ABC urged to rewrite its Middle East guidance

The ABC has been urged to hand its internal guide for reporting on Israel to independent reviewers, after a new report found it leads journalists away from the impartiality the broadcaster is required by law to deliver.

An Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) report, Biased Guidance: How the ABC‘s Middle East framework undermines its own standards, analyses the ABC‘s Middle East Conflict Guidance document which was obtained by the activist group ABC Watch.

It concludes a journalist could follow the guidance faithfully and still produce reporting that is predictably one-sided.

AIJAC executive director Colin Rubenstein said the problem went well beyond individual journalists.

“The ABC assures Australians that its reporting is governed by accuracy, impartiality, diversity and fair treatment.

“Yet its own internal editorial guidance gives its journalists detailed explanations of allegations against Israel, while frequently reducing the contrary arguments to a sentence stating that Israel rejects or denies the allegations.

“This is obviously unacceptable in a taxpayer-funded public broadcaster,” Rubenstein continued. “We urge the ABC to commission an independent review of this guidance by experts representing genuinely different legal, historical and strategic perspectives and go back to the drawing board to produce guidance for its journalists that actually meets the standards of professionalism and impartiality that the ABC rightly sets for itself.”

The sharpest imbalance is in the section on genocide.

On genocide, the guidance devotes 504 words to the evidence that Israel may have breached the Genocide Convention and 31 words to the evidence that it has not.

It also allows incidental references to genocide to run without Israel’s denial, lets claims that the occupation is illegal pass uncorrected, and says Israel’s perspective is not required in stories referencing the Nakba.

Nor does the document contain any section on Hamas’s deployment in civilian areas, use of medical facilities or role in aid distribution, while devoting detailed sections to genocide, apartheid, occupation and famine.

Report author and AIJAC director of special projects Bren Carlill said the guidance had decided which contested claims audiences should treat as established.

“When one considers the number of words it provides for and against the genocide argument, its direction for journalists to provide more space to those supporting it, the fact that Israeli denials don’t need to be mentioned and its omission of the legal principle that devastates the allegation, the existence of an unofficial ABC position on the genocide allegation is clear.”

The report also takes aim at the ABC‘s standard defence of one-sided items, that balance is achieved over time.

There is no defined period, no identified body of content and no one responsible for auditing it.

ABC Ombudsman Fiona Cameron told the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that no objective analysis of cumulative balance had been done.

Carlill said the ABC board could direct the Ombudsman to conduct a systemic audit of coverage but had not done so.

It also identifies factual errors, including on the extent of Palestinian Authority jurisdiction in the West Bank and on the Shebaa Farms dispute.

Asked what an independent investigation should look like, Carlill told The AJN no guidance document on the subject would satisfy everyone, but that transparency mattered because the ABC boasted impartiality.

“The ABC should list who wrote and signed off on each section, plus the subject matter experts with whom they consulted and, just as importantly, what those experts said about the draft with which they were provided.”

He said the ABC might not take notice immediately, but the report put the evidence on the public record and set a benchmark against which its future coverage could be measured.