Essay by Eric Worrall
“… if the [Aussie] ABC provided footage to the police it would breach Four Corners journalists’ commitment to keep some activists’ identities anonymous. …”
ABC facing internal pressure to withhold Four Corners’ Woodside material
By Hamish Hastie and Calum Jaspan
October 6, 2023 — 3.56pmThe ABC is facing internal pressure to defy an order from WA Police to hand over footage filmed for a Four Corners investigation into climate protesting and police tactics, due to air on Monday.
Staff on the public broadcaster’s media union house committee met on Friday to demand their bosses withhold the footage, warning to hand it over would damage the organisation’s reputation as a producer of public interest journalism.
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A promotional video released this week for the episode, “Escalation: Climate, protest and the fight for the future”, features footage of Disrupt Burrup Hub activists being arrested outside Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill’s Perth home during an attempted protest in August.
Under powers prescribed in the state’s Criminal Investigations Act, WA Police regularly send “orders to produce” to media outlets, including for footage of crime scenes captured by news cameras or CCTV and mobile phone footage obtained by journalists.
Disrupt Burrup Hub media advisor Jesse Noakes, who was also arrested outside O’Neill’s house for his alleged role in the protest, said that if the ABC provided footage to the police it would breach Four Corners journalists’ commitment to keep some activists’ identities anonymous.
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WA Police Minister Paul Papalia said he was comfortable with police actions.
“If Four Corners knew about these events in advance it’s actually really irresponsible and pretty disgraceful behaviour that they didn’t notify the police,” he said.
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Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/abc-facing-internal-pressure-to-withhold-four-corners-material-20231006-p5eabl.html
A trailer for the video at the center of this controversy is available here.
The protestors didn’t get a chance to do much protesting – the police somehow knew about the attack on the Woodside Oil CEO’s house, no thanks to the ABC. Police stormed out of the residence and arrested the protestors after they allegedly illegally trespassed on Meg O’Neill’s property.
The big question in my mind though, does press freedom extend to having advance knowledge of an upcoming criminal attack on someone’s home, and not informing the police? Or to withholding video evidence of the incident when police demand access?
Let’s accept for a moment the ABC possibly wasn’t aware an alleged crime was about to be committed – maybe the “source” only informed them there was going to be a protest. Does protecting sources still apply, after people get arrested?
It would be easy to say A CRIME HAS BEEN COMMITTED at this point, but lets turn the situation on its head. Imagine the protestors were a group we sympathise with, rather than a vile bunch of hypocritical greenshirts.
Say a citizen journalist captured footage of vaccine freedom protestors clashing with police.
Most media sources have accepted the official narrative that at lockdown protests in Melbourne, during which police opened fire at protestors with rubber bullets, the lockdown protestors were the aggressors.
But one witness who makes me seriously question this version of events is former Victoria Police sergeant Krystle Mitchell. She claims she could no longer stand to wear her police uniform, after police opened fire with rubber bullets at protestors assembled around the Melbourne shrine of remembrance.
The official version of events, that protestors were the aggressors, that they came armed and prepared for battle. This would be the legal basis for any official demand for protest footage. But given Krystle’s vehement denial that protestors instigated the aggression, I have my doubts about the truth of the official narrative – which raises the possibility that the seized footage could be used to persecute innocent people who have been entrapped, provoked into responding by deliberate police brutality.
Similarly the January 6th protest – look at all the conflicting narratives that event has spawned, and consider how some of those narratives might be abused.
If someone attacked my home, as Meg O’Neill’s home was allegedly attacked, I’d want every effort to be made to identify and prosecute the perpetrators. But would it be right to force journalists to hand over footage which they obtained with a promise they would never reveal their sources? Aside from the obvious criticism, that such footage should never have been filmed if it was so sensitive, how can laws be framed which allow police to obtain the evidence they need to identify and prosecute criminals, yet at the same time which maintain protections for journalistic freedom?
A final question, where did the police obtain their high quality tipoff? Have the police already seen the privileged video, and now just need official access, so they can use it as evidence? If the police have an informant inside the ABC, or if the police are just covering for their friends in the ABC, making a big show of conflict with the press to conceal that the ABC gave them a friendly tipoff to let them know what was happening, that is a whole new can of worms.
As this was Australia, I did not think there was an enforceable equivalent to any freedom of the press. Even in the US, which purportedly has such a provision, such videos would be subject to a subpoena. It looks more like the authorities covering for their special action squads.
I think in this case my sympathies are with the homeowner – my understanding is the protestors were arrested after they breached the property boundary and started trespassing.
But I’m worried how such laws compelling press to hand over evidence might be abused in future cases.
For example, the personal testimony I saw from protestors at the EPIC Canberra freedom protest has led me to suspect the police used ADS microwave radiation weapons against the protestors, causing burns which took weeks to heal (more about that here).
Like you say, what if press compulsion laws, or the threat of exercising such laws, is being used to conceal crimes, rather than prosecute them?
There are some horrible things happening in Australia lately, and other places – the velvet is wearing a little thin on the iron fist.
Most likely they don’t want to release the footage as it would show THEIR involvement likely with individuals higher placed than simple Field Correspondents. Truly trying to protect upper management and not JQP protesters
Indeed – maybe they got too close. But if this is the case, why create the incriminating footage in the first place? Are they really that stupid?
Never underestimate the value of video footage showing a superior doing something untoward
Your choice of words answers the question. Because they wanted to film certain prototypes behaving in some specific way, with some specific response.They created this footage, using public servants as set extras.
When the cops demand the footage, do they want a copy, or the original? That would make a huge difference to the relevance of the discussion. Are they trying to hide evidence, or obtain legal right to their share of the production?
Eric,
Years ago 60 Minutes in the US did an interview where the interviewee recorded the entirety of the interview.
When 60 minutes did their usual hit job against the person, he was able to show their deceptive and actually slanderous editing.
Now 90 Minutes ensures no one but them have their video, and no one else can video the interviews.
The leftists want total control of the narrative. That means total control of the video. That is why the police get the videos of their wrongdoing against the anti-vaxers and disappears it. ANs of course those injured wont get any help from the liberal press.
Drake
Eric, they are going to broadcast it to the public, at which point police can identify the criminals and prosecute them. These are not “journalists” they are coconspirators in these criminal activities, prosecute them all.
A picture used to be worth a thousand words.
Now it’s worth a thousand lawsuits.
So America isn’t the only country where increasingly with crime the perpetrators are protected and the victims are either ignored or cited.
Chief Wiggum on the Simpsons once said that the law is powerless to help you, but the law did have the power to punish you. (Season 11, episode 21)
That was comedy, but there is truth in it. The police is many place governed by leftists are not allowed to help you. According to official stats, New York City has few robberies per capita. But this is only because the police are powerless to help you. If you report a robbery, the police don’t help you and don’t report it to the official reporting. This was according a video by Louis Rossman on Youtube. Look at all the robberies that happen in American cities run by Democrats (or leftists).
But the law does have the power to punish you. And the problem is that if you are a protected class, you can do anything and get by with it. But if you are not a protected class … they will put you in prison for standing silently on public property.
Eco-terrorists are a protected class. The propaganda media covers up for them. In contrast, the same propaganda media brainwashes people into hysteria against someone not in their protected class. The process is the punishment.
“The law” has also learned that it is far safer to go after normal people for transgressions than to deal with violent criminals. For one thing, the normies are right here, requiring no investigation or searching, Defend yourself in your own home? That’s not allowed, citizen!
“ of public interest journalism.”
It is very much in the “public interest” that these eco-thug/terrorists be identified, found and brought to swift justice. !
Maybe the best answer would be for individual protesters’ faces to be pixelated so they cannot be identified, leaving a correct general impression of the mayhem thus created? I like the general thought of civilian protest, but am against their usual descent into damage and inconvenience to the general public.
Tough one. We don’t have freedom of the press in Australia, or a well defined freedom of speech for that matter (just ask one of the lefty profs the ABC occasionally asks).
We do have a police force that often seems out of constitutional control and overly repressive (not to mention continually scandal-ridden in spite of all the Royal Commissions).
No easy choice here, but:
“Staff on the public broadcaster’s media union house committee met on Friday to demand their bosses withhold the footage, warning to hand it over would damage the organisation’s reputation as a producer of public interest journalism.”
Really, the ABC’s reputation is as a producer of “urban elite ‘journalism'” and rarely if ever has any public interest reports anymore. I think it started, or at least became apparent, when the regional offices were sucked into Sydney.
I think that needs to be reversed, the jobs and reporting need to be sent back to the state capitals and regional centres – then there might actually be an ABC that it would be worth supporting with all those tax dollars they get.
As it is, I think a first step would be to fire these protesting staff (ha ha, I’m not delusional, just my joke in poor taste).
Apparently, this group also release a “stench” gas at Woodside HQ forcing evacuation.
That is essentially TERRORISM…
The perpetrators and their minders/handlers should be registered as a terrorist organisation, and treated as such.
Oh I agree they should be rounded up an locked away somewhere they can learn the benefits of fossil fuel powered civilisation – say a prison farm where they have to grow their own food by hand. But I’m wary of the state having powers which could be turned on other activists they don’t like.
I always thought that Australia was a freedom country. But this just shows that they have turned the other way. Sad. Are there any reasonable countries left at all??
Unfortunately not so, the socialist government is legislating currently a ‘misinformation and disinformation’ bill that gives the so-called Communications and Media Authority power to compel digital platforms to remove ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that they consider would ‘harm the integrity of the democratic process, the environment, the economy and the health of Australians’.
The Australian Constitution has no equivalent to the US First Amendment.
Has the “equivalent to the US First Amendment” ever been proposed/suggested or gotten to a vote in Australia?
It certainly has never been put to a referendum.
It’s amazing how quickly socialists use the power of government to outlaw opposition to there schemes.
Australia lost any pretext to being a freedom country the moment the people accepted restrictions on gun ownership.
The restrictions on gun ownership were never about public safety, they were a panic response to the Russian Revolution, during which the Russian cousins of the British Royal Family were murdered. British politicians were frightened the revolution would spread, so places under British influence started moving to restrict public ownership of guns.
It took a while if that was the case. More like a panic reaction to Martin Bryant.
Gun laws in Australia mostly keep firearms out of the hands of law abiding people. The police in Australia have admitted 10% of seized firearms are home made. Turns out some members of outlaw biker gangs, people who are always tinkering with bikes, are skilled workshop machinists.
Nobody can stop guns getting into the hands of people who really want a gun. Evelyn Owen, who designed one of the most popular machine guns of WW2, was a NSW tradie with no formal technical background – part of Australia’s countryside DIY tradition.
Nothing to do with the Russian revolution. If it was it was a try pathetic response considering it took several decades before they were banned.
The British establishment started the ball rolling with the Firearms Act of 1920. Timing is a little interesting, wouldn’t you say?
It’s not interesting it was deliberate. I just downvotedMr David Guy-Johnson. Let me explain a little bit. The Tommies in the trenches of WWI, of whom my grandfather was one and who would never talk about it, did not have the vote. At the time you had to be a property owner.
Many of my grandfather’s regiment, the King’s Liverpool Regiment didn’t come home until 1920 as they were sent straight from the trenches on the Western Front to to fight for the White Russians.
My grandfather was a docker. Liverpool dockers are quite militant and, although a reserved trade (not liable for call up) they actually went on strike during the war.
Putting two and two together – militant, heavily unionised dockers and a regiment fighting in Russia with exposure to communist zealots – you can begin to understand that when the regiment came home politicians might begin to worry.
Two things happened:
1. The Firearms Act of 1920 as Eric states.
2. Universal Suffrage
The two go hand in hand. The Firearms Act, and you’ve got to love the irony, could be brought in because people’s rights would be protected by Parliament and the Courts. Yep, what a joke.
As has been seen particularly over the last three years we are not protected by either Parliament nor the Courts.
Final point universal suffrage was down to fear of the Tommies and not the Suffragettes.
I didn’t know about British soldiers helping the White Russians. Respect to your grandfather for trying to stop the commies.
Not just British- also Americans. They went to Vladivostok and took the trans Siberian Railway to get across Russia. At least that’s my vague recollection of having studied this when I took a course in “The Russian Revolution” back in ’70. Of course I was the only forestry major taking the course. 🙂
No respect due. The regiment had no choice short of mutiny and that didn’t happen in the British Army.
He was a card carrying Labour and Union member til the day he died. On my 10th birthday I was given a beautifully leather bound TUC printed book on the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
However, he remained patriotic.
I became conservative after seeing the evil that is socialism as the Labour movement tore through Britain in the 70s. I’ve despaired since 1992 as the country becomes more and more socialist by the turning of the clock. Unlike the US we cannot defend ourselves against a tyrannical government.
Australia has always been, from its founding as a convict/slave colony, more repressive than any other part of the Anglosphere (except New Zealand, which is small consolation, and I suppose South Africa and India in the limited sense that they were Anglo). The ruling class was always completely in charge and repressive.
There was no ‘Australia’ in a country sense until the 20th Century and although the founders had high hopes for ‘freedoms’, they were never really realised. Just read the Constitution. We continued to be a loyal and subservient colony through WWII, and many Australians willingly volunteered to give their lives for the Empire – you only have to visit a CWA or RSL hall to view the plaques with the long lists of the dead to see that this is true.
We continue to be Australia, not the Far West of the USA as so many seem to think, and we muddle along in our own way – sometimes doing a good job and sometimes buggering it up – but you yanks really need to look in the mirror before lamenting the sad ways of Australia. Australia may have slipped a bit down the road to totalitarianism, but it is the USA that is ruled by a corrupt and throughly unconstitutional oligarchy and Deep State and you got to 1984 well before us.
It is very likely the ABC employees were in cahoots with the protesters, if so they are accessories before the fact and ought to be liable for any criminal offences that proceed as the protesters.
By withholding footage they are withholding evidence of their own culpability, the courts should sort that out.
“it would breach Four Corners journalists’ commitment to keep some activists’ identities anonymous”
Journalists surely have no right to commit to keeping activists’ identities anonymous, only informers’ identities. Their job is to report things. Turn it around, as the article does, and ask whether the ABC would or should keep climate sceptics’ identities anonymous if those sceptics were out in public doing their scepticism (or even protesting).
protesting is different from committing a crime
These days, many do not see any difference.
I can see nothing untoward when the Police request/demand an entire copy of footage taken.
I do see problems when police demand the only copy of footage taken and when police refuse to release potentially exculpatory footage in their sole possession. (e.g. the Capitol police refusing to release Jan 6th footage to 1033+ defendants)
There is no ‘confidentiality’ or ‘privacy’ that the ABC or any other media can invoke where a crime has been willfully committed and documented on video. (e.g. the video’s found on Hunter Biden’s laptop that show his drug-fuelled, gun mishandling … whilst cavorting with trafficked sex workers)
This rejection is evidence that the ABC want to shield themselves from any liability under the law.
But as we have all been repeatedly told … “No-One is above the law”.
Since CNN showed up early to Stone’s house just before the FBI raid, I just figured every major new organization is in on the NWO.
The ABC would’ve complied with police requests quick enough if it were an anti-Covid mandate protest.
The billion-dollar broadcaster was perfectly okay with police brutality and the police state we were all oppressed by during the Covid years. Nothing exposes their hypocrisy more than this.
And the fact that the ABC, itself, was and is responsible for so much the Covid/climate hysteria also reveals what an out-of-control menace it actually is. Make no mistake, the ABC, in no small part, helped manufacture this entire drama and its aftermath. Not to mention, the looming energy/environmental crisis about to be unleashed by government climate policy that ABC activism also had a hand in.
#DefundThisMenace
“Noble cause” activism should be the basis for immediate incarceration.
It’s not really that complicated- protesters cross a line when they start going on private property or intimating persons at their domicile restricting ingress exceeds from their home. That is totally different than a “ peaceful protest on public property in front of say a government building or corporate administrative head quarters. They ABC should cooperate fully.
With that said though, I have little respect left for the Aussi government and I really found the behavior of the police there during Covid pan plan. demic disgusting, especially the violence and brutal take down of lindividuals simply getting out of their car during “lock down” no warning, no “ excuse me sir can we have a word” no evidence what so ever that any of the individuals “ violating lock down” were dangerous “ criminals” just a sudden multi cop tackle!. Australia, NewZealand, UK, Canada might as well just call themselves The Peoples Socialist Republic of …
Australia is a federation of 6 states, each with its own laws, and a number of Territories under Commonwealth jurisdiction and some of their own laws.
Each state’s response can’t really be lumped together under a blanket “Australia”.
At one extreme, Western Australia relied on strict border controls, with very limited internal restrictions, while Victoria had very strict internal restrictions.
If an action is criminal by anyone else, it is criminal when performed by a “protester”.
Many social action protesters accepted that reality. in the past. Today’s snowflake dingbats seem to think they are different.
Journalists, filmmakers, etc. who possess advance knowledge of a clearly illegal activity who fail to report to law enforcement and show up to document activity are acting a accessories to the illegal activity. Any failure to prosecute is usually political. There are no First Amendment protections for such activity in the US.
Doesn’t seem to worry the police if Rebel News is doing the filming. They just nick Avi Yemini on the spot and take all his recording gear.
In which case I don’t see the dilemma here, just nick ABC News on the spot and confiscate their gear.
So, let me get this straight, these so-called “journalists” are going to publicly broadcast video of these “protestors” which police can then use to prosecute these criminal scumbag “protestors”, so their pious virtue signaling is a load of bullsh*t. Prosecute the “journalists” too, since they helped organize this criminal activity to begin with. Once you participate in criminal activity you are just a criminal, not a “journalist”.
So they are enabling eco terrorism to thrive and grow?
It’s World War Z: The Climate Virus movie