ABC bias is baked into its reporting rules

We have often expressed our concerns about the reporting of the taxpayer-funded ABC when it comes to Israel.

Aunty’s coverage is frequently skewed, lacking in context or giving weight to Hamas propaganda while treating Israeli narratives as suspect.

The broadcaster brazenly rejected the IHRA antisemitism definition – imagine it doing so for definitions of hatred against any other community – and its internal complaints process leaves a lot to be desired.

Now we know that, despite its charter calling for impartiality, bias is actually entrenched into the ABC‘s reporting guidelines.

Obtained under freedom of information, the document makes for illuminating reading. There are detailed sections on supposed genocide, apartheid, occupation and famine, but none on Hamas’s deployment in civilian areas, use of medical facilities or role in Gaza aid distribution.

It devotes 504 words to arguments Israel may have breached the Genocide Convention and 31 to evidence it has not. The International Court of Justice’s interim ruling on South Africa’s slanderous genocide case is misrepresented. Incidental references to “genocide” need not carry Israel’s denial, while Israel’s perspective is expressly not required in stories referencing the Nakba.

Terminology rules permit “genocide”, “apartheid” and “Nakba” while restricting words such as “terrorist organisation” and “security fence”.

It is no wonder the ABC‘s coverage is so appalling. It then feeds into hateful rhetoric and stereotypes about the Jewish homeland, and by extension into tropes about Jews themselves.

That is how Israeli athletes end up being abused on Sydney’s streets during a marathon. That is why Jewish university students get excluded and harassed on campus. That is what leads to 15 innocent people being gunned down while celebrating the first night of Chanukah.

AIJAC are calling for the ABC to commission an independent review. But there is little to suggest that, drunk on its own smug moral superiority, it will do any such thing. It must be forced to do so.

After dragging its feet earlier this year before calling the Royal Commission, the federal government can prove how serious it is about antisemitism by doing the right thing now.

The taxpayers bankrolling this bias deserve better.