2 weeks Ago By Ellen Ransley
Five additional gunshot sounds were “inaccurately” added to ABC footage of a commando firing from a helicopter, an independent review commissioned by the public broadcaster has found. ABC’s senior executives fronted Senate Estimates on Tuesday and committed to a review of its editorial policies after former editorial chief Alan Sunderland handed down his interim review into an online article and two 7.30 stories aired and published in 2022.
The review came after Seven’s Spotlight program revealed doctored audio had been inserted into an ABC story about an operation conducted by Afghanistan soldiers, including former November platoon commander Heston Russell. Acting managing director Melanie Klyn told Senators on Tuesday the Sunderland review had found “no evidence of any intent to mislead by any ABC employee”. “The interim report has also rebutted the suggestion that the central focus of the entire story was misleadingly altered,” she said.
Ellen Ransley Ellen Ransley “In relation to the issue of altered audio, the review specifically states that there was ‘no evidence to support the conclusion that any of this was done at the direction of the journalists involved, or on the initiative of the video editor, in order to doctor or deliberately distort the depiction of the events that occurred’.” News director Justin Stevens added Mr Sunderland had found “no evidence that anybody at any stage made a conscious or deliberate decision to introduce additional gunshots”. “’It appears to be an inadvertent consequence of attempts to create clean, accurate, and effective sequences in the story’,” he quoted.
The review also found the use of interview by former US Drug Enforcement Administration leader Bret Hamilton “did not accurately represent him” and was “potentially misleading”. More to come..
