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Foxtel’s conservative current affairs program Outsiders breached accuracy guidelines in its coverage of climate change issues on multiple occasions, according to broadcasting regulator the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
The authority found the program, which is hosted by Rowan Dean, Rita Panahi, and James Morrow and broadcast on Sky News, had breached its responsibilities to present news accurately and fairly and to distinguish clearly between factual material and commentary on four separate occasions between October and December 2021.
Hosts Rita Panahi, Rowan Dean and James Morrow on Foxtel’s Outsiders, which is broadcast on Sky News.Credit: Foxtel/screengrab
The investigation, in response to 80 complaints relating to 10 episodes of the program, began in June 2022. The authority considered six episodes and found breaches in four in its findings, which were handed down on Wednesday morning.
Most of the complaints related to regular segments “Outsiders Weather” and “Sceptics Ice-Age Watch”.
The authority’s investigation identified, “as a recurring tendency, the presentation of certain evidently credible research that was overlaid with critical and contrary commentary, making it difficult for the viewer to discern commentary from fact and to draw their own conclusions from the selection of material included”.
In its defence, Foxtel contended that Outsiders is not a news program.
Host Rowan Dean on Outsiders.Credit: Foxtel/screen grab
The authority agreed, but pointed out that the regulations apply equally to news and current affairs programs, and that Outsiders could properly be considered the latter. As such it is bound by an obligation “to ensure the accuracy of significant facts … whether or not they are broadcast as part of news content”.
Foxtel sought to defend many of the statements made on Outsiders – such as the false claim that Boris Johnson had “mandated” that everyone in Britain must replace their gas heaters with heat pumps at a cost of £10,000-£20,000 – as factually accurate.
Alternatively, the broadcaster argued, such statements should be read as sarcasm. “The use of humour and very personalised attacks … makes it inappropriate to pore over the segment on a line-by-line basis to determine the literal meaning of each part,” Foxtel submitted in its defence.
Its third line of defence was to argue that Sky News is in charge of all content on Outsiders, and that, as the mere licence holder, Foxtel could not be held responsible for its accuracy.
Launched in late 2016 as a response to the ABC’s Sunday-morning panel show Insiders, Outsiders was initially hosted by Dean with Mark Latham and Ross Cameron, both of whom left the show amid controversy.
The then-hosts proudly aligned themselves with Donald Trump, while Latham told The Australian newspaper he was proud there was “absolutely no balance whatsoever” on the panel.
In assessing the complaints against Outsiders, the authority noted it was not essential for a program to “determine what aspects of an issue to cover”, and that it would not necessarily have concerns “if it were merely the case that complex matters were not covered comprehensively”.
Where it did have issues with the program, though, was in the selective use of material that, while in itself factual, was used selectively or out of context to convey a meaning or impression at odds with its original overall meaning.
“The ACMA may have concerns if the result of the editorial process is to omit significant information so as to create a different impression about a matter than might be formed if the omitted information were provided,” the report noted.
“These are circumstances in which it might legitimately be asked whether a presentation unfairly represented a matter or a view, and whether a misleading or false impression was conveyed to viewers as a result.”
In a statement, ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the Australian community expects factual material to be accurate and for commentary to be clearly distinguishable from the reporting of factual material.
“The program has an obligation to its audience to clearly separate fact from comment,” she said. “Across a number of its episodes, Outsiders failed to do so and did not present news content either accurately or fairly.”
As a result of the findings, Foxtel has undertaken to review the systems it has in place to ensure that content sourced from third-party providers is compliant with the code.
Foxtel will report back to the ACMA within four months on the outcome of this system review, including the staff training, processes, and arrangements it has undertaken to ensure future compliance with the broadcasting code.
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