Nauru detention centre: The ABC’s Four Corners twisted the truth on refugee issues. I know, I was there

Oh, how it must rankle the hoity-toity types at the ABC that a tabloid television program was allowed on Nauru, while their journalists weren’t.

You can practically hear them sniffing into their lattes all the way in Sydney’s Ultimo.

Yes, in an ideal world, all journalists would be granted visas to report on conditions in Nauru for themselves.

But it’s unlikely that will happen while it becomes increasingly obvious that some media outlets have no intention whatsoever of reporting the story fairly and without agenda.

A Current Affair was given rare access and we travelled to the Pacific nation four months ago, spending three days documenting the lives of refugees and asylum seekers there.

As I’ve said ad nauseam since, no conditions were imposed on our visit, we were given free rein to see anything we wanted and the Australian government had no prior knowledge of our visit, let alone involvement.

We showed our viewers the air-conditioned, demountable units that now house most of the refugees but, similarly, didn’t spare them from the cramped mouldy tents many others still live in.

We shot up-to-date footage of hospital wards and schools, which had been upgraded at a cost of millions of Australian taxpayer dollars.

Seventy seven per cent of the voices in our half-hour story belonged to refugees and asylum seekers, including children, who made claims of assault, self-harm, theft, bullying by locals, medical conditions that were inadequately treated and the overwhelming frustration of being left in limbo for three years.

In other words, this was no Disney production.

But we also balanced our report with responses from the Nauru government, which says many refugee claims are exaggerations or straight-up lies.

It was the inclusion of these voices which, remember, made up less than a quarter of the report, that got activists so worked up that they frantically tried to discredit our work.

I caught one former Save The Children worker, interviewed in last week’s Four Corners story, Kristy Mannell, tweeting a blatant lie — that we had “got (the) @DIBPAustralia [Department of Immigration and Border Protection Australia] stage managed tour”.

These advocates simply don’t want you to hear the other side of the story at all.

Now, it’s not often you’ll hear a television journalist criticise another network for not using her footage. But a reasonable person may assume that, if only one TV crew in the world had secured access to Nauru, our public broadcaster may — oh, I don’t know — at least use a snippet of said footage to give its viewers the most accurate picture of conditions.

Ha! Think again.

Unable to bring itself to even acknowledge our visit ever took place, there has been no mention of it whatsoever on any of ABC’s television programs, including the flagship Four Corners, which devoted 45 minutes to child refugees on Nauru.

In contrast to our story, ABC’s journalists relied almost entirely on supplied footage, including its interviews with refugee children.

They ran old vision of facilities no longer in use and random YouTube clips of local men fighting each other to support their claims Nauru is an inherently dangerous place for refugees.

The story largely centred on accounts from refugee advocates Save The Children and Amnesty International, with no voices from the other side — and Nauruans given no right of reply.

And their use of highly emotive pictures of children behind wire fencing was deliberately deceptive. They knew full well those particular children lived out in the community and, besides, processing centres had been fully open for more than a year.

The resulting story was not only outrageously one-sided, it smeared all Nauruans, including local children, as heartless thugs.

But then, that’s become standard fare in the ABC’s coverage of refugee issues.

A week earlier its Q&A program spent an entire episode on the topic of offshore processing.

This time, producers were so intent on whitewashing our visit they went as far as to withhold my name from a tweet they republished on-air, in which I challenged a claim made by Amnesty International’s Anna Neistat that conditions on Nauru were worse than in war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Chechnya.

Well, lo and behold.

The same Dr Neistat appeared seven days later in Four Corners’ story.

Her Amnesty report concluding the treatment of refugees on Nauru amounted to “torture” and all should be brought to Australia immediately was conveniently embargoed to drop directly after the program went to air.

And yes, Dr Neistat is the same woman who retracted claims she made last week on yet another ABC program, Lateline, that asylum seeker children had committed suicide on Nauru (false) and there had been deaths at sea since the 2013 turn-backs (also false).

Amnesty doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to accepting refugee claims at face value. The group was last year revealed by The Daily Telegraph to have lobbied the Australian government on behalf of Lindt Cafe terrorist Man Monis on the bogus basis he was a top-level Iranian spy in need of protection.

But the ABC also has form in swallowing such dubious claims.

Who can forget the spurious, highly damaging allegations the broadcaster aired in 2014 that the Australian navy tortured and deliberately burned the hands of asylum seekers?

Two former ABC chairmen, Maurice Newman and Donald McDonald, have now voiced their deep concerns over the growing influence of activists on the public broadcaster.

McDonald told The Australian the ABC was running the risk of becoming “a branch office for advocacy groups.”

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has said he will lodge a formal complaint with the broadcaster over its “one-sided and slanted” program based on “emotions and lies” rather than facts.

At the end of the day, no one is pretending Nauru is a five-star holiday resort or that life is a cakewalk for refugees, especially children.

But misleading the Australian public is no way to engender sympathy for these people, either.

Caroline Marcus is a journalist with A Current Affair

@carolinemarcus9