ABC’s Israel fail fuels misinformation

Long problematic in its reporting on Israel, since October 7, 2023, the national taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s coverage of the war in Gaza has seen Aunty only get worse.

In the first weeks or the war, the ABC gleefully spread the libel that Israel bombed a hospital, killing 500, only for the truth to be revealed that in reality a Palestinian terror rocket killed a few dozen in a car park.

This was only the beginning of a disturbing pattern of presenting testimonies from Gaza – where many are either active in Hamas, sympathetic to it or afraid of it – without any fact checking, or giving an open microphone to so-called “experts” who are openly hostile to the Jewish state.

The ABC’s latest folly was running UN official Tom Fletcher’s absurd prediction late last month that 14,000 babies would die of starvation in 48 hours.

Yet, predictably, the claim was untrue and wildly out of context. The problem is that while many would have seen the initial allegation, far fewer would have seen the clarification the ABC sheepishly issued last week.