Aunty, context and narrative selection

As I woke on Sunday morning, May 3, and was preparing for my regular bicycle ride with a group of friends, I checked the news overnight and discovered, yet again to my dismay, how the ABC really sees the world and how, as journalism éminence grise Michael Gawenda put it, how political activism is the new not-journalism.

That weekend, a very important Victorian state by-election was held, testing the Liberals vs One Nation vs independents. That was a story about real votes, real consequences and real impact on Australian politics. It was listed 14th on the ABC news feed.

Meanwhile, a Gaza flotilla story – effectively a fringe international PR stunt – was elevated near the top of the feed. It appeared as the fifth ABC news story.

That is not a marginal call. That is editorial judgement, and it’s wrong.

By any serious standard of newsworthiness – proximity, consequence, relevance – the by-election matters more to Australians. With a Victorian state election looming in November, by-elections are a litmus test of voting intention and determine political priorities.

But with the ABC, the “reporting” of the flotilla story descends into ridiculousness.

Because what the ABC did was rely heavily on claims from a single Australian activist alleging violence by the Israeli navy, claims that are not corroborated anywhere else. Not by international media. Not even by outlets consistently critical of Israel like Al-Jazeera and the BBC.

This activist alleged – a word the ABC liked to use when it reported on the Bondi gunman we watched live on screen shooting people – that the IDF navy did all sorts of terrible things, but there is no corroboration anywhere in the world about his claims. I did find an Instagram showing flotilla activists doing cartwheels when taken into custody, as well as a picture of an older activist with face bruising, but these looked to be AI-generated and many comments showed the face picture was indeed a synthetic creation.

Still, the ABC runs with the uncorroborated story at the top of its morning feed.

No evidentiary weight or visible caution. Just amplification. This is not how a serious public broadcaster operates.

And context matters. This “neutral witness” is a self-declared political activist with a history of protest actions and violent disruption being treated, in effect, as a primary source without the scrutiny that should accompany it. You only have to take 10 seconds to look up this activist’s social media feed to see, as Australians like to say, that this guy has form.

What the ABC did is not reporting. It is narrative selection.

And this is the deeper problem: when editorial priorities consistently favour the emotionally charged over the materially important, when verification takes a back seat to immediacy, the ABC stops informing the public and starts influencing it.

It hardens perceptions, flattens complexity and recasts entire groups of people as symbols rather than citizens; and in the context of Israel and the Jewish community, that matters profoundly.

Because once coverage consistently frames one side through the lens of accusation – without discipline, balance or verification – it creates a moral shorthand in the public mind.

And from there, there is a real slide.

It is the space where criticism of a government blurs into suspicion of a community. Where narratives of power and blame attach themselves not to policy but to people – to Jews. We are already seeing the effects.

This is the uncomfortable truth: you don’t need intent to create consequence. You just need repetition, imbalance, the imposition of fixed narratives, and the erosion of standards.

The ABC has an obligation greater than any other media organisation to get this right. As our national broadcaster and narrowcaster, the way the ABC prioritises what matters, has consequence. The ABC has a charter-bound obligation to verify what is said.

And most importantly, the ABC should, at least by now, understand the downstream impact of how it frames the world.

Increasingly it is the safety and dignity of one community which finds itself on the receiving end of a narrative they did not create and who consequently need armed guards and stronger walls to keep themselves safe.

Adam Slonim is an ALP life member, podcaster and businessman.