Special Envoy Jillian Segal has slammed ABC and SBS at the Royal Commission into Antisemitism for anti-Israel bias and called for a media monitor to vet coverage. Stephanie Tran reports.
Giving evidence to the Royal Commission on Thursday, Antisemitism Envoy Jillian Segal lamented that reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza “have created an impression of great negativity about Israel”.
“It’s the perception of the Jewish community feeling constantly that they are being faced with reporting about the Middle East, about Gaza, and about Israel in a way that paints Israel constantly in a negative light,” she said
Segal said there was a “disproportionate” number of stories critical of Israel.
Sad for everyone
“There are going to be examples on both sides of activities in a war, which all you know is very sad for everyone, involving you know unfortunate loss of life. But it’s the preponderance of the focus … on the behaviour of Israel, as opposed to the behaviour of Hamas.”
Counsel assisting the Commission challenged Segal’s criticism of the broadcasters, noting that since October 7, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) had not found the ABC or SBS to have breached broadcasting codes in relation to their coverage.
Segal conceded that ACMA “haven’t found a great deal of inaccuracy”.
“I do concede that they haven’t found a great deal of inaccuracy, but it’s the more complex, nuanced issues of prioritisation, impartiality, and objectivity and balance that I’m concerned to achieve,” she said.
Segal argued that the public broadcasters should devote more coverage to positive stories about Israel.
“We should find a way where they also run positive stories,” she said.
“They could run positive stories about other things Israel is doing, the amazing startup nation, things like that. They very rarely do that. There is no attempt at that part of the agenda.”
SBS too
Discussing reports that Israel was starving children in Gaza, Segal described them as “a very negative story” and questioned whether broadcasters should seek to balance such reporting with stories portraying Israel more positively.
Segal said that balance was “very complicated” but “if you wanted balance after that negative story should there have been a very positive story about what was positively in the Middle East to feed children?”
She said there should be “skepticism in relation to some information emanating from Gaza” and called on the ABC factcheck UN reports and “not just report it as if it was undoubted fact the first item and the news”.
Segal also criticised the SBS’s reporting on the death toll in Gaza.
“The statistics have now been reported as having not distinguished between combatants and non-combatants, and therefore were inflated, but my point is that they were put out there as statistics by a health ministry, as we understand health industries being objective, organised structures within part of Hamas,” she said.
Monitor public broadcasters, adopt IHRA definition
Segal proposed forming an “independent” committee to monitor the ABC and SBS.
“That it is a committee that is appointed without the community, as long as they are people who are aware of the and understanding of modern day anti-Semitism and modern day hatreds.”
She said the existing ombudsman and ACMC were “without teeth” as they do “not have the powers to impose or require reports to be taken offline”.
Segal urged the public broadcasters to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
“It would enable the reporters to better understand the conflation because it would be ‘are you seeking to make the point so much that Israel is different in its fighting at the war to other wars that have been fought by Australia, by America etc.?’ … So it would just help them in understanding it,” she said.
ABC editorial director Gavin Fang said the broadcaster had deliberately chosen not to adopt the definition because of concerns it would undermine their independence.
“The IHRA definition, the examples in the definition in particular, are contested,” Fang said.
“It is important for us to maintain not just our independence, but the perception of independence … adopting a definition that’s contested would not help us with both the perception of independence and our independence more broadly.”
Amanda Wicks, SBS’s director of news and current affairs, said the broadcaster neither “accepts nor rejects” the definition.
Wicks said SBS recognised the IHRA definition as “an important definition recognised by many”, but said the broadcaster did not determine for itself whether conduct was antisemitic.
“We are only ever reporting on antisemitism when it is determined to be such by police, the legal system [or] the community itself,” she said.
“We’re never in a position where something happens [and] we determine as SBS that that is antisemitic.”
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Stephanie is a journalist with a background in both law and journalism. She has worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where she assisted Crikey’s defence team in the high-profile defamation case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. Her reporting has been recognised nationally, earning her the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.