ABC editorial boss Gavin Fang has conceded that the broadcaster made a “bad mistake” in how it approached correcting a story claiming as many as 14,000 babies could die in Gaza due to malnutrition.
The story had been raised earlier in evidence given by the special envoy Jillian Segal, where it was revealed that the ABC’s Ombudsman found that the statistic quoted, which ran at 6am on the ABC’s News Breakfast program on May 21, 2025, was known to be wrong at 3am AEST.
However, it then took until 4pm for the ABC to correct the story, and ran that correction on its Afternoon Briefing program.
Lancaster asked Fang if he agreed that the correction “would not have been apparent to many viewers of the News Breakfast”.
“Yes, it was a bad mistake,” Fang says.
“The correction came on the News Channel, the same channel that hosts News Breakfast, later in the afternoon.
“Ordinarily, we would try to do one of two things, try to get a correction as soon as possible, but also do a correction to the same or similar audience, so the News Breakfast audience. In this case, the correction was done on the News Channel that afternoon.”