The ABC’s chair, Kim Williams, has flagged his desire to return ABC correspondents to China as a “critical centre” of the world. 

In a speech to the Lowy Institute on Wednesday evening, Mr Williams said having an ABC bureau in Beijing was necessary given China’s “profound” impact across the world.

The chair also singled out the importance of the national broadcaster’s Asia-Pacific and international bureaux in a time of increasing global tensions.

“It is a centre of world affairs, and we need strong representation in that critical centre.

“And we are eager to restore our representation in Beijing.” 

The ABC’s last correspondent in China, Bill Birtles, was forced to leave in September 2020 after sheltering in the Australian embassy in Beijing for four days and being questioned by Chinese officials.

Since then, the broadcaster has relied on journalists filing from Taipei, Tokyo and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific to cover news on China.

In June, the ABC’s South Asia correspondent, Avani Dias, was also forced to leave her posting in Delhi, after being denied a visa extension by the Indian government ahead of the 2024 general elections.

Dias has been nominated for the Lowy Institute’s Media Award for her reporting for Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners from across India and East Asia.

The BBC’s Beijing correspondent, Stephen McDonnell, has remained in the Chinese capital after moving to the UK broadcaster from the ABC in 2015.

International reporting singled out

Mr Williams said his focus in the address was trustworthy coverage on international affairs, and singled out misinformation and disinformation as key issues all media outlets were grappling with.

The ABC’s international coverage aimed to become “the most trusted and valued broadcast media and digital content provider in the Indo-Pacific region”, he said. 

“We want the ABC to be the place people in our part of the world turn to first, to get the crucial, factual news they need to take their countries forward peacefully and democratically.

Mr Williams noted the work of ABC’s Indo-Pacific partner journalists and stories, who file from bureaux in Fiji, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and further afield across radio, TV and digital.

“Providing trusted news and helping spread the truth is in the national interest. But perhaps more importantly, it’s in the interests of a more stable and democratic world,” he said.

Review into ABC ‘editing error’

The ABC chair also noted the independent review commissioned to examine an ABC News article and 7.30 story regarding a 2012 Afghanistan mission, in which an “editing error” in audio introduced gunshot sounds to a clip of Australian troops firing from a helicopter.

The issue came to light after Channel Seven’s Spotlight program on ex-commando Heston Russell accused the ABC of adding the sound of five extra gunshots to the helmet cam footage.

ABC managing director David Anderson said on Friday an “issue with the audio on a video accompanying the online story” was brought to the attention of ABC News, with the video removed shortly after.

“This error should not have occurred,” Mr Anderson said. 

Mr Williams said the independent review “will make recommendations and a report, with agreed corrective actions, will be publicly released, as should be the case”.

The ABC chair also reiterated his focus on maintaining strong journalistic ethics to combat attempts to weaken democracy worldwide, particularly given ongoing efforts by multiple actors to influence elections such as the 2024 US presidential vote or rewrite the history of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“The decline of traditional media and the challenging of democracy around the world today are linked.

“Every email, every news story comes with a fear that we might be a target of some attempt to rip us off or mislead us,” he said.

Mr Williams stressed the need for the ABC and other mainstream media outlets to continue informing and interrogating the world in order to ensure audience trust begins to rebuild, after the 2024 Reuters Digital News Report found just 40 per cent of people trust most news coverage.

“Freedom and the truth go together. And when truth is absent, tyranny is never far away,” he said.