@freakiness wrote:https://theconversation.com/abc-forgetting-lessons-of-2001-pays-for-its-lack-of-scepticism-22746
Questions of accountabilityOn February 4, the ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, and director of news, Kate Torney, issued a media release, the Jesuitical wording of which brings us to the second ethical issue here, that of media accountability.
ABC managing director Mark Scott’s statement of regret offers a limited sort of accountability.AAP/Alan Porritt
Referring to the video evidence of the burnt hand, the statement said:
The ABC’s initial reports on the video said that the vision appeared to support the asylum seekers’ claims. That’s because it was the first concrete evidence that the injuries had occurred. What the video did not do was establish how those injuries occurred. The wording around the ABC’s initial reporting needed to be more precise on that point. We regret if our reporting led anyone to mistakenly assume that the ABC supported the asylum seekers’ claims. The ABC has always presented the allegations as just that – claims worthy of further investigation.
Too right it needed to be more precise, and assessments about what the video meant needed to be suspended until better evidence was available. As for mistaken assumptions, it is well established in media law – and equally well understood by journalists – that people take in the news impressionistically. They do not parse every sentence.
Journalists who create false impressions in the minds of their audience have only themselves to blame. In these ways, the ABC’s statement typifies the media’s conventional reluctance to own up.
Poor evidence of biasNone of these failings, however, support the accusations of bias that have been levelled at the ABC.
Failure to verify is not on its own evidence of bias. If it could be shown to be accompanied by some other culpable element such as conscious prejudice, suppression of available evidence or failure to give an opportunity to reply, then a case of bias might exist. However, there is no such evidence.
News Corp has characterised the ABC as treacherous and accused it of hating the navy. But News Corp has acommercial axe to grind with the ABC and isn’t to be taken seriously on this matter.
The government was given every opportunity to reply but was defeated by its own policy of censorship in respect of Operation Sovereign Borders.
Nor do these failings provide any support for prime minister Tony Abbott’s authoritarian proposition that the ABC should give Australia the benefit of the doubt on these issues.
Lessons of historyGive Australia the benefit of the doubt? Why? Australian governments have lied about these matters before.
During the 2001 federal election campaign, the ABC was rightlysceptical about the veracity of photos that the government asserted to be of asylum seekers throwing their children overboard. They turned out to be nothing of the kind.
The irony now is that the ABC has been insufficiently sceptical of another asylum seeker image, in this case the burnt-hand video. In journalism, it is always hazardous to suspend disbelief.
Do you have a point in amongst all that text?
