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(Image: AAP/Paul Miller)

The ABC’s ombudsman has ruled ABC News breached its accuracy standards following a complaint regarding a radio item in early February that reported as credible the results of a Project Veritas “investigation” into Pfizer executives.

What investigation? We’ll let Fox News host Tucker Carlson approvingly sum it up: “Project Veritas just released an undercover video of a Pfizer executive bragging about how his company conducts Frankenstein science, manipulating COVID viruses for profit, and does it in secret, possibly in violation of federal law.”

Yep, the ABC and Carlson have had their differences, but they were briefly united in treating this story as credible. Veritas released footage of what it claims is a Pfizer executive talking about actively mutating the virus so the company can preemptively create vaccines.

But what we’d expect from the ABC, which we might not from Carlson, is a little more curiosity about Veritas’ track record when it comes to credible investigations. As the complaint seen by Crikey points out, the hyper-partisan gotcha stunt outfit has a, shall we say, chequered past:

  • There was the (embarrassingly inept, as it turned out) attempt to trick The Washington Post into publishing allegations that Republican politician Roy Moore had impregnated a teenager. The Post‘s exposé of Veritas’ attempted sting formed part of a series that eventually won a Pulitzer, which I think we can all agree is pretty funny
  • The organisation had to pay US$100,000 to a welfare worker who was fired after Veritas released a misleading hidden-video piece
  • Indeed, we could fill a whole piece with Veritas “scoops” that turned out to be heavily edited, impossible to verify and misleading.

The ABC response was unequivocal:

ABC Radio News acknowledges the report, based on information sourced from Project Veritas, was not reliable and the story should not have been broadcast. ABC Radio News also advises that the ABC does not regard Project Veritas as an investigative news organisation and this descriptor should not have been used. ABC Radio News accepts the report was inaccurate and a breach of the ABC’s accuracy standard (2.1). ABC Radio News apologises for this lapse in editorial standards.

Details of the upheld complaint, and a clarification on the story, will be published on the ABC website. As for the Pfizer story that kicked it all off, well, you’re never going to believe this, but there are some questions about its credibility.

The hidden-camera footage is heavily edited, vague and features someone Veritas calls “Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer director of research and development — strategic operations and mRNA scientific planning”. Forbes, for one, was unable to find any indication this is a real person who works for Pfizer.

When approached by Crikey, the ABC said it had “nothing to add” to the ombudsman’s findings.

Since the bulletin, Veritas head James O’Keefe has been, by his own estimation, “forced out”. There were allegations of staff mistreatment, followed by the group’s board of directors saying it had uncovered “financial malfeasance”, accusing O’Keefe of spending “an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries”, including “$14,000 on a charter flight to meet someone to fix his boat under the guise of meeting with a donor”.