LIAM BARTLETT: Inside the bid to uncover the truth about the ABC’s war crimes footage fiasco

Let’s not beat around the bush.

The ABC’s fake war crimes footage is almost a treasonous act. The doctoring of vision and audio to give the impression Australian soldiers were firing at unarmed civilians was not only against the national interest but vilified brave servicemen fighting on our behalf, in the worst possible way.

The targets turned out to be terrorist insurgents who had minutes before been firing at coalition troops and, to add insult to ignorance, the commandos at the centre of the action had used far fewer bullets than was depicted in the manipulated news stories.

All in all, a disgraceful act from the elite investigative journalism unit at the taxpayer-funded broadcaster.

The people responsible for publishing that fraud were either careless, incompetent or ideologically-driven to present such an erroneous, immoral view of Aussie Diggers at war.

Those are the three choices that now face Alan Sunderland, the man charged with finding out what went so badly wrong when the ABC made the decision to air those false allegations on its flagship 7.30 program and online news site.

Sunderland though has also already come in for criticism with some analysts asking how a former editorial director who worked at Aunty for 23 years could ever be considered truly “independent”.

But the inquiry head has a far bigger problem than that.

The man who appointed him to lead the review, ABC managing director David Anderson, has an interesting way of finding the truth. Let me explain.

In announcing the ABC’s attempt to find the path to redemption, Anderson said Sunderland’s inquiry would allow the broadcaster to “fully understand what has occurred and make any necessary recommendations”.

And then, in the next breath, there was this exemption clause for their star journalist at the centre of the scandal: “ABC News has no evidence that reporter Mark Willacy directed anyone to change the audio on the video and to imply otherwise is false.”

And that was seconded by ABC news chief Justin Stevens, who said, among other plaudits: “He’s a fantastic journalist … his journalism is beyond repute”.

So, that settles that. If we paraphrase the two bosses at the top of the ABC tree: let’s have an inquiry to get to the bottom of this disgrace but, by the way, the bloke who was the chief author is already innocent before we begin.

It’s an unusual way to start a supposedly open investigation.

When I pointed this out to Sunderland, he was keen to reject the implication it was all a foregone conclusion.

“I’m not fussed about any public statements”, he insisted.

“I’m not taking anything at face value and I don’t accept that anyone is quarantined”.

Fighting words indeed. But he lost his mojo slightly when I pointed to a factual error in the public statement from the man who has given him a substantial meal ticket.

Anderson’s office told their own Media Watch that “the decision to remove the embedded video was made on Friday September 13. The decision to take down the online and 7.30 story was made on Friday 20 September.

The first time concerns about the editing of the audio were raised with ABC News was from the Spotlight program, when the ABC sought detailed questions from Channel Seven. At this time an editing error in the audio was identified”.

Now, that timeline is convenient because it makes it sound like the ABC acted responsibly and took these fake stories down at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately, if you believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, you might just be able to swallow that public relations tripe.

The truth is they failed to act until they knew they had been caught red-handed. I know because I raised the exact issue with them in an email almost four months earlier.

WATCH 7’s Spotlight interview with retired special forces commando Heston Russell

On June 6, in a series of questions to Sally Jackson, the ABC’s media handler, I specifically mentioned the problem areas and requested an on-camera interview with Anderson, Willacy or Jo Puccini from the investigations unit.

So as to leave no uncertainty as to what we needed them to account for, I told them my questions would cover “the use of edited helmet cam vision, wrongly edited shooting sequences and the false portrayal of DEA Agent Brett Hamilton”.

So, what part of that didn’t the ABC understand? Well, Jackson simply replied by saying none of the chief players wanted to take part in an honest interview about these issues because apparently our standard of journalism wasn’t up to scratch with theirs. As they so quaintly put it: “We have no confidence in engaging with your program”.

However, that siege mentality changed markedly on Friday, September 13 when they knew our program exposing their fake news would be viewed by the rest of the country two days later.

Since then, it has also been shown that their own legal department was made aware of these dire discrepancies in the stories as early as November of 2022.

The ABC’s response to that staggering oversight is that the crucial information was “innocently overlooked”.

But there is nothing “innocent” about any of this scandal. From the outset, the ABC has adopted the ludicrous position of it stemming from an “editing error” but this is a lot more sinister than a simple error.

Anyone who has worked in television news for more than a week can tell you that “errors” like this don’t just happen.

Stories as serious as this are constructed carefully and purposefully and are checked and screened and then signed off on.

Extra gunshots that are synced up with sequential vision don’t just appear as a consequence of a creative editor who thinks it may sound more dramatic.

This not a new chocolate treat that pops out at the end of a production line at the Willy Wonka factory. It’s a methodical, labour intensive process that has oversight and editorial input at the highest level.

But the ABC is suggesting a scenario where their leading journalists write the story, voice the story, publish the story and win awards for their stories but suddenly, somehow become Stevie Wonder when it comes to the pictures attached to their stories. Well, it’s almost laughable.

Except the commandos of the 2nd Regiment’s November platoon are not laughing and nor should any of our proud veterans. They want heads to roll and I don’t blame them one bit.

The exquisite irony in all this is that’s exactly what the Taliban would have been happy with.

Liam Bartlett is a reporter at 7NEWS Spotlight