Activist groups are using artificial intelligence to target the ABC’s coverage of the Middle East with accusations of bias, contributing to a sharp rise in the number of coordinated complaints detected by the public broadcaster’s independent ombudsman.
One of those groups is Pen Power Australia, which has been using AI technology to coordinate complaints to the ABC’s board and management to attempt to correct what it sees as bias and make coverage more favourable to Israel.
A new report released by the ABC’s Ombudsman on Thursday found that organised complaint campaigns rose sharply over the past year, in part due to the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The report did not name Pen Power, but ABC ombudsman Fiona Cameron identified 48 “campaigns” during the year ending June 30 which accounted for 5259 total complaints, or 61 per cent of all content complaints received.
“Complaints were categorised as campaigns where a concentration of complaints raised similar concerns about the same content within a specific period. They may be substantively similar or identically worded or appear coordinated,” the ombudsman’s report notes.
The report underscores how coordinated campaigns are making it more difficult for organisations like the ABC to gauge the level of community anger over hot-button issues such as the Middle East as they seek to balance genuine engagement with resisting pressure campaigns.
Pen Power’s coordinator John Grimwade said the campaigns he had organised could have anything from 100 people to a few thousand sending complaint letters if he could enlist support from overseas groups.
The group runs campaigns about Gaza, Israel and anything connected to these issues, he said. Last month, Grimwade told the group its members had sent more than 40,000 letters by email to date, according to internal WhatsApp messages seen by this masthead.
“Our campaigns go out as required,” Grimwade said. “We try to keep up with the ABC in particular but so many of their reports are biased or statements made that lack proper context.”
In March, ABC chair Kim Williams defended the broadcaster against accusations of bias, saying it stood by its coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.
Grimwade, an Adelaide retiree, confirmed the group has used a platform called Activist Mailer, which boasts online of letting users coordinate campaigns with artificial intelligence.
The platform’s website claims that its platform makes what would otherwise appear as a barrage of emails appear “unique” by using different words, tone, formating and length to deliver the same coordinated message, “each sent directly from supporters’ own inboxes”.
“The result? Messages that get read, voices that get heard, and movements that drive real change.”
But Grimwade is planning on changing to a new AI platform. “I am currently using the Activist Mailer but will be changing most of our campaigns over to the new AI,” Grimwade said.
Letter-writing campaigns have worked in the past. In late 2023, the ABC sacked casual radio host Antoinette Lattouf after a coordinated letter-writing campaign targeted members of the broadcaster’s board and management team, including then-chair Ita Buttrose.
That campaign was driven by a separate pro-Israel group and did not include Pen Power Australia. A Federal Court judge last year found the ABC had sacked Lattouf unlawfully and she was awarded $150,000 in damages. The case cost the ABC more than $2 million.
Grimwade said his campaigns had had little success so far beyond yielding a response from ABC head of editorial standards Gavin Fang or the ombudsman. “In simple terms, they think they are right,” he said.
But he said Pen Power had succeeded in getting an Instagram video removed in recent days featuring Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran covering the Iran war.
“We have had a video on Instagram taken down, which we are claiming as a win,” Grimwade said. “It was removed shortly after our letters were starting to be sent.”
In a statement, an ABC spokesperson said the video had already been taken down before the first campaign email came in because the reporter misread the script, resulting in an error. “In any event, the campaign would have been immaterial because when we identify errors, we always take action,” the spokesperson said.
In a podcast interview with the conservative Australian Jewish Association, Grimwade claimed his campaigns had more success outside the ABC.
Pen Power last week organised a campaign of emails to the ABC managing director Hugh Marks, chair Kim Williams and Fang, claiming the ABC’s reporting on Israel-Palestine was inaccurate and not impartial.
“As long as it’s antisemitic, we’ll have a go,” Grimwade told AJA chief executive Robert Gregory. Gregory praised Grimwade and thanked him “for the work you’re doing”. The two organisations have a “limited” partnership, Grimwade confirmed.
In another call-out this week, Pen Power produced a letter asking members to target the ABC over its Middle Eastern guidance document. “Please join with us and send the letter exposing it for what it really is. Another ABC document that is bias [sic] and factually incorrect,” the message said.
It isn’t just Australian groups pushing these coordinated campaigns, Grimwade said.
“I am aware of overseas groups doing the same as us and we sometimes use each other’s letters where it’s applicable to do so,” he said, without naming his international allies. “The only other Australian group is a WhatsApp chat group that was formed specifically to tackle the ABC problem.”
The ombudsman said 1148 (13 per cent of all content complaints) related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The volume of allegations of both pro-Israel or pro-Palestine coverage were about equal, the report said.
But allegations of pro-Iranian coverage topped both allegations of pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian coverage. The US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February.
The ABC received 2746 complaints from across the globe about an Instagram reel published in May, focusing on its reporting from inside Iran. Most complaints were made by “Iranian Australians” or “Iranians in the diaspora community” the ombudsman said, and alleged the post lacked impartiality.
The ombudsman also noted “68 identical complaints by email to the ABC board and other recipients (rather than the ABC complaints form)” regarding an April episode of Radio National program If You’re Listening about the war in Iran.
The identical complaints said the episode presented Iran as a “reasonable diplomatic partner” and Israel as an “antagonist” and “disruptor of diplomacy”, suggesting a lack of impartiality, the ombudsman’s report, which cleared the piece of content of any breaches, said.
The ombudsman has since changed its classification of complaints it identifies as identical or coordinated, counting them as one complaint. This masthead is not suggesting this complaint was organised by Pen Power.
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Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.From our partners
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