An independent investigation has found the ABC made several ‘errors’ in a report which criticised Australian soldiers who had been deployed to Afghanistan. 

The 39-page report into the network’s reporting of soldiers’ alleged war crimes was tendered to the Federal Parliament on Thursday. 

The investigation was headed by former ABC staffer, Alan Sunderland, who left the network in 2019. 

‘For a public broadcaster that relies on its reputation for rigorous journalism and seeks the trust of Australians, that is not an acceptable outcome,’ Mr Sunderland said. 

One segment in question headed by Walkley Award-winning journalist Mark Willacy had been edited to include five additional gunshots to a clip in which a soldier fired a single warning shot from a helicopter as it flew above an Afghan compound where unarmed civilians walked below.

The 7.30 story was challenged by Channel 7’s Spotlight for its accuracy issues in September 2024 which prompted the ABC to acknowledge its mistake and launched the independent review. 

Mr Sunderland said the ABC’s legal department had failed to pass on a letter warning of serious ‘discrepancies’ in the story which was sent out by lawyers representing retired Special Forces Commander Heston Russell on November 29, 2022.

He said the subject line may have been misunderstood and letter may have been obscured during ‘an extraordinarily busy time’ for the network.

Mr Sunderland said he found no record of the warning letter having been passed on to editorial management or staff after interviewing people in the ABC’s Legal team.

‘[The email] appeared to have been opened [by the legal team but] no one I spoke to can recall specifically reading the full attachment and noting the issue of altered audio,’ he wrote in the report which was handed to the ABC’s management at its Sydney headquarters in Ultimo in December.

‘The correspondence was overlooked and not passed on to ABC News for separate consideration … journalists only became aware of the potential problems in the lead up to the broadcast of the Spotlight program.

‘I have spoken directly to those to whom the email was addressed, and they have also confirmed that they have no recollection of passing the email onto staff in ABC News or discussing its contents with them.

‘All of the journalists and managers I have spoken to in the ABC News are consistent in saying that this letter was never drawn to their attention, and they had no idea there were accuracy concerns about the way the audio of the helicopter footage was edited.’

Mr Sunderland further found there was ‘clearly a sufficiently detailed concern that it could and should have prompted the ABC to go back to the specific stories and check them for accuracy’.

The edited footage which aired in Mr Willacy’s story was slammed by Mr Russell, who appeared on Spotlight almost two years after his lawyers had alerted the ABC towards its errors.

Mr Sutherland said that the additional gunshots had not been added to ‘deliberately mislead or doctor’ and were ‘not detected’ by editing staff, producers or Mr Willacy.

Errors in the creation of the news story occured because it had been ‘edited in Sydney and the reporter was in Brisbane,’ Mr Sunderland wrote.

‘I find no evidence that anybody, at any stage, made a conscious or deliberate decision to introduce additional gunshots.’   

‘Both the reporter and the producer on the story, who had responsibility for overseeing the edit of the story, are adamant they did not ask for or direct that additional gunshot audio should be added at any point, and at no stage prior to the public concerns being raised some two years later were they aware that it had occurred.’

Mr Sunderland also spoke to the video editor of the news story who no longer works for the ABC but ‘given the passage of time’ they were unable to confirm if they added additional gunshot audio.

The report also noted the concerns of retired US DEA official Bret Hamilton who told The Daily Telegraph he was ‘furious’ after the ABC took his quotes out of context.   

Mr Willacy had allegedly told Mr Hamilton over the phone that his story would be a ‘positive’ one about the joint operations between Australian and US troops in Afghanistan before it eventually turned into one about alleged war crimes.

Mr Sunderland agreed in his report that Mr Hamilton’s quotes had ‘lacked context’ and were ‘potentially misleading’.

The report concluded however that there was ‘no evidence that the interview was in any way an ambush’.