ABC Australia staff’s concerns over Gaza bias revealed

Staff warned that language in 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.

“We’re worried the language we’re using in our coverage is askew, favoring the Israeli narrative over objective reporting. This is evident in our reluctance to use words such as ‘War crimes’, ‘Genocide”, ‘Ethnic cleansing’, ‘Apartheid’ and ‘Occupation’ to describe the various aspects of the Israeli practices in Gaza and the West Bank, even when the words are attributed to respectable organisations and sources,” staff said in the document, which is signed “Concerned ABC journalists and staff” and addressed to “managers and colleagues”.