ABC team ‘inaccurately’ doctored audio: independent review finds

The Coalition has called for “heads to roll” after the ABC was found to have “inadvertently but inaccurately” added additional gunshot sounds to footage of a commando firing from a helicopter.

The public broadcaster apologised to commandos and audiences after former editorial chief Alan Sunderland on Tuesday handed down his interim review into one online article and two 7.30 stories aired and published in 2022, concluding the audio had been edited — but not intentionally.

Mr Sunderland cleared the broadcaster, video editor and journalists of malintent in declaring he found “no evidence of any intent to mislead”.

He said he had found no evidence that anyone had “deliberately doctored, falsified, manipulated or distorted information, material or evidence, in order to mislead audiences” when additional gunshot sounds were added to the videos.

ABC officials appeared at Senate Estimates 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’s veterans affairs spokesman Barnaby Joyce to query why no one had been punished.

“This is not good enough. Frankly, heads need to roll on this one because this is a really big dark mark against the ABC,” he said.

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

In his review, Mr Sunderland said the evidence “suggests it was not a deliberate editorial decision to include additional gunshot audio in order to mislead or deceive,” he wrote.

He did find that five additional gunshot sounds were added after the “warning shot” fired by a commando in the 56-second clip used in an online story. The 7.30 footage also contained additional gunshot sounds in a second sequence.

He concluded the difference “adds weight to evidence it was not doctored”.

”It appears to be an inadvertent consequence of attempts to create clean, accurate, and effective sequences in the story,” Mr Sunderland wrote.

News director Justin Stevens told senators the issues “shouldn’t have happened”.

In a statement, he said the ABC “sincerely regrets and apologises for the editing errors in the video clips, including to members of the 2nd Commando Regiment. The video has been removed”.

Officials appearing before senators on Tuesday also denied they were aware that ABC’s legal department had received a letter raising concerns about the audio editing back in 2022 — insisting they were only made aware in September.

Acting managing director Melanie Kleyn said she “didn’t know” if anyone in the organisation’s news division had received the letter.

“The exact circumstances surrounding exactly what happened at that date, and why, and then what will we do differently, is the outstanding element of Mr Sunderland’s review,” Ms Kleyn said.

Liberal senator Sarah Henderson, who led the questioning on the matter on Tuesday, requested all documents between the ABC’s legal team and all other sectors of the ABC in relation to the helicopter vision be tabled.