ABC apologises for ‘misleading editing’ after photo of Liberal Senator Jane Hume was doctored

The ABC had admitted it digitally altered a picture of a federal politician – the latest in a string of controversies at the taxpayer-funded broadcaster.

This time, the misleading edit was made by its flagship political discussion program Insiders on Sunday morning.

The image in question shows Liberal Senator Jane Hume holding The Australian newspaper featuring three of her fellow Coalition party members on the front page.

Originally, the photo in 2022 showed Hume holding The Australian’s front page that pictured Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with the headline, ‘Life will be ‘cheaper’ under me’.

The voiceover on Insiders mocked the Coalition by claiming it had ‘once again made itself the story’.

The edited image appeared during a segment discussing ongoing division within the Coalition over its net zero emission policy.

Hume lodged a complaint with the ABC almost immediately, leading the organisation to publish a grovelling apology that played of the edit as ‘satire’.

‘In an attempt to be satirical, the image was changed so that a photograph of three of Senator Hume’s Coalition colleagues was superimposed onto the newspapers front page,’ the ABC said.

‘The change was made in the edit process to accompany a line of voice over which stated that the Coalition had ‘made itself the story again’.

‘Insiders acknowledges that, while the montage was attempting to be humorous, changing the image in this way was misleading and inaccurate and has apologised to Senator Hume. 

‘All versions of the program have since been re-edited to remove the altered image.’

While some Insiders viewers may have gotten a chuckle from the doctored image, the incident flags the continuation of a trend of serious editing errors at the ABC.

The broadcaster’s most infamous case of an editing muck-up was the addition of five additional gunshot sounds to a video of an Australian soldier firing a single warning shot while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

The edits, which were uncovered by Seven Spotlight in late 2024, made it appear as though he was repeatedly shooting at unarmed villagers.

The ABC was forced to remove the offending vision from its news website and launch an independent inquiry into how it came to be included in the aired segment.

Overall, the ABC has published 77 corrections in the last 11 months alone. 

In the last few days the public broadcaster has only been called out for editing a speech US President Donald Trump gave ahead of the January 6 capitol riots.

The ABC has claimed its edits didn’t substantially alter the meaning of Trump’s speech. 

That not the case for the UK public broadcaster the BBC, which altered the same speech to make it appear as though Trump was encouraging rioters. 

Trump has nnow threatened legal action against the BBC.

BBC chairman Samir Shah has apologised for the ‘error of judgment,’ which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.

Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness quit over accusations of bias and misleading editing of a speech Trump before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

The hour-long documentary – titled ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’ – was broadcast as part of the BBC´s ‘Panorama’ series days before the 2024 US presidential election. 

It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and ‘fight’. 

Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Shah said the broadcaster accepted ‘that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action’.

Daily Mail has contacted Jane Hume for further comment.