{"id":591435,"date":"2026-08-12T23:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T23:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/591435\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T23:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T23:42:12","slug":"abc-changing-editorial-policy-after-rinehart-furore-prompts-fears-of-overreach-australian-broadcasting-corporation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/591435\/","title":{"rendered":"ABC changing editorial policy after Rinehart furore prompts fears of overreach | Australian Broadcasting Corporation"},"content":{"rendered":"

A pledge by the ABC managing director, Hugh Marks, to change editorial guidelines on satire and violence after the broadcaster aired a program featuring offensive comments about Gina Rinehart<\/a> has sparked concerns about overreach.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The segment concluded with the film-maker, Kate McGuinness, stating: \u201cWhen the revolution comes will you hide under the bed or will you know exactly how to shove a stick right up Gina Rinehart\u2019s butthole, stirring it round, mixing her guts up nice and smooth, to make one big sausage roll to make something out of nothing?\u201d<\/p>\n

After sustained backlash in News Corp and the West Australian, and threats of legal action<\/a> from Rinehart, Marks issued an apology<\/a> last Thursday.<\/p>\n

He said while the ombudsman, Fiona Cameron, had found that the film did not breach editorial policies on harm and offence<\/a>, it fell short of \u201ccommunity expectations\u201d and the ABC would change its editorial guidance.<\/p>\n

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On ABC Radio North Queensland last Thursday, he said the ABC\u2019s guidelines will now demand that \u201cno individual should be the subject of comedy that is violent in its description in our programming\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think the ABC has to hold itself to a higher standard and I think it\u2019s really important we make that change.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, that should have been \u201cthe end of it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very ill-advised move,\u201d he said of the promised change. \u201cIt\u2019s virtually unenforceable \u2026 and it\u2019s literally throwing fuel on to the News Corp fire. They will bank that and they will move straight on to the next demand which will be a curtailing if not the abolition of the ABC.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ombudsman initially received eight complaints about the program in the week after was broadcast. A further 988 complaints were made after criticism from \u201cseveral media outlets\u201d, it said in its report.<\/p>\n

News Corp\u2019s major mastheads have published 46 articles critiquing the program since it aired and the West Australian has published 15.<\/p>\n

The ombudsman found \u201ca reasonable audience member would be likely to understand the remarks as part of a satirical and exaggerated commentary\u201d rather than encouragement of violence.<\/p>\n

A former editorial director of the ABC, Alan Sunderland, agreed with the ombudsman\u2019s findings, which didn\u2019t discount that the joke was in \u201cpoor taste\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said he wasn\u2019t \u201cperturbed\u201d by the ABC reviewing its guidance, which could help program makers interpret editorial principles if it wasn\u2019t enforceable. But he said \u201cif it\u2019s more elaborate than that then you start to get into problems\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be able to put much [satire] to air,\u201d he said, pointing to Aunty Jack in the 1970s, who threatened to \u201crip yer bloody arms off\u201d if viewers didn\u2019t watch the next week.<\/p>\n

Sunderland said it was a \u201crepeated pattern\u201d to see ABC content picked up and \u201camplified\u201d by some media and politicians, thereby giving it a \u201csecond life\u201d. \u201cBroadcasters can and do apologise without the world coming to an end,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Journalist, author and academic Dr Margaret Simons said Marks was right to apologise but rewriting editorial policies \u201cwasn\u2019t necessary\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem here is that either somebody didn\u2019t make a judgment call or they made the wrong one,\u201d she said. \u201cI would have thought it was self-evident that a threat of violence, even a satirical threat, is a pretty serious matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Simons said the ABC\u2019s editorial policies<\/a> required carefully judged decisions and explicitly stated that contentious decisions should be upwardly referred<\/a> to an appropriate level.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy main question is, were the ABC policies followed in the sense of upward referral? Did anybody actually stop to look at this before it was broadcast?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t \u2026 that in itself is arguably a breach of editorial policy. If editorial policies are substantially rewritten in the light of what I suspect is a failure of the ABC\u2019s internal processes \u2026 that\u2019s not good.\u201d<\/p>\n

An ABC spokesperson confirmed the changes would be amended \u201csoon\u201d, with approval by the ABC board. It did not respond to questions on whether the program had been upwardly referred.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Hancock Prospecting said it would \u201cwait to see long overdue changes to the ABC\u2019s \u2018editorial standards\u2019\u201d and accused it of normalising \u201cviolent torture against a woman till death\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSatire needs to be funny, what the ABC approved to be aired for 25 days, in its violent torture until death content, was not,\u201d it said. \u201cWe await a detailed account in relation to who approved this unacceptable piece to be aired, and who approved the long delay in its removal. The buck stops with the heads of the ABC.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president of ABC Friends, Cassandra Parkinson, said the ABC had \u201coverreacted in trying to appease Ms Rinehart\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand that the ABC issued an apology to avoid a costly legal action but it\u2019s difficult to understand the rationale for this new rule,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of our views about the \u2018joke\u2019 in question, it\u2019s important that the process that follows involves close scrutiny. It\u2019s essential that the ABC hold firm against this sort of external pressure and that it uphold the independence laid out in its charter.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGuinness has also apologised over the segment, saying it wasn\u2019t her intention to promote violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy writing is cartoonish and always satirical. Unfortunately, jokes do not land with everyone. Its purpose was never to be taken literally,\u201d she said in a statement uploaded to the ABC\u2019s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pledge by the ABC managing director, Hugh Marks, to change editorial guidelines on satire and violence after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-591435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}