Australia’s national public broadcaster has been accused of orchestrating a coordinated media campaign vilifying and harming on members of a local faith group.
In 2021, Australian-based practitioners of the meditation practice Falun Gong filed a claim against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) under Section 8 of Victoria’s Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 after it broadcast a series of programs about the discipline in 2020.
They allege the reports were inaccurate and biased, and as a consequence incited public hostility towards the group.
Section 8 of the Act prohibits any person from engaging in conduct inciting “hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule” of a class of persons, and applies to conduct occurring in or outside Victoria.
Hearings for the lawsuit were first held in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) in August 2023.
Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is a meditation practice that originated from China. From its inception in the early 1990s, the practice spread via word-of-mouth to an estimated 100 million practitioners across China, and eventually the world.
However, in 1999, the former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership, fronted by Jiang Zemin, launched a brutal persecution against the practice.
Subsequently millions of families were affected, while many practitioners were arbitrarily detained, tortured, and had their property confiscated.
Overseas, the CCP launched an intense media campaign to denigrate Falun Gong, encouraging governments, corporations, and media outlets not to discuss human rights or it would impact potential trade with China.
An Alleged Coordinated Media Campaign Targeting Practitioners
Peter King, the barrister representing Falun Gong practitioners, argued that the ABC had organised a coordinated media campaign to vilify and incite hatred against Falun Gong in the name of “investigative journalism.”He pointed out 13 instances of vilification in the ABC programs that were false and inaccurate representations of the spiritual meditation discipline and its practitioners.
The case examined four episodes of the ABC’s podcast series Background Briefing (titled The Power of Falun Gong), as well as an episode of Foreign Correspondent.
Barrister King also said ABC used its TV, radio, and social media platforms to widely promote the disputed programs.
“On the 14th of July [2020], the first trailer [of the programs] begin [on] YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, ABC’s website, radio and TV ads and press releases,” he said.
“They continue through to the 18th of July, when the final ABC trailer on the website was introduced.
“This was a highly coordinated campaign, with trailers in various areas and on various media.”
King said the ABC initially did not seek responses from Falun Gong practitioners in its programs, nor respond to people who were concerned about the trailers.
The ABC’s Defence
Haroon Hassan, a barrister representing the ABC, argued that the public broadcaster’s reports were not capable of inciting audience members to commit acts of vilification, nor did they have the tendency to incite “hatred against, serious contempt for, revulsion or severe ridicule” of Falun Gong practitioners.He said the reports were “orthodox examples” of investigative or public interest journalism, saying they were a far cry from the type of extreme behaviour prohibited by Section 8 of the Act.
Hassan also argued that the definition of hatred, serious contempt for revulsion or severe ridicule as described in the Act referred to “extreme feelings of dislike” and did not include behaviours such as rudeness, dismissiveness, disagreement, anger, or mere contempt.
Regarding audience reaction, the barrister cited some examples to show that people who had watched the ABC’s programs did not develop serious contempt or hatred toward Falun Gong practitioners.
One example was an email response from an Anglican clergy who told the ABC that, according to his best knowledge, the report had not affected the thinking of people in his parish to a “great degree.”
Hassan also said the ABC’s reports did cover responses from the Falun Gong community, including practitioners’ denials about some allegations as well as their counter-evidence.
At the same time, the ABC’s legal representative argued that there was a balance between the right of freedom of expression and the protections provided by the Act.
He said it was not prohibited to say things about a religious belief that may cause someone to despise that belief, as long as what was said did not incite hatred.
ABC’s Programs Caused Harm to Practitioners: Barrister
Falun Gong’s barrister, King, argued the ABC’s programs caused mental harm for many Falun Gong practitioners.He gave the example of the lead applicant of the lawsuit, who suffered from depression and anxiety after watching the programs as they reminded her of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong when she was in China.
According to the lead applicant’s evidence, this anxiety led her to seek consultation with psychologists, where she went through mental health plans to recover from the distress.
Falun Gong practitioners were also subject to hostile and aggressive behaviours of people who had watched the ABC’s programs, the barrister said.
He cited the case of a practitioner who was confronted by a man in Melbourne’s CBD in 2022.
The man accused Falun Gong of being a “cult” and repeated the information he learned from the ABC’s programs.
The practitioner said she tried to explain the facts to the man, but he was too furious to listen to her explanation.
“Due to his angry and threatening manners, I felt intimidated and disrespected. The exchange caused me so much distress that I started to cry after he left. I couldn’t help crying for half an hour,” her evidence stated.
In another case, King said two bystanders had to intervene when a man was about to attack a practitioner on the street. The man also believed in what was said in the ABC programs.
VCAT received the final evidence from both parties and will provide its ruling early next year.
