ABC’s Justin Stevens defends Four Corners investigation after ACMA finds Fox News episodes breached code of practice

The ABC’s director of news, analysis and investigations has defended a Four Corners report after the Australian media watchdog found parts of it had breached the ABC’s code of practice.

The double episode, presented by Sarah Ferguson and titled Fox and the Big Lie, aired in 2021 and examined the role of US media outlet Fox News in propagating and legitimising Donald Trump’s allegations of election fraud in the 2020 US presidential election.

Fox made a formal complaint to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) after the program aired, alleging it had lacked impartiality, failed to present a diversity of views and contained “numerous provable falsehoods”.

After a year-long investigation, the ACMA failed to uphold most of Fox’s complaints, and found the program had not breached what it called the “high bar” set by the ABC’s impartiality standards.

However, it did find that the episodes had omitted relevant contextual information in two instances, firstly regarding the culpability of social media in encouraging the January 6 riots, and secondly regarding Fox’s censuring of two of its presenters for appearing at a 2018 Trump rally.

It also found that Four Corners had failed to sufficiently inform Fox host Jeanine Pirro of the nature of her participation in the program when approaching her with questions outside Fox News’ headquarters in New York.

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

ABC has ‘serious concerns’ over findings

The ABC’s statement in response to the ACMA report said it had “consistently disagreed” with the three adverse findings during the course of the investigation.

Speaking to the ABC’s PM radio program on Wednesday afternoon, ABC news, analysis and investigations director Justin Stevens defended the Four Corners episodes, calling them an “outstanding piece of journalism” and raising concerns the findings could have serious implications for public interest journalism.

“The ACMA investigation rejected most of the wide-ranging complaints made by Fox News … [but] with the findings today we have serious concerns about them,” Mr Stevens said.

“What’s particularly concerning in the ACMA press release and in the report is that there are a number of subjective elements of how they’re characterising things, and it’s inconsistent with the established approach to accuracy and fairness under the code.

“We think it sets a precedent which could place undue pressure on content makers when selecting an editorial focus for fear of potential breach.”

One of the complaints upheld by the ACMA was that Four Corners had failed to include reporting on the role played by social media in encouraging the January 6 rioters, with the ACMA finding that “its absence invited the viewer to discount their [social media companies’] role relative to that of Fox News”.

“The ACMA effectively criticise the ABC with a subjective view of what they believe we ought to have published editorially, and the things they imply ought to have been included would not have been good journalism in our view, and nor is it their role to express a subjective view of what we publish editorially,” Mr Stevens said.

“This was not a program about social media, this was about Fox News, and we need to make that judgement editorially.”

Mr Stevens also took issue with the ACMA’s criticism of the “emotive” and “strident” language in Four Corners’ reporting, including a description of the Capitol Hill rioters as a “mob”.

“I’ve searched this before and the definition of mob is a large group of people, especially one that is disorderly or intent on causing trouble or violence — so it’s completely unclear to me how the ACMA could assert that the crowd on January 6 at the Capitol building was not a mob,” he said.

“This was an extremely serious event in the democratic process in the US and calling what occurred there that day a ‘mob’ is factually accurate.”

The two-part Four Corners investigation Fox and the Big Lie remains available to view on ABC iview.