The ABC’s Media Watch has come out in support of Peta Credlin after the Sky News host was hit with a “fact check” by Meta over her claims about the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Debate over the 2017 document has been raging in recent weeks after Credlin, in a nightly editorial on Sky News, accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of misleading voters in the Voice referendum by not discussing the “full” 26 pages, which talk of “reparations” to Indigenous Australians under a future treaty.
Mr Albanese, the Yes campaign and the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA), which released the documents under freedom of information earlier this year, have all maintained that the Uluru Statement is one page.
One week after Sky News Australia uploaded Credlin’s August 3 editorial to Facebook, the social media giant censored the post, blanking it out and labelling it “false information … checked by independent fact-checkers”, with a link to an RMIT FactLab website.
“False. The Uluru Statement is a one-page document comprising just 440 words, as confirmed by the statement’s authors,” the verdict read.
“Papers released under FOI contain the statement, but also include 25 pages of minutes of meetings held with Indigenous communities in 2016 and 2017, which are not part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The claim that the FOI documents reveal that the Uluru Statement of the Heart is 26 pages long and contains policies such as reparations for First Nations peoples is false.”
Media Watch host Paul Barry on Monday night weighed in, suggesting there was “some point” to Credlin’s claims.
“The Uluru Statement is expressed on one page … but there are many more pages of notes and background — which it must be said the Australian public are not voting on — where matters like a treaty and reparations are raised,” he said.
“So, should Facebook have labelled her claim false?”
In a statement to Media Watch, Meta denied censoring the post. “This fact check was applied by an independent fact checker and not Meta,” the company said.
“If someone disagrees with a rating applied to their content, they can request a review with the fact checking organisation. Meta doesn’t believe companies like ours should decide what’s true or false, so we partner with local, indepdenent fact-checkers to identify and review potential misinformation.”
Barry said, “And that is true. But it was Meta that slapped it on. And, given that there may be some point in what Credlin is saying, we think a disputed label would be more appropriate.”
The Australian last week blasted Meta’s “censorship” in the referendum debate.
“Certainly, whether or not the Uluru Statement is one page or longer is now a contested fact,” the newspaper said in an editorial on Friday. “The RMIT-ABC fact-checkers simply asserted that the Prime Minister, the Uluru Statement’s authors and the NIAA had denied Credlin’s claim.”
The ABC reportedly complained to The Australian about the editorial, saying it made “incorrect statements about RMIT ABC Fact Check and should be corrected”.
“The fact check referred to, concerning a column by Peta Credlin, was not conducted by RMIT ABC Fact Check but by RMIT FactLab, a stand-alone operation with its own editor and editorial processes which has no financial or editorial relationship with RMIT ABC Fact Check, or the ABC,” a spokesman wrote.
“The fact checks referred to are published on the RMIT FactLab Debunks website, which again has nothing to do with the ABC.”
But as noted by The Australian’s media section on Monday, RMIT FactLab’s website states that it “works hand-in-hand with RMIT ABC Fact Check, a partnership between RMIT University and the ABC which focuses on fact-checking claims by public figures”.
Russell Skelton is the director of both RMIT ABC Fact Check and RMIT FactLab.
RMIT FactLab states that “we do not assess opinions (because you can’t fact check what someone believes)” and “we do not fact check statements that speculate about future events (because no one can fact check the future!)”.
Since March last year, RMIT FactLab has “debunked” nearly 40 “false claims” and “conspiracy theories” pushed by “anti-Voice” social media users, with headlines such as “Vote No camp sows fear by falsely linking scrapped WA land laws to Indigenous Voice”, “Proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament will not confer ‘special rights’ to one race of people” and “The Voice will not create apartheid in Australia, say experts”.
While 38 fact checks targeting claims made by opponents of the Voice are listed on its “debunks” page, RMIT FactLab does not appear to have assessed a single claim made by the Yes campaign or supporters of the Voice.
One debunking, however, reassures Indigenous Australians that they will “not cede sovereignty under the Voice due to 1973 ‘change’ to constitution”.
“An online video has made the false claim that Indigenous Australians will cede sovereignty if a Yes vote in the Voice referendum is successful because of changes made to the constitution back in 1973,” the May 19, 2023 article states.
“The claim was made in a YouTube video published in April by an account called Grandmother Mulara. The account creator describes herself as ‘an initiated senior lore woman’ with a ‘Juris Doctor law degree’.”
RMIT FactLab concluded, “False. The Queen’s title was amended through legislation in 1973 but this did not alter the constitution in any way. The amendment has no bearing on the impact of a successful Yes vote.”
RMIT has been contacted for comment.
frank.chung@news.com.au
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