ABC Faces Continued Controversy Over Digital Alterations
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has admitted to digitally altering a photograph of a federal politician, marking another incident in a growing series of controversies that have shaken the taxpayer-funded broadcaster. This time, the misleading edit was made by its flagship political discussion program, Insiders, during its opening montage, which aired across Australian screens on Sunday morning.
The image in question shows Liberal Senator Jane Hume holding The Australian newspaper, which features three of her fellow Coalition party members on the front page. Originally, the photo from 2022 depicted Hume holding The Australian’s front page that featured Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with the headline, “Life will be ‘cheaper’ under me.” The voiceover on the Insiders montage mocked the Coalition by claiming it had “once again made itself the story.”
The edited image appeared during a segment discussing ongoing division within the Coalition over its net zero emission policy. Hume immediately lodged a complaint with the ABC, leading the organization to issue a grovelling apology, describing the edit as “satire.”
“In an attempt to be satirical, the image was changed so that a photograph of three of Senator Hume’s Coalition colleagues was superimposed onto the newspaper’s front page,” the ABC said.
“The change was made in the edit process to accompany a line of voiceover which stated that the Coalition had ‘made itself the story again.’”
“Insiders acknowledges that, while the montage was attempting to be humorous, changing the image in this way was misleading and inaccurate and has apologised to Senator Hume.”
“All versions of the program have since been re-edited to remove the altered image.”
While some Insiders viewers may have found the doctored image amusing, the incident highlights a troubling trend of digital alterations at the ABC. In April this year, the ABC was forced to issue a correction after giving a “false impression” of construction noise at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
A Four Corners episode titled Sacrifice aired on March 10 and focused on controversial upgrades being made to the Canberra memorial under a $500 million plan by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison. ABC reporter Mark Willacy told viewers the site had “become a battleground fought over by those who want it to expand and evolve, and by those who warn that it’s being turned into a half-a-billion-dollar military theme park that celebrates, rather than commemorates war.”
A clip from the episode played sound from the Last Post Ceremony held at 4:30 pm daily to farewell guests before cutting to b-roll of construction work.
“As viewers were confronted with the noisy machinery, the Last Post continued to play in the background,” Willacy said.
Memorial Director Matt Anderson PSM clarified there was no construction noise when the ABC filmed the Last Post, nor during the daily ceremony.
The broadcaster’s most infamous case of doctoring was the addition of five additional gunshot sounds to a video of an Australian soldier firing a single warning shot while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. The edits, uncovered by Seven Spotlight in late 2024, made it appear as though he was repeatedly shooting at unarmed villagers. The ABC was forced to remove the offending footage from its news website and launch an independent inquiry into how it came to be included in the aired segment.
Overall, the ABC has published 77 corrections in the last 11 months alone. In recent days, the public broadcaster has only been called out for editing a speech by US President Donald Trump ahead of the January 6 Capitol riots.
The ABC has claimed its edits didn’t substantially alter the meaning of Trump’s speech. That was not the case for the UK public broadcaster, the BBC, which altered the same speech to make it appear as though Trump was encouraging rioters.
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened legal action against the BBC over the way a speech he made was edited in a documentary aired by Britain’s national broadcaster. BBC chairman Samir Shah apologized for the “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.
Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness quit Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.
The hourlong documentary—titled Trump: A Second Chance?—was broadcast as part of the BBC’s Panorama series days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
Shah said the broadcaster accepted “that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”
Daily Mail has contacted Jane Hume and the ABC for further comment.