I know all about Murdoch stunts. I’ve been a victim of one

On the face of it, news of some Daily Telegraph employees trying to goad employees in a pro-Palestinian restaurant into conflict is just another stunt.

What’s wrong with this set-up? A man walks into a cafe with a Star of David on his cap. Nearby, his co-conspirators (let’s not dignify them by calling them journalists) wait for an eruption. In the Daily Telegraph newsroom, the project was called “undercoverjew”. I love the fact that there are some News Corp employees who are refuseniks. But on this project was the ever co-operative Danielle Gusmaroli, photographer Rohan Kelly, who everyone tells me just wanted to die, and a videographer who had been at the newsroom for precisely two weeks. “He’s not doing well,” a colleague says.

Cairo Takeaway in Enmore Road, Newtown, the scene of the Daily Telegraph’s attempted stunt.Credit: Anna Kucera

This project should have been called entrapment. The media union, the MEAA, has a code of ethics – and this assignment fails across multiple criteria. News Corp’s endemic resistance to ethical practice is a blight on our democracy. Think fake sheikh. Think Milly Dowler. Think the closure of News of the World. Read the report of the Leveson inquiry. Then read the interview with Murdoch’s former favourite son James in The Atlantic.

It’s an embarrassment to me as a journalist and an insult to me as a reader of both the Telegraph and The Australian. The editor of The Daily Telegraph, Ben English, who oversaw this project, has been in meetings with his fellow News Corp editors for two days. Will this lack of ethics top the agenda? Doubt it. But as one of English’s senior colleagues told me, it’s a waste of resources to encourage people to be antisemitic. There’s already plenty of it about.

As Crikey’s Daanyal Saeed discovered, The Daily Telegraph’s internal planning system provides insight into how “journalists” plotted the story.

They detail an aim of reporting “what it’s like being Jewish in Sydney” and secretly filming with video glasses. The system notes also outline the Telegraph’s intention to send the man into various neighbourhoods to film people’s reactions.

It’s not the first time News Corp has pulled a stunt. These stunts can have serious long-term consequences. I know because they tried one on me.

Back in 2014, I was the undergraduate journalism co-ordinator at the University of Technology, Sydney. Shock jock Sharri Markson went “undercover” (there’s that word again), pretended to be a journalism student and attended lectures to uncover the “lies” we academics spread about her boss. She did the same at the University of Sydney. She ended up writing three days of utter rubbish, and I was on the receiving end of numerous calls from concerned parents.

And, boy, did we tell those “lies”. We invited students to think about whether it’s important to speak truth to power. We asked students whether it was journalism to run page one after page one, campaigning for one side of politics. My name was dragged into News Corp sludge, despite Markson failing to attend a single lecture of mine. In those days, I had a pretty good memory and might have wondered where that ageing student came from.

Steph Harmon, then of Junkee now at The Guardian, wrote at the time: “At the end of the stint, Markson was outraged by what journalism students were being taught; that unbiased media plays a crucial role in the healthy functioning of democracy; that the government’s media policy occasionally favours corporate interests; that media ownership can affect the bias of the newspapers; and that News Corp – her employer – was a powerful company with interests in and an impact on how the government is run.”

The wonderful part was the response from students. Basically, Sharri, you are full of it, was the summary.

And that’s the person who will now run Sky’s Antisemitism Summit. Markson has declared Australia must “break the cycle” of antisemitism and uncover what needs to be done to end acts of antisemitic violence in the community.

Who will be at the “summit”? News is taking every opportunity it can to boost the chances of the Coalition, so obviously Peter Dutton and John Howard. These men are no fans of multiculturalism of any kind. Think “One Australia”. Think African gangs. Think Lebanese refugees.

Guests of the summit also include Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus (poor bloke, who’s already had to deal with Dutton’s deceptions) and NSW Premier Chris Minns, who understands why he must court the Murdoch menace. But a word of warning to Dreyfus and Minns; please, take care.

I’ll tell the summit one thing for free that could be done – stop provoking conflict. Stop encouraging hateful behaviour. People are doing it off their own bat, without you trying to make it worse. Swear to God, nearly 40 years ago I had a dinner where one of the guests cast a slur on Jews. She said it was only a joke. I asked her to leave. It made for an awkward few minutes while she failed to wait my anger out. She’d still be waiting.

This behaviour isn’t going anywhere. Has been there for centuries. It’s embedded in slang. Don’t encourage it. Don’t fuel it.

As I wrote last week in a review of Peter Beinart’s new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, there’s a link between military operations (also known as war) conducted against Palestinians by Israel and the resultant rise in antisemitic behaviours. Three studies all found a clear correlation – including one paper by Deakin University academic Matteo Vergani and others that examined 673 incidents between October 2013 and September 2017, well before this current razing of Gaza.

No one needs News Corp’s help in spreading discord. No one. It’s here already. It’s fuelled by stunts such as these. As for the summit, it will be pure cheerleading for the Coalition, and I fear Dreyfus will bear the brunt of News Corp’s disappointment with Labor.

Sure, I’m disappointed in Labor. But I’m terrified of the Coalition. They like Jews this week because they can see how we can be exploited. What happens if they get elected? Maybe an entirely different story.

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