The ABC has come under scrutiny for providing sympathetic media coverage to an orthopaedic surgeon whose controversial practices were extensively documented in Federal Court proceedings just months earlier.
The surgeon in question, named 2020 NSW Australian of the Year, is particularly known for osseointegration surgeries, attaching implants to the bones of amputated limbs. His public profile rested largely on inspirational narratives about innovation and his own refugee journey. Yet in August 2025, after a landmark Federal Court decision, a more complex picture emerged.
Justice Wendy Abraham found that Nine successfully established both the contextual truth and public interest defence in the case of Al Muderis v Nine Network Limited. This was significant: the public interest defence, which was introduced as part of the suite of defamation reforms in 2021, had not previously been successfully relied upon by any defendant in defamation proceedings. The case is the first time the public interest defence has succeeded in Australia.
What the court actually found matters enormously for questions about editorial responsibility. A judge found that the surgeon told osseointegration patients they were "connected for life", making some patients feel dependent on him and scared to risk the therapeutic relationship. The judge said patients considering osseointegration needed to know about the "darker side of his practice", including instances of poor care.
The court's judgment was emphatic about public interest: Justice Wendy Abraham said that "a number of Dr Al Muderis' patients had negative experiences with significant similarities was something the public, especially prospective patients, needed to be informed of", before dismissing the surgeon's defamation application, noting "Patients should be making their decisions with both sides of the story."
Yet despite these findings, the ABC appears to have featured the surgeon in a sympathetic light in programming after the court's decision. Nine won the high profile defamation case brought against it by Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Munjed Al Muderis, with Al Muderis having sued 60 Minutes following a story by Tom Steinfort, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age over a series of reports in September 2022.
The ABC's approach shifted only after public attention focused on the inconsistency. Despite the findings of the defamation case, in which the court said "positive media his practice had enjoyed needed correcting", ABC replayed an episode. After this became public, the ABC took the decision to remove the episode from ABC iview and the broadcast rotation.
The tension here reflects a genuine editorial challenge. Individual journalists and media outlets pursue stories for reasons they believe serve the public interest. The court accepted Nine's reasoning on this point. But public broadcasting carries a particular obligation: when courts have documented systematic failures in patient care and vulnerability exploitation, continuing to amplify flattering narratives about the subject of those findings raises legitimate questions about editorial process and institutional awareness. The ABC's initial decision to feature the surgeon positively, followed by quiet removal of past content, suggests the broadcaster may not have fully integrated the court's findings into its editorial decision-making at the time the programming was aired.
None of this necessarily means bad faith on anyone's part. But it does illustrate why scrutinous journalism sometimes matters more than sympathetic storytelling. The court emphasised that prospective patients deserve complete information. Broadcasters, especially public ones, have responsibility for ensuring that information reaches audiences with appropriate context.