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
Title: Message
Journalist Admits Lying Abour Balkans Massacre
