ABC: What the Lattouf affair has revealed

The dismissal of presenter Antoinette Lattouf is but one facet of ABC management’s failure to maintain the integrity of the broadcaster, writes Rosemary Sorensen.

SEARCHING FOR ABC news online reporting about the South African genocide hearing against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), you may not have found very much to satisfy the thirst for details about this hugely important event. The temptation to blame bias in our national broadcaster was strong.

And yet, just maybe, perhaps, there was more to the story. Possibly, an open-minded critic might decide, the ABC’s massive funding cuts have abetted a concomitant managerial decision and strategy to get more readership cheaply — by deploying journalists as content providers with a brief to write long reads about anodyne but sexy topics.

Then came the news about ABC presenter Antoinette Lattouf’s sacking. The story in The Age by Michael Bachelard and Calum Jaspan details WhatsApp messages shared by a Lawyers for Israel group that shows Ita Buttrose responding to demands that Lattouf be sacked immediately.

And she was.

That story will, surely, have repercussions. It was reported on Tuesday evening that staff at the ABC are demanding a meeting with managing director David Anderson.

Meanwhile, back at the international desk, the daily churn continues — although there does seem to be a little more action and a little more attention to quality now the holiday season is over. We’re being kept abreast of global affairs with a range of wire stories and postings from the ABC’s foreign correspondents, including the Port Moresby riots, Taiwan’s presidential election, the U.S. primaries — as well as yet another story about the King and Queen of Denmark.

As for the Israel-Gaza genocide, the international desk appears to have stepped up its coverage of this urgent, calamitous and terrible story.

The ABC is under unremitting scrutiny and – now it’s clear – relentless lobbying that calls out even unexceptional reporting as unbalanced and even anti-Semitic. It may well have been like the lancing of a boil for some ABC journalists when the story about the sacking of Antoinette Lattouf broke.

The Sydney Morning Herald last week also reported the resignation of Nour Haydar, who told reporter Calum Jaspan:

“Commitment to diversity in the media cannot be skin deep. Culturally diverse staff should be respected and supported even when they challenge the status quo.”

Jaspan also reported that staff concerns had led to the creation of a “Gaza advisory panel” to improve coverage, around the time that the ABC’s global affairs editor, John Lyons, was reporting from Israel about the day-by-day escalation of the destruction in Gaza.

Fewer stories appeared after a flurry of Lyons’ stories back in October. Then, at the end of last week, Lyons filed a report on the Houthi escalation of the conflict.

Lyons also posted to the ABC website on Monday (15 January) an “analysis” of the ICJ hearing considering the charge of genocide against Israel brought by South Africa. The word “genocide”, which has been targeted for complaint across the past couple of months, is now acceptable, following South Africa’s move in the ICJ.

The swift and rancorous reactions, the claims of bias and the personal attacks against journalists and presenters who are tasked with reporting on Gaza, come from, as John Lyons wrote, both pro-Israel and anti-Israel people. Now, with the facts behind the sacking of Antoinette Lattouf emerging, even the most courageous, decent and dedicated journalist would feel that pressure as debilitating.

John Lyons is one-time editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and former head of current affairs and investigations at the ABC. As global affairs editor (alongside Dee Porter, international editor), he has the responsibility to find a way past the Scylla of public outrage and the Charybdis of corporate and lobbyist pressure. Even such an experienced journalist falls back on imprecise words and expressions, to avoid the rocks and whirlpools.

Having spoken to ‘a range of people’, he writes, ‘Most people seemed to be polarised into one point of view or the other’. The Israel supporters, he writes, ‘often say civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas’. The critics of Israel, on the other hand, ‘often argue it is committing genocide by its “disproportionate response”’.

That’s a lot of “often” and unspecified “people”. A report detailing the dramatic presentation of South Africa’s case, in the words of the legal team themselves, might have been more impressive.

One of the most shocking revelations from the Lattouf affair is that the group of lawyers who targeted the journalist were able to get access via email to the chair of the ABC board, Ita Buttrose – and managing director David Anderson – with demands that were louche and loud.

While ABC leadership is there to stand up to this kind of threat, from the top down this is increasingly difficult for anyone in public life — particularly for ABC journalists and presenters, who are bombarded with complaints and abuse.

This may be why it is difficult to understand who is responsible for what, and the editorial processes underpinning story selection and distribution at the ABC. Because the ABC is our public broadcaster, the public wants it to be both accountable and accessible, but the structures can seem opaque.

A “spokesman” did provide this in response to this writer’s query about how the digital international team is structured, who assigns stories and oversees their distribution:

‘The International Desk is run by the Editor, International News, who reports to the Head, National and International News. The ABC has a team of foreign-based correspondents and international news is also covered by Australia-based journalists, including from the Asia Pacific Newsroom and the digital newsroom.’

The ‘Editor, International News’ (who is, in fact, Dee Porter) is protected from enquiries by this kind of arm’s-length descriptor and if she’s listed somewhere on the labyrinthine ABC website, good luck with finding that.

As an ABC employee, you’d want some commitment from ABC management that you will be supported and protected against that unruly mob which has, ever since Sir Keith Murdoch’s plotting, been hell-bent on shutting down the national broadcaster. On the other hand, if you work for the ABC, you know you’re part of an organisation crucial to the democratic health of the nation.

What we are witnessing right now is kind of oxymoronic: the ABC’s leadership is undermining from within the competencies and commitments that have made the ABC so important, through weakness or by design.

By building structures where those responsible (for decisions such as how Gaza is reported, what constitutes “international news”, how many experienced journalists are employed and what they are assigned to do) are not visible to stand behind those decisions, ABC management is overseeing the metamorphosis of a lively but reliable, sure-footed beast into a lumbering mammoth.

And we know what happens at the end of that story, don’t we?

Rosemary Sorensen was a newspaper books and arts journalist, based in Melbourne, then Brisbane, before moving to regional Victoria where she founded Bendigo Writers Festival, which she directed for 13 years. 

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