Water omissions at the ABC

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has found the Four Corners program “Water Grab”, broadcast on ABC TV in August 2024, in breach of the public broadcaster’s accuracy and impartiality standards, which the public broadcaster only partially accepts.

The ABC does not accept that the program was inaccurate and is silent on the impartiality breach, kind of.  

This is a marginal improvement on the reaction of another major journalistic outlet – News Corp – to a finding against it by the Australian Press Council, which Derek wrote about in this newsletter on March 26. News Corp very persistently railed against the APC finding in its newspaper pages for a week. Mercifully the ABC has spared us that level of fury.

The interesting aspect of the ACMA ruling against the ABC is that the ABC’s own complaints ombudsman found a minor impartiality breach (it doesn’t often seem to find against the corporation’s program content) which begs the question: what lack of impartiality did the regulator see that the ABC itself couldn’t?

The 2024 Four Corners story examined the role of the Northern Territory government in facilitating water licences for cotton growing. The program claimed that a water licence was being used for cotton growing despite having nothing to do with that activity, and that a fire at the Claravale Station was essentially a land clearing exercise to facilitate cotton growing.

The ACMA found that the program’s use of the line “burning off had already begun” implied illegal land clearing at Claravale Station and that Four Corners could have done more to establish as fact that the fire constituted illegal land clearing. Four Corners had contacted the landowners to give them an opportunity to respond, but they didn’t. And given that, the ACMA says the ABC ought to have considered whether it had enough evidence to include the “burning off” statement in its report. The ABC accepts the words used by its reporter should have been qualified but not that the statement was inaccurate which sounds slightly resonant of the News Corp reaction referenced above. 

Inaccuracy is of course not a finding that any journalistic operation wants as a mark against its reputation. Nor is lack of impartiality.

The regulator found the program failed to present relevant viewpoints, omitting credible alternative scientific perspectives which limited the audience’s ability to assess competing evidence about water usage by the cotton industry. The credible alternative scientific perspectives not included were those of the cotton industry itself, a draft water allocation report (still under consultation and therefore not as probative as a final report) and a background report by the CSIRO.

The ACMA said it accepts that “impartiality does not require that every perspective receives equal time, nor that every facet of every argument is presented within a single program”. It also said that “A program that presents a perspective that is opposed by a particular person or group is not inherently partial”. As to compliance with the ABC Code of Practice, the ACMA said, “… under the Code, the ABC is not required to give all perspectives equal time or prominence in order to comply with its impartiality obligations”. However, the ACMA said information about water usage from the cotton industry could have been presented to give greater balance and the draft report and the background CSIRO report, both of which were public documents, could have provided viewers with relevant viewpoints on a contentious issue. Instead, Four Corners had unduly favoured the perspectives of two environmental scientists. As a result, the ABC breached the impartiality rule.

The ABC has added an editor’s note to the online Four Corners story citing the ACMA findings.  But the ABC Ombudsman’s investigation of the complaint in October 2024 found no breach of the accuracy standard. Further, a breach of the impartiality standards was portrayed as a mere oversight. This involved a statement by one of the interviewed environmental scientists which the NT regulator had responded to before the program aired. Four Corners didn’t include the response and though the Ombudsman says the program could have included it, the fact that it didn’t, did not materially affect the story.

In other words, nothing to see here. Except there was.

References:

Four Corners "Water Grab" episode https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2403H027S00 

ACMA findings on Four Corners "Water Grab" https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2026-03/four-corners-breaches-accuracy-impartiality-requirements 

ABC Statement on Four Corners "Water Grab"
https://www.abc.net.au/about/media-centre/statements-and-responses/abc-statement-on-four-corners-water-grab-/106512672 

ABC Ombudsman report on "Water Grab"
https://www.abc.net.au/about/ombudsman/complaints/breach-findings/ombudsman-investigation-report-four-corners-water-grab/104483354