Investigation Report No. 3215
File No. / ACMA2014/384Broadcaster / ABC TV
Station / ABN Sydney
Type of Service / National Broadcaster
Name of Program / Four Corners
Date of Broadcast / 10 February 2014
Relevant Code / Standards 2.1; 4.1; and 7.7 of the ABC Code of Practice 2011 (revised in 2014)
Date finalised / 9 October 2014
Decision / No breach of standards 2.1 [accuracy]; 4.1 [due impartiality] and 7.7 [discriminatory content] of the ABC Code of Practice 2011 (revised in 2014).
The complaint
In May 2014, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) commenced investigating a Four Corners segment, ‘Stone Cold Justice’ broadcast by the ABC on 10 February 2014.
The complaint is that the story was inaccurate, biased and it incited violence and racial hatred against Israel.
The complaint has been investigated in accordance with standard 2.1, standard 4.1 and standard 7.7 of the ABC Code of Practice 2011 (revised 2014) (the Code).
The program
Four Corners is a current affairs program broadcast on Mondays at 8.30pm and is described on the ABC’s website:
Four Corners is Australia's premier television current affairs program.
It has been part of the national story since August 1961, exposing scandals, triggering inquiries, firing debate, confronting taboos and interpreting fads, trends and sub-cultures.[1]
‘Stone Cold Justice’ ran for 45 minutes and 20 seconds and reported on the arrest, interrogation and detention of West Bank Palestinian children in the Israeli military court system. The segment referred to a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report of February 2013, Children in Israeli Military Detention; Observations and Recommendations, which stated that ‘Each year approximately 700 Palestinian children aged 12 to 17, the great majority of them boys, are arrested, interrogated and detained by the Israeli Army, police and security agents.’[2]
The segment featured interviews with three Palestinian boys of 14 to 15 years of age, two of whom were arrested at home at night, recounting their experiences of arrest and detention by Israeli security forces. It included references to the establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank since 1967, footage of confrontations between Palestinian residents and soldiers and between Palestinian school children and Israeli police who fired tear gas, a description of the detention of a five year old boy by soldiers, vision from a Swedish documentary of children being attacked by settlers, the account from the mother of an Israeli child suffering from brain damage as a result of stone throwing by Palestinians, comments on the dangers of stone throwing and its basis for the arrest of Palestinian children, and comments about the arrest of a nine year old who was interrogated about his uncle who was also interviewed.
It concluded with the presenter stating that Israeli Authorities have responded to some of the recommendations made in the UNICEF report, and have agreed to pilot areas in the West Bank where children are issued with a summons rather than being arrested in the middle of the night. He closed with, ‘To date, this pilot hasn’t begun.’
The segment included interviews with, or comments from:
· Gerard Horton, Military Court Watch, a former Australian barrister
· Yigal Palmor, of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
· the President of the United States, Barack Obama in a Vox Pop
· Daniella Weiss, Leader, Settler movement
· Lt. Col. Maurice Hirsh, Israeli Army’s head of prosecutions in the West Bank
· A Palestinian school teacher from Hebron
· Yehuda Shaul, former Israeli Commander and founder of Breaking the Silence comprised of current and former Israeli soldiers trying to end human rights abuses
· Gaby Lasky, Israeli lawyer who defends Palestinians
· Guy Butavia, an Israeli volunteer who accompanied Palestinian school children past a settler outpost when the Isreali Army was not available to escort them
· Adva Biton, mother of a three year-old victim of stone throwing by Palestinians
· Salwa Duaibis, Palestinian Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling
· Nader Abu Amsha, Palestinian, Director YMCA’s Rehabilitation program
· Bassem Tamimi, Palestinian protestor.
A transcript of the segment is at Attachment A. It is also currently available together with the broadcast from the ABC website at:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2014/02/10/3939266.htm
Assessment
This investigation is based on submissions from the complainant and the ABC and a copy of the broadcast provided to the ACMA by the ABC.
Other sources used have been identified where relevant.
In assessing content against the Code, the ACMA considers the meaning conveyed by the relevant material. This is assessed according to the understanding of an ‘ordinary, reasonable’ listener or viewer.
Australian Courts have considered an ‘ordinary, reasonable’ reader (or listener or viewer) to be:
A person of fair average intelligence, who is neither perverse, nor morbid or suspicious of mind, nor avid for scandal. That person does not live in an ivory tower, but can and does read between the lines in the light of that person’s general knowledge and experience of worldly affairs[3].
In considering compliance with the Code, the ACMA considers the natural, ordinary meaning of the language, visual images, context, tenor, tone, and any inferences that may be drawn. In the case of factual material which is presented, the ACMA will also consider relevant omissions (if any).
Once the ACMA has applied this test to ascertain the meaning of the material that was broadcast, it then assesses compliance with the Code.
Issue 1: Accuracy
Relevant code provision
2. Accuracy
2.1 Make reasonable efforts to ensure that material facts are accurate and presented in context.
Relevant Principles in relation to accuracy in the Code include the following:
[...]
Types of fact-based content include news and analysis of current events, documentaries, factual dramas and lifestyle programs. The ABC requires that reasonable efforts must be made to ensure accuracy in all fact-based content. The ABC gauges those efforts by reference to:
· The type, subject and nature of the content;
· The likely audience expectations of the content;
· The likely impact of reliance by the audience on the accuracy of the content; and
· The circumstances in which the content was made and presented.
The ABC accuracy standard applies to assertions of fact, not expressions of opinion. An opinion, being a value judgement or conclusion, cannot be found to be accurate or inaccurate in the way facts can. [...]
The efforts reasonably required to ensure accuracy will depend on the circumstances. Sources with relevant expertise may be relied on more heavily than those without. […]
The ABC should make reasonable efforts, appropriate in the context, to signal to audiences graduations in accuracy, for example by querying interviewees, qualifying bald assertions, supplementing the partly right and correcting the plainly wrong.
Complainant’s submissions
The complainant’s submissions are set out at Attachment B.
The complaints concerning accuracy are that:
1) The segment shows allegations of systemic torture by the Israeli authorities as fact not as allegation.
2) The segment depicted all the Palestinian teenagers arrested by the Israeli authorities as innocent. It is at least possible that some of them did something.
3) Some of the parts such as the walk (in fear) by Palestinian children walking past an Israeli settlement was obviously staged. The shooting of a stone thrower by a settler with live bullets was highly unlikely.
The Broadcaster’s submissions
The ABC’s submissions are set out at Attachment C.
In its responses to the complainant the ABC submitted:
· The segment was based on research by the Middle East correspondent for The Australian John Lyons and co-producer Sylvie Le Clezio, who conducted background interviews and research around the issue.
· The research included background briefings with three senior Israeli military officers and briefings with officials from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israeli Army’s legal department, UNICEF, local social workers and lawyers.
· Both journalists attended the military court three times to witness proceedings.
· Four Corners referred to the UNICEF investigation into the Israeli Army’s treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank and its report on that investigation; Children in Israeli Military Detention, which concluded that ill-treatment ‘appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized’.
· Four Corners has explained that it filmed children walking home from school, a journey they take every day, and did not direct them in any way.
· The program identified the source of the footage of the Palestinian stone thrower being shot in the side of the head as being from a Swedish documentary.
· On the view that it ‘depicted all the Palestinian teenagers arrested by the Israeli authorities as innocent’, the focus of the report was not on their guilt or innocence, but the treatment they received at the hands of the Israeli military justice system.
Finding
The ABC did not breach standard 2.1 of the Code.
Reasons
In applying standard 2.1 of the Code, the ACMA usually adopts the following approach:
· Was the particular material (the subject of the complaint) factual in character?
· Did it convey a ‘material’ fact or facts in the context of the relevant broadcast?
· If so, were those facts accurate?
· If a material fact was not accurate (or its accuracy cannot be determined), did the ABC make reasonable efforts to ensure that the ‘material’ fact was accurate and presented in context?
In determining whether or not a statement is factual, the ACMA has regard to the considerations set out at Attachment D.
The ACMA has considered each of the accuracy complaints as follows:
1) The segment shows allegations of systemic torture by the Israeli authorities as fact not as allegation
The ACMA notes that the segment did not use the term ‘torture’. In his introduction the Presenter said,
For more than 40 years Israel has controlled the West Bank. But now there are serious claims that Palestinian children are being systematically targeted, arrested and jailed in the battle to control this disputed territory.
He referred to,
[R]egular late night raids on family homes by heavily armed soldiers to take away children in blindfolds and handcuffs for interrogations’ and a ‘military prison where the inmates include children as young as 12, in shackles…
He also cited the findings of the UNICEF investigation (referred to above):
A UNICEF report last year found that Palestinian children had been threatened under interrogation by Israeli security forces with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault against themselves or a family member while demanding confessions for alleged offences, most commonly stone throwing. UNICEF estimates that over the past decade an average of 700 children a year have been detained, interrogated and processed through Israel's military court.
The segment continued:
In tonight's story a joint investigation by Four Corners and The Australian newspaper, outlines the way justice is practiced with regard to the children of the West Bank.
Later in the segment the reporter noted:
The United Nation's children's agency, UNICEF, last year released a scathing report on Israel's system.
It found that Palestinian children had been threatened with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault against themselves or a family member.
This was followed by the comment from Gerard Horton:
The report found that that ill-treatment was widespread, systematic and institutionalised throughout the system from the moment that the child was arrested right up until the sentencing process.
In the context of the segment in its entirety, the ACMA considers that the relevant allegations were that Palestinian children in the West Bank were being ill-treated in Israel’s military detention system. These were specific, unequivocal and capable of independent verification.
The relevant allegations were based not only on the subjective accounts of the children involved, but were reinforced and separately asserted by the presenter and reporter. They were corroborated by references to the findings of the UNICEF report, which opened the segment and set the tone of the story. The ACMA considers that the ordinary, reasonable viewer would have understood the allegations of ill-treatment as statements of fact.
The ACMA accepts the complainant’s submission that these statements were not presented as allegations, but as factual assertions. In the context of the entire segment, the factual assertions were material facts.
The ACMA is satisfied that the assertions of ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military court system of the West Bank were presented accurately and in context. In this regard, the content was verified by the findings of the UNICEF report:
Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized. This conclusion is based on the repeated allegations about such treatment over the past 10 years and the volume, consistency and persistence of these allegations. The review of cases documented through the monitoring and reporting mechanism on grave child rights violations, as well as interviews conducted by UNICEF with Israeli and Palestinian lawyers and Palestinian children, also support this conclusion.[4]
‘Ill-treatment’ in the UNICEF report is broadly used to refer to acts such as threats, interrogation, physical violence, confinement and sexual assault. The report also contains the following:
The analysis of the cases monitored by UNICEF identified examples of practices that amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture. What amounts to ill-treatment depends on the facts and circumstances of each case. However, the common experience of many children is being aggressively awakened in the middle of the night by many armed soldiers and being forcibly brought to an interrogation centre tied and blindfolded, sleep deprived and in a state of extreme fear. Few children are informed of their right to legal counsel.[5]
The references to the UNICEF report were surrounded by contextual material such as descriptions by the reporter of night time raids by the Israeli Army as well as his accounts of witnessing children at hearings, the first-hand accounts by the boys and their families of arrests, and comments from Gerard Horton, Yehuda Shaual, Gaby Lasky and Salwa Duaibis, Yigal Palmor and Nader Abu Ashmer.