ABC 7.30 political correspondent Laura Tingle has kicked off a debate here about traditional techniques requiring balance in news reporting.
Tingle was speaking about the ABC’s balance checklist provisions in reporting of the referendum on the Indigenous voice to parliament. She was answering an audience question on October 12 at the Sydney launch of journalist and lawyer David Marr’s new book, Killing for Country.
Only five days later, news consumers were treated to a spectacular example of the dangers of ditching traditional balance in news stories. Some of the world’s biggest media outlets swallowed false Hamas claims that Israel had bombed a hospital in northern Gaza, even though Israel had almost immediately said it had no record of any attacks by it at that time.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Racket News criticised The New York Times’s bungling of what was a failed missile attack from inside Gaza by Islamic Jihad. Taibbi wrote: “Newspapers in recent years have moved away from the ‘he said, she said’ rhetorical method critics now tell them is out of date in the moral-clarity era. In situations where you really aren’t sure of the facts, however, it’s the only way to go, and outlets are paying the price for moving away from the format.”
At least the NYT on October 23 issued a lengthy “Editors’ Note” admitting its mistake and concluding, “Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified.”
The same mistake was repeated in outlets across the world from the BBC to Al Jazeera and our own ABC. Al Jazeera English continued running the false claim even after its main Arabic channel had shown footage of the failed rocket launch from inside Gaza.
These mistakes underline a problem in journalism. Too many reporters quick to swallow Hamas lies now see their role as upholding moral virtue rather than reporting facts. Trouble is, they are too ill-informed to know where virtue lies.
Why has no Australian journalist since the hospital story mentioned that Hamas has a long history of attacking the Barzilai Hospital in the Israeli city of Ashkelon and has destroyed the children’s ward that treats Palestinian children from Gaza alongside Israeli children?
Anyone interested in the culture of young reporters should watch the question and answer session at the National Press Club last Wednesday with Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon. Some of the journalists there should be working for student newspapers.
Why do so few covering the events since the October 7 massacre of women and children in southern Israel point out all were murdered in Israel proper? These were not settlers encroaching on Palestinian land.
Why do so many journalists unquestioningly report Gaza casualty figures given by Hamas without acknowledging what US President Joe Biden did last week: these are numbers from a terrorist organisation? We know Hamas claimed 500 were killed at the Al-Ahli Hospital but Israel insists at most 50 died.
Patricia Karvelas on RN Breakfast on Friday allowed Minister for Workplace Relations Tony Burke to imply Israel was to blame for water shortages in Gaza. She failed to point to the large Hamas fuel stockpile in Gaza that could fuel the city’s desalination plants. Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, not Israel.
Why have we seen so few attempts by journalists here to ask protesting Muslims if they condemn the murders of October 7? Do these journalists privately believe Israel deserved it, even though Israel vacated Gaza in 2005?
Why the media focus on false claims of collective punishment by Israel? Israel has been urging civilians for weeks to move to Gaza’s south. Why would Gaza’s political leaders be threatening people if they do want to move to safer areas?
It’s the same reason Hamas has for two decades been launching its missiles at Israel from within schools, hospitals and mosques. Journalists need to reflect on how Hamas uses the suffering of Palestinians to win the public relations war in the West against Israel.
Why is Hamas prepared to risk thousands of Palestinian civilians’ lives but Israel has delayed its ground invasion for weeks in an effort to seek the release of Jewish hostages? Does Israel care more about Israeli lives than Hamas does about Palestinian lives?
Why do so many news broadcasters run footage of pro-Palestinian marchers around the world chanting “from the river to the sea’’ without pointing out what this means? Since the settlement of the 1948-49 war after Arab states rejected the UN partition, Israeli territory included land west of the so-called Green Line to the sea.
The pro-Palestinian chant effectively urges the destruction of Israel.
Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer got it right in a tweet on October 23: “There are 56 Muslim nations, 103 so-called Christian nations and one Jewish state. If you think one is too many … yes, exactly. I don’t need to spell it out.” It’s about anti-Semitism: Jew hatred.
Why have so few media outlets reported what Sharri Markson did on Sky News on Tuesday night last week when Hamas terrorists captured by the IDF admitted on camera that they were being paid $US10,000 each and each had been promised a free apartment for taking hostages? Does ignoring such a story imply journalists think paid brutality is OK if used against Jews?
Why did the ABC, criticised when its reporter Tom Joyner cast doubt on stories of Israeli babies being beheaded, not prominently report that footage from Hamas body cameras was shown to foreign journalists on Monday night to prove these atrocities?
And how does the left’s preferred narrative of Israel as an apartheid colonial state really sit given Arabs, Druze and Christians all vote alongside Jews in the Knesset?
Of course Palestinian lives matter. But if the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat could not deliver the “Two State” deal he and former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin won the 1994 Nobel prize for, can anyone really see West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas or Hamas delivering it?
This is the crux of the issue. Israel occupies Palestinian lands today after defeating Arab forces that refused to accept Israel’s boundaries as proposed by the UN in 1947. Jewish fighters in 1948-49 repelled attacking troops from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and the subsequent Green Line settling the conflict represented terms that cost Palestinians some landearmarked for them.
British Mandate Palestine included all of what is now Jordan. The original British plan was for the territory east of the Jordan River to be an Arab Palestinian State. The British backtracked because of Arab pressure against any Jewish state.
Israel occupied more Palestinian land after the 1967 Six Day War when it defeated Egypt, Syria and Jordan. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, it repelled Egypt and Syria.
In the face of so many conflicts, Israel pursued a Two State solution offering to hand much of this former Arab land back in return for peaceful coexistence.
Does anyone hear any Palestinian leader offering to stick to that deal now? Certainly not Hamas, whose original 1988 Charter clearly states its real aim is simply to kill Jews.
More Coverage
Join the conversation
ABC ignored ‘doctored’ audio concerns
ABC boss David Anderson admits the broadcaster's legal team ignored a letter raising concerns over audio depicting an Australian soldier shooting at unarmed civilians in Afghanistan.
Read more
Our journos vow: we will be fearless
The Australian’s leading journalists have pledged to continue their fearless reporting into the issues that lie within the ‘grey’ as they looked back at the debates waging within society and forward to how best to cover it.
Read more