It took eighteen days, a national backlash and a referral to the ABC's own complaints office before anyone said sorry for the film describing Gina Rinehart being sexually assaulted and killed. When the apology finally arrived on last Thursday, it didn't come from the broadcaster that put the film to air. It came from the amateur filmmaker, and it never mentions Gina Rinehart by name.
Video: News24 Australia. Andrew Bolt replays the ABC segment describing an assault on Gina Rinehart.
Nobody apologised when the film screened on 12 July. Nobody apologised when Hancock Prospecting called it disgusting, or when MPs on both sides of politics said the same thing publicly. The ABC's first instinct was to defend the film as "editorially justifiable" and leave it online, where it remains today. The apology came only after almost three weeks of sustained public pressure, and only from Kate McGuinness, the Race Around the World contestant who made it.
The ABC published her statement on its website and said it supports it. Our earlier report set out the segment and the broadcaster's defence of it, and Communications Minister Anika Wells called the film unacceptable while declining to ask anyone to say sorry.
What Kate McGuinness said
Her statement, in full, reads:
"The sense of humour featured in each of my films on the Race Around the World program is farcical. In no way was it my intention to promote violence. My writing is cartoonish and always satirical. Unfortunately, jokes do not land with everyone. Its purpose was never to be taken literally. I apologise to anyone I've offended."
Read it again and notice who's missing. The woman her film described being sodomised with a stick, her guts mixed up and made into a sausage roll, isn't mentioned anywhere in it. McGuinness apologises "to anyone I've offended," which is an apology for the offence other people took, not for the thing she made. In the same statement she defends the work as farcical, cartoonish and never meant literally, so the closest thing to regret on offer is that the joke didn't land.
The ABC posted it with no context
Look at how the ABC chose to publish it. The page is headed "Race Around The World Statement" and sits on the corporate About the ABC media centre, not on ABC News, not on the programme's own page, and not attached to the film that caused all this. It carries no explanation of what the film said, no description of the content people complained about, and no account of why an apology was needed at all.
Gina Rinehart's name does not appear on the page. Not in the heading, not in the ABC's introduction, and not in the statement itself. A reader who came across it cold would have no way of knowing who was wronged, or what was said about her. The one line the broadcaster adds in its own voice is that McGuinness asked it to share the statement, "which the ABC supports."
None of this is attached to the film itself.
The ABC published McGuinness's generic apology but still won't give its own
The broadcaster's position is now the harder one to defend. The ABC has put McGuinness's statement on its own website and endorsed it. An organisation running on more than $1.2 billion of public money a year is willing to distribute a contributor's apology and unwilling to make one of its own, over content it commissioned, cleared and broadcast.
Meanwhile, Hancock Prospecting is still waiting for the apology it asked for
None of this delivers what Rinehart's company demanded. Hancock Prospecting said last weekend that the ABC owed her a public apology, and asked how the video reached air at all, as reported by The Australian.
"If the ABC believes it can hide behind the false shield of 'satire' to glorify sexualised and political violence and murder, it has completely lost sight of its editorial responsibilities. A public apology would be the minimum appropriate response, but more importantly a light must be shone on who let this go to air in prime time, and action taken."
The company had already accused the ABC of "encouraging and normalising violence and murder" by continuing to distribute the material. Politicians on both sides of the aisle, along with senior business figures, joined the criticism.
The film is still up, and Kate McGuinness is still in the competition
The segment remains on the ABC's platforms, nearly three weeks after it went to air. McGuinness remains one of six contestants on Race Around the World, and the final episode is due to screen on 9 August. The broadcaster reviewing the film is still broadcasting the filmmaker.
The review answers to the ABC's own board
The ABC says its Ombudsman is independently reviewing audience complaints about the 12 July episode, and that it won't comment further while that runs. The Ombudsman is independent of the programme makers, but not of the ABC. The office sits inside the corporation and reports directly to the ABC board, an arrangement the broadcaster's own annual report describes as ABC self-regulation. The external regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has announced no action of its own.
So the amateur has apologised to anyone who was offended, and the national broadcaster has apologised to nobody at all.
