MEDIA RELEASE: ABC apologises for inaccuracies in interview of Rev Dr Stephen Sizer on RN Breakfast

MEDIA RELEASE: ABC apologises for inaccuracies in interview of Rev Dr Stephen Sizer on RN Breakfast

The fol­low­ing media release con­cerns the ABC’s apol­o­gy for inac­cu­ra­cies and for the omis­sion of mate­r­i­al con­text that occurred dur­ing an inter­view on RN Break­fast  of Rev Dr Stephen Siz­er, which was aired on Good Fri­day. To down­load this media release in PDF for­mat, click here.


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Interview of Rev Dr Stephen Sizer on RN Breakfast on Good Friday, 30 March 2018

28 May, 2018

The ABC has writ­ten to the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ) apol­o­gis­ing for inac­cu­ra­cies and for the omis­sion of mate­r­i­al con­text that occurred dur­ing an inter­view of Rev Dr Stephen Siz­er which was aired on RN Break­fast on Good Fri­day, and the eve of the Jew­ish fes­ti­val of Pesach (Passover), on 30 March 2018.
In a let­ter to ABC Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Michelle Guthrie, on 5 April 2018, the ECAJ com­plained that the inter­view­er, David Rut­ledge, had under­played the grav­i­ty of accu­sa­tions of anti­semitism that had been made against Siz­er and “pro­ject­ed a gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive atti­tude towards Siz­er from the out­set, which result­ed in a soft inter­view that allowed Sizer’s self-serv­ing, inac­cu­rate answers to pass unchal­lenged.”
The ECAJ com­plaint alleged that “David Rut­ledge allowed Siz­er to get away with claim­ing that none of the speak­ers at one of the con­fer­ences he addressed in Tehran in 2014 were crit­i­cised as anti­se­mit­ic. In fact, as was report­ed at the time, the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment-run Press TV described the con­fer­ence as intend­ing to “unveil the secrets behind the dom­i­nance of the Zion­ist lob­by over the US and EU pol­i­tics”, with one ses­sion devot­ed to exam­in­ing “Mossad’s role in the 9/11 Coup d’Etat”, and anoth­er dis­cussing “9/11 and the Holo­caust as pro-Zion­ist ‘Pub­lic myths’ ”. In ques­tion­ing Siz­er, David Rut­ledge gave only par­tial infor­ma­tion about, and under-played the full extent of, Sizer’s own state­ments legit­imis­ing out­landish con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that blame Israel for the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror attacks in the US. The audi­ence was not informed that the link which Siz­er post­ed on his Face­book page in 2015 was to an arti­cle enti­tled “9/11 Israel did it”, and that Siz­er had sub­se­quent­ly pub­licly apol­o­gised for post­ing it. There was no men­tion of the fact that Sizer’s Church in the UK had been so embar­rassed by his pub­lic state­ments that it had extract­ed an under­tak­ing from him to stop com­ment­ing on the sub­ject while he remained a vic­ar, an under­tak­ing which Siz­er broke.”
In response, the ABC wrote, “The inter­view includ­ed infor­ma­tion to indi­cate that Dr Siz­er holds con­tro­ver­sial views; is a crit­ic of Israel; at times has been accused of anti-Semi­tism and that his activ­i­ties could be used by explic­it­ly anti-Semit­ic groups. How­ev­er, Dr Sizer’s mis­char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the Tehran con­fer­ence which was not chal­lenged or cor­rect­ed in the inter­view, togeth­er with the lack of infor­ma­tion on his repeat­ed cen­sure by his Church was not in keep­ing with the ABC’s edi­to­r­i­al stan­dard for accu­ra­cy: the inter­view did not present these issues with the nec­es­sary mate­r­i­al con­text.”
“The pro­gram has append­ed an Editor’s Note to the web­site and pro­vid­ed rel­e­vant links to fur­ther infor­ma­tion (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/good-friday‑8:05/9601212). The ABC apol­o­gis­es for this lapse and would like to assure you that this find­ing has been dis­cussed with the pro­gram area and RN man­age­ment, and a sum­ma­ry will be pub­lished on the ABC web­site”
The fol­low­ing note has now been includ­ed on the page of the ABC web­site that relates to the pro­gram that was aired on ABC RN on 30 March 2018:

“NOTE: Pre­sen­ter David Rut­ledge acknowl­edged to the audi­ence that Dr Sizer’s views are con­tro­ver­sial, that he has been accused of anti-Semi­tism and that he attend­ed a con­fer­ence in Tehran in 2014, which has been crit­i­cized for includ­ing speak­ers with anti-Semit­ic affil­i­a­tions. How­ev­er, the ABC accepts that the inter­view did not pro­vide suf­fi­cient con­text for lis­ten­ers to ade­quate­ly under­stand the extent of the con­tro­ver­sies. The ABC acknowl­edges that the Tehran con­fer­ence did include anti-Semit­ic ele­ments, and infor­ma­tion on the Angli­can Church’s cen­sure of Dr Siz­er can be found here.”

Com­ment­ing on the ABC response, ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim wel­comed the ABC’s acknowl­edge­ment of inac­cu­ra­cies and omis­sion of mate­r­i­al con­text, and its apol­o­gy, but added, “Sad­ly, this will come too late to undo the false, indeed poi­so­nous, impres­sions giv­en to many ABC lis­ten­ers to the pro­gram who heard the inter­view but will not be aware of the ABC’s admis­sion of error and apol­o­gy”.
“The ABC has also failed to appre­ci­ate the grav­i­ty of the wrong done when David Rut­ledge took it upon him­self to tell Siz­er, and the audi­ence, “I accept you are not an anti­semite”, instead of allow­ing the audi­ence to draw its own con­clu­sions. The ABC has point­ed to David Rutledge’s aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions and said that the ABC’s edi­to­r­i­al stan­dards per­mit­ted him to pro­vide his own analy­sis. How­ev­er, David Rut­ledge pro­vid­ed no analy­sis at all, only his own unsup­port­ed asser­tion. There is a big dif­fer­ence.”
Wertheim also crit­i­cised the ABC’s fail­ure to address specif­i­cal­ly the ECAJ’s com­plaint that “the ABC audi­ence is sure­ly enti­tled to know what Chris­t­ian Zion­ism is from the point of view of a knowl­edge­able and artic­u­late expo­nent, not mere­ly from the point of view of a harsh and dis­cred­it­ed crit­ic”.
“We are now con­sid­er­ing pur­su­ing these unre­solved aspects of our com­plaint with the Aus­tralian Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Media Author­i­ty”, he con­clud­ed.

Anton Block
Pres­i­dent
Peter Wertheim
Co-CEO

Con­tact:
Peter Wertheim AM | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au | www.ecaj.org.au

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