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The Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, the peak rep­res­ent­at­ive body of the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, has lodged a formal complaint with FreeTV Australia, the industry body that rep­res­ents the Free-to-air Aus­trali­an TV network, about an interview that was aired on Ten Network’s ‘The Project’ on Wednesday 5 August 2020.

One of the Project’s pan­el­lists, Waleed Aly, inter­viewed Beirut-based pho­to­graph­er João Sousa about the massive explosion that rocked Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, the previous evening.  The blast and the shock waves from it resulted in at least 158 deaths, 5,000 injuries, US$10 – 15 billion in property damage and an estimated 300,000 people made homeless.

The blast occurred after a fire broke out and ignited about 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate — equi­val­ent to an explosion of about 1,155 tonnes of TNT — that had been con­fis­cated by the Lebanese gov­ern­ment from the abandoned ship MV Rhosus and stored in Beirut’s port without proper safety measures for more than six years.  This was despite repeated warnings from the Director-General of Beirut Customs about “the extreme danger posed by the storage of the goods in the warehouse under inap­pro­pri­ate weather.”  (‘A vast store of explosive material sat in Beirut for years despite repeated warnings’, Wash­ing­ton Post, August 5, 2020).

When asked by Aly if it is “widely accepted by people there” that the cause of the explosion was ammonium nitrate, Sousa responded by saying that “99 per cent of the people I’ve spoken with” do not believe this explan­a­tion, and that “people are more likely to believe that this was an attack, a military attack, possibly by Israel”.

Sousa failed to point to any facts or evidence to support this view. Aly failed in his duty as a current affairs inter­view­er to question Sousa about the basis for his view, beyond Sousa’s mere sub­ject­ive impres­sion that “people are always expecting something like this to happen”.

As it has turned out, Sousa was utterly wrong not only about the cause of the blast but also about the per­cep­tions of the people in Lebanon.  Since the interview went to air, Beirut has been further rocked by massive anti-gov­ern­ment demon­stra­tions, with the demon­strat­ors blaming the explosion on cor­rup­tion and incom­pet­ence by their own gov­ern­ment, not Israel: ‘Beirut explosion: Anti-gov­ern­ment protests break out in city’, BBC News, 7 August 2020.

“Aly gave a platform for the airing of a baseless con­spir­acy theory, and then failed to contest or challenge it.  It was bad journ­al­ism, and grossly irre­spons­ible to allow Sousa without con­tra­dic­tion or challenge to stoke baseless suspicion, fear and hatred in the Aus­trali­an community”, said ECAJ co-CEO, Peter Wertheim.

The ECAJ complaint states:

“The cause of the explosion in Beirut, and the popular belief in the city about the cause, were ‘material facts’ about the story within the meaning of clause 3.3.2 of the Free TV Com­mer­cial Tele­vi­sion Industry Code of Practice 2018 (“Accuracy and Fairness”).  Network 10 therefore had an oblig­a­tion to present that content “accur­ately”, as required by clause 3.3.1 of the Code.  Pursuant to clause 3.3.3, Network 10 “must make reas­on­able efforts to correct or clarify sig­ni­fic­ant and material errors of fact that are readily apparent or have been demon­strated to the Licensee’s reas­on­able sat­is­fac­tion in a timely manner”.”

The morning after the interview went to air, the interview segment was deleted from The Project’s social media channels. In a statement, a spokes­per­son said, “The Project rejects the sug­ges­tion there is any evidence the explosion in Beirut was a military attack. As our report last night clearly stated, this is a tragic accident resulting from the mis­hand­ling of dangerous chemicals.”

“This was far too little in the cir­cum­stances”, Wertheim said.  “The Project has an audience of several hundred thousand people, many of whom would not be aware of the spokesperson’s statement.  Further, the spokes­per­son does not have anything like the public profile of Waleed Aly. Nor was there any acknow­ledge­ment of the harm done by the airing of baseless suspicion, fear and hatred in the Aus­trali­an community.”

The ECAJ complaint calls for Aly to provide “an unqual­i­fied, unre­served retrac­tion and apology on-air during the program, and at the earliest oppor­tun­ity”.

Contact
Peter Wertheim AM | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 588
e: [email protected]| www.ecaj.org.au