Sacked Four Corners reporter Mahmood Fazal has accused his critics of betraying the ABC and portraying him a diversity hire amid the fallout from the retraction of two of his programs on Australia’s drug trade.

This masthead reported on Monday that ABC sources believed Fazal had featured the same person under different names in the two broadcasts, which underpinned concerns ABC management had raised last week about the “veracity of certain sources used in both program”.

The national broadcaster’s Media Watch program aired those fears that night and named the person staff believed had appeared in different guises in Fazal’s reporting, creating major questions for the broadcaster about its standards and processes.

Fazal, who is suing the ABC for unfair dismissal after being sacked in May, published a social media video on Tuesday arguing that all his programs had been vetted, his relationships to sources had been declared, and that he had been hired to access the kinds of people featured in his work, which predominantly focused on the criminal underworld.

“They used me to tell the kinds of stories they wanted, and then when the new bosses come in, I become a target, and they decided to make the reason they hired me a reason to throw doubt over all of my journalism,” Fazal said on his Instagram on Tuesday afternoon.

Most of the ABC’s editorial leadership has left or been replaced since he was hired. Fazal is the son of Afghan refugees and was a member of the Finks and Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang.

On Monday night, Fazal’s boss during his entire tenure at Four Corners, Matthew Carney, said he had inquired about allegations that the reporter had misrepresented an anonymous interviewee.

Media Watch later unmasked the source as a known associate of Fazal’s. In a statement to this masthead, Carney said he was unaware of Fazal’s personal relationship with the man, who featured in Fazal’s first Four Corners story Cocaine Nation in 2023 and, staff believed, in *Meth Highway * a year later.

Linton Besser, the veteran investigative journalist and Media Watch host, accused Fazal on Monday of having “coldly betrayed those who championed him”.

Fazal suggested his critics had actually betrayed the broadcaster, arguing that the identities of his sources had been exposed.

“They just keep going on attacking me, my work, my sources, and apparently I’m the one that’s betrayed the ABC,” Fazal said.

“Now that they got rid of me, I’m reduced to a fucking diversity hire,” he said. “Or is it really about people like me having no place in telling the public different sides of the story?”

Former Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour published a long piece in the Monthly this week detailing former colleagues’ concerns about Fazal, including from the very top of the organisation. One ABC source told Neighbour that his colleagues had found it hard to criticise his work at the time for fear of being seen not to support a “a young brown man”.

Fazal expanded his criticisms to what he said was the broadcaster’s wider obsession with “managing institutional risk”, claiming the saga surrounding his work was a sign of “reflexive impotence”.

“Confidentiality doesn’t mean there was no oversight. It means there are some things you don’t share widely because it might help get closer to the truth without putting people at risk,” he said.

“We all know that the problem in the joint is how they’ve been able to slowly replace ambition with bureaucracy. Instead of asking is this the best journalism we can produce, they’re asking is it legally safe? Will it generate complaints? Will it protect the organisation? Those questions do matter, but if they become the only questions, something important disappears.”

“It’s all about bureaucracy, and the result isn’t terrible journalism. It’s competent journalism, safe journalism, journalism that just doesn’t surprise anyone.”

The ABC was approached for comment. It has referred both episodes to its independent ombudsman.

Fazal was sacked by the ABC in May over a podcast he launched with underworld media figure Ryan Naumenko, which the broadcaster said did not give final approval over. Fazal has previously denied any wrongdoing relating to the podcast and has lodged an unfair dismissal case in the Fair Work Commission.

In 2024, this masthead published allegations Fazal had passed on threatening messages from the Alameddine crime organisation to the team behind the FriendlyJordies YouTube page. Fazal denied any wrongdoing and the ABC stood by him.

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