Wednesday, saying ACMA’s conclusion is “inconsistent with the established approach to accuracy and fairness under the code” and will have negative consequences for public interest journalism.

ABC news director Justin Stevens took aim at a press release from ACMA which said said “the program came close to, but did not breach” impartiality standards.

“The ABC strongly disagrees that the program is not impartial,” Stevens said.

“FOX and the Big Lie was a strong and measured piece of public interest journalism and a world class report by Sarah Ferguson and the team.

“This was a comprehensive investigation analysing the role Fox News played in helping promulgate the ‘big lie’ – that the 2020 US Presidential election was stolen.”

Source: Guardian Australia

7 Responses

  1. … the ABC news department has now gone completely rogue … how on earth can the person who was the subject of an ACMA investigation write an objective “analysis” on that investigation? what absolute arrogance …

  3. A lot of times with ABC current affairs, you can tell just by the topics alone that it’s done to create political influence or narrative, rather than reporting on issues that need to be reported on.

    Just because they say they’re the most trusted, that may not actually be the case, regardless of survey results. Just like when Fox News said and insisted they were ‘Fair and balanced’, but the reality seemed different.

    1. I agree, I find the bias with news organizations is more to do with the stories they don’t do, more so than the stories they do do. From my perspective the ABC focuses very much on social issues. For example most days on their news website I can find a story on climate change and it’s the go to site for me with this topic, but if I want news around business issues I’d look elsewhere.

  5. So the ABC’s vague wafflely Code Of Practice permits ABC staff to make a 2 hour hatched job against their sworn enemy with omitted relevant facts and context that manipulated the audience, as does the complaints procedure run by the same ABC staff, who dismissed the complaint and filed it straight into the bin as they always have. The ACMA found that there were two violations of the ABC Code Of Practice in deliberately omitting relevant facts and context that journalism would require. They then took a year to find this was only nearly partial, because they hate News Corp as much as the ABC. The ACMA also pointed out the two hours was mostly subjective, strident op-ed from Fox News competitors, but couldn’t make a finding here because the Code Of Practice says this fine. The ABC’s new Complaints process removes ACMA oversight, so they can with more denials and attack the ACMA and it’s attempts to apply their Code to them instead. ABC Staff are not accountable to nobody and nothing.

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