Open letter – MEAA, retrieved 24 November 2023
Letter from journalists to Australian media outlets
Israel’s devastating bombing campaign and media blockade in Gaza threatens newsgathering and press freedom in an unprecedented fashion. Newsrooms around the world have a duty to cover these events with integrity, transparency and rigour.
As of November 23, more than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed – including roughly 6,000 children – by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis. Included in the mounting death toll are at least 53 journalists – 46 Palestinians, 3 Lebanese and 4 Israelis – according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which it says is the deadliest conflict for journalists since it began tracking deaths in 1992.
As reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and other workers in newsrooms around Australia, we are appalled at the slaughter of our colleagues and their families and the apparent targeting of journalists by the Israeli government, which constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
We join hundreds of our colleagues in the US, Reporters Without Borders, the International Federation of Journalists and others in calling for an end to attacks on journalists and journalism itself. We also call for an end to violence against civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon; the perpetrators of crimes against journalists and civilians be held to account; and Australian newsroom leaders to be as clear-eyed in their coverage of atrocities committed by Israel as they are of those committed by Hamas. We stand by our Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Jewish and Israeli colleagues during a time that is personally and professionally confronting for them. The rise in both Islamophobia and antisemitism has ripple effects for those communities worldwide.
It is our duty as journalists to hold the powerful to account, to deliver truth and full context to our audiences, and to do so courageously without fear of political intimidation. Audiences are viewing much of this war through the lens of social media, fuelling suspicion of the mainstream media’s ability to properly inform audiences of events on the ground. We risk losing the trust of our audiences if we fail to apply the most stringent journalistic principles and cover this conflict in full.
We – journalists from across the Australian media landscape – call on Australian newsrooms to undertake these steps to improve coverage:
1. Adhere to truth over ‘both-sidesism’. Both-sidesism is not balanced or impartial reporting; it acts as a constraint on truth by shrouding the enormous scale of the human suffering currently being perpetrated by Israeli forces. The immense and disproportionate human suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza should not be minimised.
2. Centre the human tragedy in the coverage of the conflict. Human-focused coverage can include, as examples, daily updates on the civilian death tolls, sharing the profiles and stories of the lives lost and highlighting the humanitarian catastrophe.
3. Apply as much professional scepticism when prioritising or relying on uncorroborated Israeli government and military sources to shape coverage as is applied to Hamas. The Israeli government is also an actor in this conflict, with mounting evidence it is committing war crimes and a documented history of sharing misinformation. The Israeli government’s version of events should never be reported verbatim without context or fact-checking. This is our basic responsibility as journalists.
4. Give adequate coverage to credible allegations of war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, and don’t avoid using the term “Palestine” where appropriate.
5. Provide historical context when referencing the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The conflict did not start on October 7 and it is the media’s responsibility to ensure audiences are fully informed. Important contextual references include:
a. the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their native lands in 1948 to make way for the state of Israel
b. the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel since 1967, including that the UN deemed Gaza an Israeli-occupied territory even after Israel’s withdrawal from the enclave in 2005
c. the roughly 5,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, including around 150 children, thousands of whom are held without charge and many of whom are tortured
6. Provide full and fair coverage of Australia’s growing anti-war movement, including the large weekly protests in capital cities, and the traumatising impact of the conflict on Arab, Muslim and Jewish communities.
7. Be transparent about journalists who have been on all-expenses paid trips to Israel organised by pro-Israeli government groups. It is essential for audience transparency that reports include disclosures of a journalist’s participation in all-expenses paid trips to Israel. We also urge all Australian journalists from hereon to reject offers of paid trips to the Middle East.
8. Trust Australian journalists of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Jewish backgrounds to do their jobs. Diversity is an asset in newsrooms and should be harnessed to enrich coverage. Journalists with identities that intersect with a live issue bring insights and perspectives otherwise unattainable from a disconnected, privileged vantage point.
Signed,
National Media Section Committee – Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance
ABC MEAA National House Committee
Guardian MEAA House Committee
Lachlan Abbott
Khaled Al Khawaldeh
Drew Ambrose
Tito Ambyo
Cheyne Anderson
Tony Armstrong
Kate Atkinson
Tahlea Aualiitia
Meghna Bali
Jordyn Beazley
Jarni Blakkarly
Matilda Boseley
Yaara Bou Melhem
Nino Bucci
Mairi Burford
Sian Cain
Caitlin Cassidy
Nick Chesterfield
George Clarke
Olivia Cleal
Eelemarni Close-Brown
Lachlan Coady
Stephanie Convery
Marni Cordell
Angus Dalton
Christopher Dengate
Matt Dennien
Imogen Dewey
Abbir Dib
Billie Eder
Ben Eltham
Farid Farid
Lisa Favazzo
Jordan Fennell
Jan Fran
Nell Geraets
Peter Greste
Bianca Hall
Madeline Hayman-Reber
Doug Hendrie
Miles Herbert
Jess Hill
Soaliha Iqbal
Lauren Ironmonger
Antoun Issa
Carla Jaeger
Kara Jensen-Mackinnon
Greg Jericho
Rae Johnston
Simone Amelia Jordan
Neha Kale
Fiona Katauskas
Bernard Keane
Cait Kelly
Jo Khan
Joe Koning
Jon Kudelka
Royce Kurmelovs
Lee Tran Lam
Jackson Langford
Antoinette Lattouf
Benjamin Law
Patrick Lenton
Esther Linder
Samantha Lock
Antony Loewenstein
Donna Lu
Sarah Malik
Jim Malo
Rebekah Manibog
Laura Masia
Melissa Maykin
Amy McQuire
Alex Mitchell
Scott Mitchell
Rick Morton
Maher Mughrabi
Laura Murphy-Oates
Joshua Nicholas
Bianca Nogrady
Bernadette Nunn
Firstdog Onthemoon
Miki Perkins
Issy Phillips
Jennetta Quinn-Bates
Mostafa Rachwani
Jared Richards
Arielle Richards
Derek Rose
Najma Sambul
Belinda Smith
Jeff Sparrow
Angus Thomson
Brian Thomson
Noel Towell
Kasun Ubayasiri
Alan Vaarwerk
Marnie Vinall
Calla Wahlquist
Max Walden
Marisa Wikramanayake
Cathy Wilcox
Emily Wind
Rachel Withers
Kat Wong
Mohamad Youssef
Stevie Zhang
Anastasia Ugurluyan
November 25, 2023 at 12:33
Thank you to the journalists and the MEAA for this open letter about the severely biased reporting of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I remain appalled and astounded at the severity of the bias in Australian news services of all types, and their reporting of the genocidal and homicidal leadership of Israel.
ABC Radio is the only service wherein I have heard some balanced coverage. The rest of the print press and newsrooms are atrociously biased and pro-Israeli in all their coverage. Our highly concentrated media ownership in this country is always presenting right-wing and extreme propaganda, but this rises to the level of complicity in the frenzied genocide of the Palestinian people.
Never once have I seen the major newspapers report on the history of Gaza and occupied territories by Israel and its settlers. Never have I heard or read about the shocking genocidal policies of the Israeli government as adequately reported in any type of balanced or unbiased reporting that they perpetrate against the Palestinian people.
Journalists of every persuasion and news service need to stand up and tell the truth about all this complicity in the killing of innocent people who are unarmed, who are just ordinary civilians being slaughtered en masse by a genocidal Israeli government. How blind does anyone need to be to see what horrors are being perpetrated against these people?
When will Israel be happy in the name of destroying Hamas? There appears to be zero strategy around finding Hamas fighters and bringing them to justice. With Israel there’s just an indiscriminate bombing and killing and destruction campaign to eliminate all Palestinians, their homes, their infrastructure, their food sources, their health facilities – and the list goes on and on.
We watched and listened to extreme propaganda by Israel and its supporters to silence any dissenting voices, with anyone daring to tell the truth being labelled as a holocaust sympathiser and an anti-Semite racist who should be removed from the face of the earth.
Democratic societies need to do a great deal better than being complicit in homicidal and genocidal mania perpetrated by the Israeli government and its supporters.
Jennifer Smith
November 25, 2023 at 16:02
“We – journalists from across the Australian media landscape – call on Australian newsrooms to undertake these steps to improve coverage.” While it provides instruction on how journalists should improve their coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, the letter itself reflects media bias.
The ironic subtext of the entire letter is that journalists are not doing their job properly, and therefore should not be trusted.
Thinker
November 25, 2023 at 16:49
The core issue here is the extremely vainglorious Israeli attitude of divine superiority as purportedly written in ancient texts of questionable origin.
Here’s a list of a few of the wickedly cruel causes behind Palestine’s exploding pressure cooker through the eventually white-hot channel of Hamas. It was the continuous impositions of evils by Israel that produced Hamas. No evils – no Hamas. Look hereunder at this history and realise that Israel’s stinking attitudes set up one of hell’s biggest factories.
It seems to me that Israel is maliciously pulverising the whole of Gaza to avoid paying contractors to go in later to clear the land of nearly everything Palestinian, including its people, the whole of whose territory Israel demands for its chest-thumping, grand-standing, infinitely arrogant “We are the victims” lying self.
Who would have thought that Holocaust One would have been so quickly followed by Holocaust Two? Who would have thought that Holocaust Two would be inflicted so viciously on innocents by the very descendants of the survivors of Holocaust One?
Israel, no longer a valid subset of humanity, has learned nothing. Its limitless conceit started this problem illegally in 1948, and now its complicitly selfish, grovelling and gutless Western supporters, such as Australia’s Liberal Party, have also become a world abomination.