Journalist Admits Lying About Balkans Massacre

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Journalist Admits Lying About Balkans Massacre


VETERAN 60 Minutes reporter Richard Carleton has admitted he had misled and
lied to viewers by showing footage from another massacre site to illustrate
a story about the massacre of Srebrenica. Mr Carleton, 60 Minutes executive
producer John Westacott and producer Howard Sacre are suing the ABC and its
Media Watch team over two Media Watch segments in July 2000 accusing 60
Minutes of lifting footage from an earlier BBC documentary. Mr Carleton told
the ACT supreme court yesterday that being accused of plagiarism was the
journalistic equivalent of paedophilia. But under cross-examination by
counsel for the ABC, Media Watch presenter Paul Barry and former executive
producer Peter McEvoy, Mr Carleton conceded he had knowingly used footage of
a morgue and a mass grave site far away from Srebrenica to illustrate the
Channel Nine report. Asked by barrister Terence Tobin if he had misled
viewers, Mr Carleton said: "In the technical meaning of the word misleading,
yes." Asked had he lied, he said: "In so far as the meaning of the word lie
is taken (to mean) misleading, yes." But Mr Carleton denied he had behaved
unethically as a journalist and said the footage had enhanced viewers'
understanding of the 1995 massacre of Muslim residents by Bosnian Serbs. The
hearing before Justice Terence Higgins is continuing. /rlt/rz