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A formal complaint against ABC’s one-sided reporting of a crime crisis meeting in Alice Springs was filed with Australia’s media watchdog.
Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson, a former ABC employee, has lodged a complaint about two reports ABC filed about a crime meeting with the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Senator Henderson called the report, on national broadcaster AM’s flagship current affairs program as well as in a television report, “monumentally distorted,” criticizing ABC management who defended the report as “utter rubbish and absolute’.
The audience at the town hall meeting included concerned families, business owners, indigenous leaders, health and emergency service workers, and police officers.
The senator, who once worked as a consumer reporter at ABC and once hosted 7.30 in Victoria, described the station’s coverage as ‘garbage reporting’.
But he said the report highlighted a deeper problem with the taxpayer-funded broadcaster, which is supposed to be free from bias under its charter.
“ABC senior management and advisers have defended this report,” he said.
‘There should be a retraction, an apology and a review of journalistic training standards.
“I am asking the ACMA to investigate ABC for a violation of its code of practice.”
Thousands of fed up residents turned out for the Save Alice Springs rally after intense media focus on the town’s battle against a crime crisis, amid threats from locals to sue the Northern Territory government over a compensation of 1.5 billion dollars.
Senator Sarah Henderson, a former ABC journalist, is filing a formal complaint over ABC’s “white supremacist” coverage of the Alice Springs crisis meeting, describing it as “monumentally distorted.”
The senator described ABC reporter Carly Williams’ (pictured) reports of the meeting as “a disgusting display of white supremacy” as “garbage reporting.”
The audience at the town hall meeting included concerned families, business owners, indigenous leaders, health and emergency service workers, and police officers.
But ABC’s report on the meeting only aired interviews that were critical and claimed it was dominated by “white supremacists.”
ABC’s Indian Affairs correspondent Carly Williams’ live telecast said many people had left the gathering early and that “a non-Indigenous person” had described the gathering as “a disgusting display of white supremacy.”
“Another said there was tension and anger in the room,” he said.
He also interviewed several attendees, with one woman saying it was “a really disgusting white supremacist show and really disappointing, it was scary to be in that room.”
Senator Henderson announced that she had filed her complaint with 2GB Breakfast Host Ben Fordham. Fordham said ABC had published “fake news” and “picked a few people” out of a gathering of hundreds.
“Instead of telling the full story, ABC offensively and inaccurately described the meeting as ‘clearly revolving around white supremacy,'” the senator wrote on Twitter.
Not only has she refused to retract the story, apologize, and investigate how it got on the air, but ABC has arrogantly defended her. A very big flop from ABC.
Senator Henderson’s complaint came after a Sydney-based indigenous professor compared the meeting in question to a Hollywood movie about racially hateful killings committed by the KKK in the American South in the 1960s.
Nareen Young, a professor of Indigenous Politics at Sydney University of Technology, told ABC’s The Drum that the comments from some concerned locals were “appalling”.
“If you saw that room in Mississippi Burning, for example, Australians would say ‘how terrible, oh, that’s terrible going on there,'” said Professor Young, who is a close friend of Anthony Albanese.
“The vitriol and the racism and the lack of consideration and respect for those people on their land while those people lived off the bounty of it was appalling.”
The indigenous activist, a descendant of Eora, also told the show that “how the mafia is treated on their own land, in their own town…it’s the impact of the theft of that land.”
Mississippi Burning is a brutal 1988 film about the FBI’s efforts to investigate the disappearance of civil rights workers while the Ku Klux Klan attacks the local black population.
The crisis meeting was held in response to footage taken by Alice Springs locals showing young men brandishing weapons such as machetes and axes, especially at night and children running wild, breaking into houses and spitting through fences. of the bars
After Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited the town last week, the Northern Territory Government reinstated partial alcohol restrictions banning takeaway alcohol sales on Mondays and Tuesdays, with sales limited between 3pm and 7pm. the remaining days.
A quick NT government review also recommends alcohol bans in central Australian communities, including city campgrounds in Alice Springs.
The gathering was held in response to images of young men brandishing machetes and axes, children running wild, and youths robbing venues like this venue (above) trying to get into Todd Tavern.
Other locals offered different depictions of the crisis meeting.
“I’m so proud to see the number of locals giving their time and support to help bring about change,” local business owner and lifelong resident Garth Thompson posted on Facebook after the event.
Senator Henderson has been an outspoken critic of ABC, last month criticizing the station’s response to ACMA’s findings about his Four Corners show on Fox News’ coverage of the 2022 Capitol siege.
An ACMA investigation found that Sarah Ferguson’s two-part report on Fox in August last year “omitted relevant information in a way that materially misled the audience.”
It found that ABC breached the accuracy and fair and honest dealing requirements of ABC’s Code of Practice, “but did not breach impartiality.”
When ABC rejected the findings and instead fired up ACMA, Senator Henderson said it had “improperly attacked the independent regulator, demonstrating an untenable disregard for the need to comply with its own Code of Practice.”
‘This… reeks of arrogance and self-sufficiency, and is completely unacceptable.’
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