ABC Alumni Limited represents a community of nearly 300 former staff and contracted employees of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). We support independent, ethical and free public media in Australia.
We are outraged at the continued insistence by Jillian Segal AO, Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, that the ABC and SBS, Australia’s most trusted news outlets, are contributing to antisemitism.
We believe that her proposed ‘solutions’, if implemented, would erode the public broadcasters’ independence, and with it the trust they currently enjoy among the vast majority of the Australian public.
Ms Segal writes in her most recent report, ‘Priorities’, that her office has received “many expressions of concern from the Australian Jewish community” that the coverage on the ABC and SBS relating to Israel and the conflict in the Middle East is “perceived as disproportionate, misleading or inaccurate.”
She gives no examples and no references in her report. Since October 2023, the ABC’s Ombudsman has upheld four out of thousands of complaints of bias or inaccuracy relating to the middle east received by her office. The Australian Communications and Media Authority, to which dissatisfied complainants can appeal, has upheld none.
Yet, based on anecdotal and clearly partisan “evidence” Ms Segal is calling for the abolition of the ABC and SBS Ombudsman positions and their replacement by an “independent” Ombudsman, appointed by the government of the day, not the ABC and SBS Boards, and reporting to who knows whom.
She is further calling for “an independent expert advisory panel appointed by the Australian Government, the ACMA or other independent body, to conduct a retrospective analysis of the public broadcasters’ news, current affairs and online reportage, over a fixed period … in the context of matters that may contribute to antisemitism in Australia.”
Once again, the Boards of the ABC and SBS would be entirely excluded from this process.
Ms Segal claims that the overly negative portrayal of Israel conveyed by the public broadcasters’ coverage contributes to antisemitism in Australia by a process she calls “conflation” – that is, the blaming of Australian Jews for the actions of the Israeli government and defence force.
We deplore such “conflation”. However, we suggest that the growth of antisemitism in Australia since 7 October 2023 owes far more to a perception that Israel’s reaction to the horrific Hamas assault of that date has been disproportionate, and that the majority of Australian Jewish organisations have been too reluctant to say so, than to the accurate and impartial coverage of the conflict by the public broadcasters.
We are of the view that Ms Segal’s continued denigration of the public broadcasters and their complaints systems is not only unjustified, but deeply damaging to Australia’s social cohesion.