A year to forget

It’s been a year to forget for the ABC’s Four Corners program – and there’s three months to go.  

Last week, the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), slapped the program with a second breach¹ of the ABC’s impartiality provisions in one year. The latest was for the program’s investigation of conflicts of interest and corporate influence related to a $500 million redevelopment of the War Memorial in Canberra. The program, ‘Sacrifice’,² aired in March 2025.  The first³ was for a program called “Water Grab”, broadcast in May 2024. 

But the program’s woes have just worsened.  

In May, it sacked its reporter, Mahmood Fazal, after he failed to receive approval to produce an external podcast that featured online gambling advertising. Fazal, a one-time bikie, had allegedly demanded secret payment for his work on the podcast. But an investigation was also underway into Fazal’s then alleged misuse of anonymous sources in his work for Four Corners.  

Now the ABC Ombudsman has delivered her verdict⁴ on that investigation – and it's not pretty.

The Ombudsman has found that two Four Corners programs produced by Fazal – Cocaine Nation and Meth Highway – failed to meet the ABC’s editorial standards for accuracy, fair and honest dealing, and independence and integrity. Both programs relied on anonymous sources involved in criminal activity, but information about the sources was not verified or disclosed to the audience. As a result, the audience couldn’t assess the reliability of their claims.  In one instance, the same person appeared in both episodes, using two different names while their face was obscured by a mask. “As a result, audiences were given a misleading impression of who key contributors were, the basis on which the ABC was relying on them and the level of confidence that could reasonably be placed in their claims,” the ombudsman, Fiona Cameron, concluded. 

Worse, Cameron found the breaches emerged from a culture that favoured “limiting knowledge about anonymous sources” because of the perceived risks, insufficient factchecking and verification, and inadequate upward referral processes.   

Almost everyone involved in the Fazal programs has left the national broadcaster. Mahmood Fazal; the Executive Producer at the time, Matthew Carney; head of investigations and current affairs, Jo Puccini; and director of news, Justin Stevens are all gone. The new Four Corners Executive Producer, Joel Tozer, has already overhauled and tightened the program’s editorial standards.  

The ABC has accepted the ombudsman’s findings, having several weeks ago removed the two shows from its website, along with another reported by Fazal and one of his episodes on the radio investigative program Background Briefing. The broadcaster has accepted Cameron’s recommendations – the ABC’s internal guidelines identify which senior staff member is responsible for approving the use of anonymous sources and that Four Corners staff receive training on the tension between legal and editorial risk. 

This response stands in sharp contrast to the ABC’s reaction to the ACMA finding that Four Corners had breached the corporation’s impartiality obligations in “Sacrifice”. Refusing to remove the episode from the ABC website, Managing Director Hugh Marks has hit out⁵ at ACMA’s finding that Four Corners had not practiced impartiality by not having balanced critics with supporters of the War Memorial redevelopment, amongst other claims. “Overall, the ACMA finding creates an unworkable interpretation of impartiality and imposes false balance on public interest reporting. It fails to understand the difference between an explanatory interview and an accountability interview and the obligation on public officials to be held to appropriate scrutiny public interest reporting.”  

Tozer and his team will no doubt be relieved when the silly season hits.  

References

1. https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2026-09/four-corners-breaches-impartiality-requirements-war-memorial-story 
2. https://iview.abc.net.au/show/four-corners/series/2025/video/NC2503H006S00 
3. https://www.uts.edu.au/news/2026/04/water-omissions-at-the-abc
4. https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/39e8eeeffed7acde9a54d3ccc2f2a6fb
5. https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2026-09/four-corners-breaches-impartiality-requirements-war-memorial-story