Media watchdog has beef with ABC over Catalyst program

The media watchdog has found the ABC science program Catalyst breached editorial standards for impartiality in its presentation of the beef industry as harmful to the environment.

Meat & Livestock Australia complained to the ABC last year that the program was unfair to the beef industry and insects were promoted as an alternative source to cattle. But an internal investigation found the program met editorial standards.

The industry complained to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, saying that Catalyst depicted Australian beef production as an unsustainable user of land and water.

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The authority came to a different view and ruled the the ABC did breach the impartiality provisions of its own Code of Practice in the Catalyst program Feeding Australia: Foods of Tomorrow.

It’s not the first Catalyst program to be criticised.

In 2014 two episodes about statins – that led thousands of Australians to stop their cholesterol medicine – were found to have breached the broadcaster’s standards on impartiality and were removed from the ABC website.

In 2016 another episode on the potential health risks of wifi was found to have breached its editorial standards and reporter and then Catalyst host Maryanne Demasi was suspended.

At the end of the year the program’s weekly slot and its 11 staff – including the suspended Demasi – were made redundant. The program returned with the Catalyst name but is a series of externally produced one-hour films.

The Acma investigation into the 2019 broadcast found that the program failed to present the production of beef with due impartiality, as it did for other foods.

“It is an editorial decision of the broadcaster as to how particular matters will be presented,” the Acma chair, Nerida O’Loughlin, said. “However, the code requires that the overall presentation must still be done so in a manner that achieves due impartiality.”

The investigation found Catalyst used dramatic visual displays, emotive language and moral arguments in the segments that referred to beef. “In aggregate, these caused the program to demonstrate a lack of fair treatment and open-mindedness,” Acma said.

The beef industry said the program did not reflect the latest science and was highly damaging to the Australian beef industry.

The industry said the broadcaster had an “obvious agenda of metropolitan ABC to discredit agriculture in Australia” and the program was a “disgraceful attack on farmers and the communities and workers they support”.

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In one segment the presenter looked at alternatives to beef in which a former medical student, now restauranteur, talked about a synthetic protein burger as a “meat protein substitute”. “The restauranteur likened the eyes of cows in a slaughterhouse to ‘the patients I was seeing in emergency rooms’ and considered eating synthetic, plant-based protein ‘more morally righteous’.”

The ABC has rejected the Acma’s findings.

“The ABC stands by the Catalyst team and the program, which explores key breakthroughs in food production that will help Australia find more sustainable ways to feed an expected population of 40 million by 2050,” the broadcaster said in a statement.

“We respectfully disagree with the Acma’s view that the program lacked impartiality and note that it found the program’s description of the environmental impact of beef farming to be accurate and not misleading.”