Heston Russell says ABC must ‘come clean’ over botched story amid doctored audio scandal

Special forces veteran Heston Russell says he can’t rule out further legal action against the ABC and has demanded the national broadcaster sack the journalists he claims fudged an entire story about him.

Mr Russell, who served in Afghanistan, has called for a parliamentary inquiry and demanded a meeting with ABC chairman Kim Williams after the network was forced to delete edited audio from a news report it said was published “in error”.

The doctored audio made it appear as though Australian Defence Force soldiers in 2012 had fired six shots from a helicopter back at unarmed civilians, instead of what Mr Russell says was just one warning shot fired after pursuing a pair of enemy insurgents from the air.

ABC news director Justin Stevens on Tuesday admitted the network had made mistakes and “must do better”, and was investigating how doctored audio was published online “in error”.

“We removed the video and are still looking into how this happened. Once we have the full facts we will determine the appropriate response,” he said.

“Until we have clarity on how it occurred, I won’t be making further comments about it, so as to not pre-empt that.”

The ABC has said the three journalists involved in the story - Jo Puccini, Mark Willacy and Josh Robertson - had nothing to do with the audio production and editing.

But speaking to The Nightly, Mr Russell said the ABC needed to admit the entire story was “an error”, and sack all three journalists.

“These people have to lose their job,” he said.

“Robertson and Willacy were found (to have defamed me) by the federal court, and the ABC - I sued all three of them.”

He said the real issue was that the ABC had deliberately selected 15 seconds from the full five minute clip from his helmet camera, which he said had been brought to the journalists’ attention and clearly showed they were being attacked by insurgents.

“The ABC has made no attempt to correct the record, despite having the raw footage for 18 months,” he said.

“When they say they are investigating an error, the real error is the entire 7.30 report which they said shows soldiers flying around and shooting unarmed civilians. They should have said, ‘hold on, we have the raw footage from the soldiers on the ground being shot at by insurgents’.

“That’s what’s missing. The changing of the shot audio is just the icing on the cake.”

Digital audio analyst James Raper told 7NEWS’ Spotlight that ABC had “taken the audio from the six shots and they’ve applied it to this video in the news clip, and they’ve copied and pasted across this scene”.

Mr Russell, who successfully sued the ABC for defamation in the Federal Court last year over a series of stories, said the entire story had been rushed after he had filed proceedings against them.

“They have rushed to failure, been exposed, and are digging the hole deeper through these lies,” he said.

“Stop trying to defend yourself. Sit down and do a full review of how you got this story so wrong.

“There is a massive opportunity here to be transparent and explain to the Australian people how you got it so wrong.”

Mr Russell contacted Mr Williams on Sunday night as the Spotlight program went to air, but has yet to receive a response.

He said he was hopeful the chairman — who only took over this year — would come through, but warned he was considering further legal action.

“But it’s all taxpayer dollars, and I’m not comfortable with that. Courts are meant to be a last resort, not first,” he said.

In his speech in Melbourne, Mr Stevens said while “it should never be used as an excuse”, ABC News had a team of more than 2000 “human beings” producing live and scheduled TV and radio, continuous news coverage, vertical video and online content every day.

“Underpinning the ABC’s trust are our editorial standards. Our staff are rightly held to the highest standards because they work for the Australian taxpayer,” he said.

“Crucially, those standards are not there to stifle us — they don’t stop us from being brave and doing agenda-setting, challenging, interesting journalism.

“My job is not to be liked all the time by everybody, it’s to work for the public and to uphold the reputation of ABC News.”