ABC journalists have demanded assurances that management will not hand over Four Corners footage to Western Australian police who have applied through the courts for the camera tapes of Monday’s upcoming program about climate protesters.
In the program Escalation, which the ABC has confirmed will go ahead despite the legal action, the reporter Hagar Cohen investigates the battle between climate activists, the government and energy companies over the massive gas project on the Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara.
WA police ordered the ABC to hand over all footage collected by its investigations flagship, which received national attention in August when a crew was present when activists were arrested outside the home of the Woodside chief executive, Meg O’Neill, in Perth.
The police order relates to all footage shot by the Four Corners crew over several months, and not just on the day of the protest.
“The MEAA House Committee calls on the ABC not to hand over the Four Corners footage of the climate protest and to resist all efforts by the WA Police Force to obtain the footage,” the union said on Friday morning.
“To be seen to be cooperating with the release of footage would not only be morally and ethically wrong; it would seriously damage the ABC’s reputation for creating valuable, public interest journalism and make the position of ABC journalists much more difficult.
“Journalism has a long and storied history of resisting legal compulsion when it is against the public interest.
“We demand immediate assurances that the ABC executive will not hand the vision to WA authorities.”
Both ABC journalists and the activist group Disrupt Burrup Hub, whose members were filmed for the program, fear management will comply with the order to produce footage. The ABC has declined to comment.
Disrupt Burrup Hub said it understood ABC management was considering complying and it was concerned the broadcaster would breach undertakings not to reveal the identity of sources for its reporting.
An internal ABC inquiry later concluded the Four Corners crew did not collude with or encourage the the protesters or trespass on O’Neill’s family property.
The WA police said on Thursday it would not comment on a specific case but “orders to produce are routinely used to gather materials for investigations and are issued to people and businesses including news organisations”.
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Disrupt Burrup Hub’s media adviser, Jesse Noakes, who faces trial next month on charges that he refused to obey a WA police data access order, said it was “astonishing” that the ABC may order its journalist to break the principle that sources must be protected.
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2023-10-05 19:51:37
Source from www.theguardian.com