THE ABC OF IMPARTIAL REPORTING: Bashing Israel bruises our public broadcaster’s rep

Loewenstein There’s a lot we don’t know about Australian-Israeli alleged spy Ben Zygier, other than there’s a grieving family and one of our friends and allies, Israel, known for its robust democracy and rigorous judicial system, appears to have caught him committing a serious criminal offence. We only know that because his lawyer said the matters with which he was charged were serious and because Israel is not in the habit of imprisoning its citizens without cause or legitimate process. SPIES LIKE US We’ve avoided writing about the matter til now because there’s little we could add and because we generally think there’s a great deal of double-standard, thinly veiled anti-Semitic, hysteria about Mossad, which we are pleased to know mostly does an exceptional job in keeping our fellow democracy Israel safe and protected from some rather seriously murderous foes. The fact that Mossad gets a lot of attention while larger Arab external security services get very little coverage says a lot about the prejudices of many who obsess about the Middle East, in Australia. Much of the Australian media has been appalling in its treatment of this story. As ever, the ABC has led the charge. THE ABC MATTERS MORE THAN EVER With even the best newspapers in trouble, commercial TV news coping with big changes too, the ABC is going to become more and more important, presenting all of politics (other than the extreme-left) with a serious problem. Taxpayers are comfortable enough with a public broadcaster that dresses to the Left but will increasingly become troubled by it if they’re the only well-resourced show in town. The AM/PM programmes are meant to be one of the ABC’s most serious, heavy-hitting and best-resourced news efforts. The ABC Saturday AM programme’s willingness to trot out the odious Antony Loewenstein to speak on Israel, as if he’s an impartial expert on it (rather than someone who agitates for the destruction of the Jewish state), is among its most egregious misjudgments in recent times. SANITY CHECKING OUTRAGE Loewenstein is not a mainstream representative of Jewish community opinion. He is an extreme leftist, not just on the Middle East, where is the Israel-hating Nazi-style boycott-brigade’s token Jewish voice. He says hateful things most non-Jewish Israel-haters outside a skinhead mosh-pit wouldn’t dare. Last year, he said in a public forum that six million Jews should die to achieve the Palestinian state he craves. This year he is addressing a Marxism conference in Melbourne, alongside John Pilger. He was described as hailing from ‘Independent Australian Jewish Voices,’ a tiny fringe group that barely exists and has very little support in the Jewish community in Australia. Lowenstein worked at Fairfax for a time but was too red-hot even for them. He has written an Israel-hating book, has a blog, but has little impact in journalism except where favourably quoted on Stormfront and other fanatically anti-Israel websites. Loewenstein’s assertion that Australia’s highly-regarded and academically strongly performing schools are somehow recruiting grounds for Israel’s security agencies or military went unchallenged despite its hysterical and silly nature. Liz Jackson, the show’s host, seemed desperately willing to hear the outrageous canard that Jewish schools are training grounds or propagandising units for Israeli militarism or espionage. She should have perhaps thought for a minute ‘Would I accept these assertions as sensible if articulated by someone from the Ku Klux Klan or Jihad Weekly or Nazis of Newtown?’ There wasn’t a moment of scepticism or sanity-checking. Jackson just blindly accepted his every mad utterance. Loewenstein went to suggest or imply that any number of Australian Jews moving to Israel would join the Mossad which has, according to that usually reliable anti-Israel source, Wikipedia, has all of around 1000 staff. From what we’ve read elsewhere, it’s actually quite a bit smaller. There are 7.7 million Israeli citizens. So chances are very few Australians moving to Israel are joining the elite spy service, in any capacity. That it is necessary to point this out shows how silly the discussion prompted by the ABC’s reporting on Ben Zygier has become. And yet the fanatic Loewenstein suggested otherwise, that Aussie Jewish schools are zoned to Mossad like Dimboola was to Essendon back in the day. Sadly, the award-winning ABC journalist Liz Jackson, didn’t think to challenge the hysterical nonsense. Not a single moment of scepticism. If someone had asserted that all Anglican schools train their pupils for a martini-vodka drinking, shaken-not-stirred life of emigration back to England for service in MI6, we suspect Ms Jackson might have questioned the sanity of her guest and would certainly have tested his silly claims. WHAT DOES THE ABC STAND FOR? That this kind of outrage occurred, and went unchallenged, is a serious problem, not just for Australian Jews, not just for the many Australians who see Israel as an exemplar of innovation, liberty and freedom in a part of the world not known for those things, but also for those who support public broadcasting and want it to be truly politically independent. The ABC’s reputation for anti-Israel bias is reasonably well-established and seems to be accepted as part of its ruling ideology. Pretending Loewenstein is representative of Jewish community or any other mainstream community opinion does the ABC’s reputation even more damage. The publicly stated goals, aspirations and standards of the ABC do not allow for this kind of bias to stand. There was no signal to the audience of Loewenstein’s marginal role or of explaining this in terms of the requirements of section 2 of the Code of Practice: ‘The ABC should make reasonable efforts, appropriate in the context, to signal to audiences gradations in accuracy, for example by querying interviewees, qualifying bald assertions, supplementing the partly right and correcting the plainly wrong’. The interviewer simply went along with Loewenstein’s criticisms and opinions without question, even embellishing them. Or of section 4 which mandates impatiality, balance and fair treatment. Were the facts gathered ‘with due impartiality? This is the only interview which comprises this segment which presents only one side of the picture without any opportunity to respond. Section 5.3 of the Code of Practice states: ‘Where allegations are made about a person or organisation, make reasonable efforts in the circumstances to provide a fair opportunity to respond’. THE ABC MAKES CLAIMS WORTHY OF NEO-NAZIS While many in the Jewish community might have wanted to avoid blundering into an issue where the facts about Ben Zygier weren’t known and where a family’s grief was still raw, there could have been any number of people involved in Jewish schools as educators or students who could have, from their own direct experience, contrasted with Loewenstein’s wild speculations, rebutted the fanatic’s claims. It didn’t happen, leaving a supposedly serious ABC programme repeating a vile and absurd lie worthy of the Stormfront Nazi website. The ABC luvvies would be the first to tut-tut about the anti-Islamic MP Geert Wilders’ obnoxious views or some skinhead yob with Hitler tats. And yet views of a similar nature are broadcast quite willingly by them, as long as the proponent identifies as being an ultra-lefty. There’s a lot we don’t yet know about what happened with Ben Zygier. It may well be best for the security of Israel that we don’t know. What we do know is that the ABC can no longer expect to operate in promotion of the biases of some of its staff. It can expect more — not less — democratic accountability to its own publicly expressed standards. Tony Abbott’s election later this year won’t change much based on how little changed under Howard. But what most certainly will change everything are the big changes going on in the news market that could leave state-sponsored news operating largely alone, should newspapers and commercial TV news continue to decline and fail in the long run. The far-Left ought not imagine that a democracy could continue to tolerate the lack of diversity of opinion and a genuine balance reflecting community views at the ABC, in that event. They should realise that the conservative side of politics and most people on the Labor side share these concerns. It’s not just about the Middle East, either, it runs much deeper than that. When a public institution, dependent on taxpayer funds, offends so many, then change, willing or otherwise, strikes us as inevitable, eventually. The ABC’s performance on Israel is a symbol of how well — or poorly — its doing. We were greatly encouraged that SBS broadcast the very confronting and emotionally charged Israeli drama Prisoners of War that reminded those Australians lucky to see it just how diverse, fascinating, much like us and on edge Israel can be. So there are signs of change. And hope. But based on Saturday AM and Liz Jackson’s effort, they have a very long way to go before the publicly funded broadcaster is actually broadly representative of public opinion on many issues, including the Middle East. If it continues this way, there will inevitably be a confrontation between the self-appointed and actually elected representatives of those who provide billions in public money to the ABC.