Feelings have nothing to do with war reporting

Ramona Koval. Picture: Darren James

Speaking to journalism students in 2017 on “without fear or favour”, I said that the principle was not necessarily easy to follow and would not win you many friends. Example: I had interviewed the then head of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, for The Saturday Paper, and she clearly regretted her forthright comments.

She accused me of misquoting her, I furnished the recorded interview, which forced her to apologise for misleading the Senate. I saw a sea of baffled faces. What side was I on? In defending my reputation from the claims of a revered upholder of human rights, it was as if I had shot Bambi.

I suspect many of their cohort have signed the group letter now doing the rounds (a reprise of a 2021 letter calling on the media to abandon “both sides” reporting on Israel-Palestine) where journalists claim that, in effect, they should be permitted to write, broadcast, and narrowcast work that indulges their own partisan views on the Israel/Hamas war. Is this ‘without fear or favour’ or is it fear of being on the “wrong side of history”?

At a recent meeting of ABC executives with 200 of their journalists, (including many younger ones) who reportedly wanted to freely use the terms “genocide”, “occupation” and “ethnic cleansing” in their own reporting, they were rightly told no. But when some, with family or political allegiances, claimed they were upset by the reporting of the war, another executive agreed to go away and think about what might be done. What are they running, a kindergarten? They should have said feelings have nothing to do with reporting. Leave their feelings at home and if they can’t, then get another job where feelings can be the driver. Like folk singing.

Nine Entertainment have been forthright, saying that anyone signing the letter would be prohibited from reporting the war. But does this include reporting on the “war” here, where intimidating rallies are held in suburbs where Jews live, “gas the Jews” is chanted at the Sydney Opera House and Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi posts a photo (now deleted from her Insta account) of herself with a school student holding a sign urging the making of a cleaner world by removing dirty Jewish refuse?

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi standing and smiling beside a sign saying 'Keep the World clean' Picture: Instagram

The SMH/Age culture editor Osman Faruqi (Senator Faruqi’s son) signed the 2021 letter and wrote a pro-boycott op-ed during the 2022 Sydney Festival Israel boycott controversy. He’s entitled to his opinion but as an editor of a newspaper section should he have recently reported on the competing literary world group letters? The war isn’t just confined to a tiny piece of eastern Mediterranean land, it has spilled over to capital cities all over the world, to the streets, the campuses and even to local council meetings.

Hamas launched 10,000 rockets at Israel and ignited a global propaganda war on all of us by broadcasting their bestial October 7 massacre in Southern Israel.

They carefully staged Gaza as a media spectacle and flooded the world with their footage of the war. In this context the integrity of our journalists is vital. Have those who claim everyone’s feelings should be respected ever viewed the Hamas footage of the massacre’s blood-lust orgy of murders, mutilations, and the accounts of torchings and rapes?

Media companies must not allow themselves to become partisan combatants in this propaganda war, effectively serving the interest of a terrorist group, cheered on by useful idiots on their own staff.

Ramona Koval is a writer and was the staff elected ABC board director from 2002 to 2006.