ABC Australia staff’s concerns over pro-Israel bias revealed
Staff warned that language in the national broadcaster’s coverage ‘favoured the Israeli narrative over objective reporting’.
Staff at Australia’s national broadcaster warned that its coverage of the war in Gaza relied too much on Israeli sources and used language that “favoured the Israeli narrative over objective reporting”, internal communications reveal, shedding new light on bias claims that convulsed the outlet.
In a summary of a meeting on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)’s coverage of the war, staff detailed concerns that coverage displayed pro-Israel bias, such as by accepting “Israeli facts and figures with no ifs or buts” while questioning Palestinian viewpoints and avoiding the word “Palestine” itself.
The three-page summary, which Al Jazeera obtained via a freedom of information request with the ABC, is undated, but its contents correspond with a meeting of 200 staff that was held in November to address concerns about the broadcaster’s coverage.
While the broad thrust of concerns aired at the meeting was reported by Australian media in November, the document contains extensive detail about staff’s complaints and previously unpublicised examples of alleged pro-Israeli bias.
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