ABC changing editorial policy after Rinehart furore prompts fears of overreach

ABC’s managing director, Hugh Marks, has pledged to change editorial guidelines on satire and violence, after the broadcaster aired a program featuring offensive comments about Gina Rinehart that has sparked concerns about overreach.

The four-minute film, titled A Very Relaxing Video, ran on documentary-reality show Race Around the World on 12 July and sparked a furore over comments made about the billionaire, due to the filmmaker McGuinness’s segment containing vulgar jokes about Rinehart’s body parts.

After sustained backlash in News Corp and the West Australian, and threats of legal action from Rinehart, Marks issued an apology last Thursday. He said while the ombudsman, Fiona Cameron, had found that the film did not breach editorial policies on harm and offence, it fell short of “community expectations” and the ABC would change its editorial guidance. On ABC Radio North Queensland last Thursday, he even emphasized that the ABC’s new guidelines will now demand that “no individual should be the subject of comedy that is violent in its description in our programming”.

Matthew Ricketson, a journalist and professor of communication at Deakin University, said it was poor satire but once McGuinness had apologised for the joke, as she did on 30 July, that should have been “the end of it”. He also remarked that the move was ill-advised and unenforceable.

While former editorial director of the ABC, Alan Sunderland, agreed with the ombudsman’s findings on how most audience members would be likely to understand the remarks as part of a satirical and exaggerated commentary rather than encouragement of violence, which didn’t discount that the joke was in “poor taste”. He said he wasn’t “perturbed” by the ABC reviewing its guidance, which could help program makers interpret editorial principles if it wasn’t enforceable, but more worried that the renewed guidelines will be enforcing overreaction and force self-censorship on satirical humor.

An ABC spokesperson confirmed the changes would be amended “soon”, with approval by the ABC board. It did not respond to questions on whether the program had been upwardly referred.