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The ABC’s cov­er­age of Israel – in par­tic­u­lar, its high­ly con­tro­ver­sial Q + A pro­gram which focused on the recent Israel-Hamas war – was the sub­ject of a high-lev­el meet­ing between the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ) and the ABC lead­er­ship at ABC head­quar­ters in Syd­ney on Mon­day, 21 June 2021.

It was attend­ed by ABC man­ag­ing direc­tor David Ander­son and his chief of staff Michael Rip­pon, and ECAJ pres­i­dent Jil­lian Segal, co-CEO Peter Wertheim and new­ly-appoint­ed ECAJ con­sul­tant Vic Alhad­eff. ABC chair Ita But­trose was also sched­uled to attend, but had suf­fered an injury and sent an apol­o­gy.

The meet­ing had been sought by the ECAJ in a detailed let­ter of com­plaint deliv­ered to the ABC Chair­man and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor short­ly after the pro­gram went to air.

The ECAJ let­ter com­plained of “a per­va­sive cul­ture of bias, if not antipa­thy, towards Israel and the main­stream Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, with­in the unit respon­si­ble for organ­is­ing and pro­duc­ing the Q + A pro­gram”.

It said that the pro­gram had “fea­tured an out­pour­ing of undi­lut­ed and uncon­test­ed false­hoods and vit­ri­ol from two pan­el­lists (one of whom seems to have her own page on the Q + A sec­tion of the ABC’s web­site, which describes her as ‘a Mus­lim of Pales­tin­ian and Egypt­ian her­itage’), with pas­sive sup­port from two oth­er pan­el­lists and only one lone voice, not from the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, swim­ming against the tide and try­ing to put the oth­er side of the argu­ment despite repeat­ed inter­rup­tions. The selec­tion of ques­tions from the audi­ence and of tweets that were screened was sim­i­lar­ly skewed.”

Point­ing to a pat­tern of con­duct over many years, the ECAJ stat­ed that the Q + A pro­gram “was mere­ly the lat­est unfor­tu­nate exam­ple of a long his­to­ry of exclu­sion of an authen­tic Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty view­point on Q + A and else­where by the ABC on mat­ters of vital con­cern to our com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing gross mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion or exclu­sion of the main­stream Jew­ish community’s per­spec­tive on mat­ters relat­ed to Israel. We empha­sise that the cul­ture of bias and exclu­sion against our com­mu­ni­ty is not lim­it­ed to the Q + A pro­gram. The ABC’s over­all news and cur­rent affairs cov­er­age of the armed con­flict between Israel and Hamas on this occa­sion, and in the past, is part of the same pat­tern.”

The let­ter added that “the urgency of our request for a meet­ing is due to the dra­mat­ic upsurge in anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents which have neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed on the safe­ty, secu­ri­ty and well­be­ing of Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties around the world, includ­ing Aus­tralia.”

Dur­ing the course of a wide-rang­ing dis­cus­sion, David Ander­son read­i­ly acknowl­edged that the Q + A pro­gram and the ABC’s news and cur­rent affairs cov­er­age of the con­flict had con­tained “many errors” for which he apol­o­gised.  He also acknowl­edged the valid­i­ty of the ECAJ’s ear­li­er detailed cri­tique of an “Explain­er” doc­u­ment that had been pub­lished on the ABC web­site at the start of hos­til­i­ties, before being cor­rect­ed. That mat­ter is still under inves­ti­ga­tion by the ABC com­plaints unit.

“The meet­ing was held in a very pos­i­tive spir­it and Mr Ander­son was keen to explore spe­cif­ic con­struc­tive steps to pre­vent a recur­rence of the prob­lems we raised and improve the qual­i­ty of the ABC’s news cov­er­age,” ECAJ Pres­i­dent Jil­lian Segal said after the meet­ing. “Despite the obvi­ous dif­fi­cul­ties, we have secured a com­mit­ment for fol­low-up meet­ings and engage­ment with both key ABC staff and lead­er­ship, and have rea­son to hope for a pro­duc­tive out­come.”

Con­tact
Peter Wertheim | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 588
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au| www.ecaj.org.au