Seven West Media chair Kerry Stokes blasts the ABC for ‘egregious’ attacks through its false reporting

Kerry Stokes has taken the public broadcaster to task for its “egregious and unfair assault” on Seven West Media, and then refusing to investigate its failure to meets its own principles on accuracy and fairness.

He also took a swipe at the Albanese government for its weak stance on international streaming companies stealing content and providing minimal value in return for the Australian economy.

The Seven West Media chair said on Thursday the ABC’s recent Four Corners program on Seven “veered well away” from the public broadcaster’s own charter by engaging in “an egregious and unfair assault on our business and the reputation of our good people”.

“Our formal complaint to the ABC — making a compelling case that Four Corners had clearly failed to meet the broadcaster’s own principles of impartiality, accuracy and fairness — was unsurprisingly ignored,” Mr Stokes said at Seven West’s annual general meeting in Sydney on Thursday.

“Despite our request, the ABC’s Ombudsman has also refused to investigate the matter.

“The Four Corners program backfired as the ABC itself is now the subject of charges of hypocrisy and entrenched cultural problems including racism, misogyny and bullying. This attack failed to dent the spirit and pride of our incredibly talented, hard-working and professional teams.”

The chair’s comments come two days after the ABC was found to have “inaccurately” added additional gunshot sounds to footage of an Australian commando firing from a helicopter.

The doctored footage was made in now discredited media reporting which made allegations of war crimes.

ABC officials appeared at a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday, where they said while the video editor involved had left the public broadcaster voluntarily, no one had been fired for the “editing errors”, at least to their knowledge. It prompted the Coalition to query why no one had been punished.

The Senate review was ordered in September, after Seven’s Spotlight program revealed audio had been inserted into ABC stories about a 2012 operation conducted by Afghanistan soldiers, including former November platoon commander Heston Russell.

Mr Russell successfully sued the ABC for defamation last year over the same stories. He told The Nightly in September he wanted the three journalists involved to “lose their jobs”.

Mr Stokes on Thursday also expressed his frustration at the Albanese Government’s soft stance on social media and streaming giants like Facebook, TikTok and Amazon stealing content from traditional media sources to put on their own platforms.

“(Former Treasurer) Josh Frydenberg sat there and held the streamers to account, and he made them pay a fee for our journalism, and he did that through pure strength of argument,” he said.

“The current government doesn’t seem to be able to continue that, because they (the streaming and social media companies) are advising us they aren’t going to continue paying for that service. They think they’ve paid too much for stealing.”

Mr Stokes said government intervention is required to “level the playing field” and this would benefit all Australians.

“You take the whole broadcasting industry together . . . 10, years ago, between us, we’re paying $1.3 billion a year in tax,” he said.

“This year we’ll probably pay, between us, maybe $200 million. Now streamers who took all that revenue pay no tax.

“Ireland just took Apple on and finally made Apple pay tax — $18 billion — so it can be done if you’ve got a strong government with strong leadership who knows how to protect the citizens and how to protect its assets.”

Local news is at risk of being lost if swift action is not taken, according to Mr Stokes.

“Seven and our competitors, at (channels) nine and 10, if we give up you’ll end up having Zuckerberg as your news editor . . . you won’t have local news, you won’t have independent journalism.”