On Saturday, the Weekend
Australian ran an op-ed by
Julie Nathan from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Nathan's piece
concerned vicious anti-Jewish bigotry which has appeared on the Facebook page
of ABC's Four Corners in the discussions surrounding the 'Stone Cold Justice'
episode by the Australian's
Middle East Correspondent John Lyons.
In that episode, Lyons focussed on the treatment of Palestinian
minors in the West Bank by the Israeli criminal justice system. As a piece
of journalism, the documentary was quite problematic; but separate to the many
issues regarding its content (for AIJAC's breakdown see here and here), a whole set of
questions were raised by the antisemitism it sparked on the Four Corners
Facebook page -- including some additional ones relating to the ABC's
credibility and accountability.
In her article, Nathan
detailed a number of comments on the page which were overtly and indisputably
antisemitic -- referring not to Israeli policies or even Israelis, but to
"Jews" --and clearly in breach of the ABC's editorial policies. As
Nathan pointed out:
Some of the comments were deleted or edited by ABC moderators. However, many anti-Semitic comments have remained online for more than a week, spewing forth the gamut of traditional anti-Semitic themes.
In response, the Executive Producer of Four Corners, Sue
Spencer, wrote into the Australian on
Monday to say just how offended she had been -- not by the racist material
published on her page, but by Nathan's article exposing it. Spencer first
claimed that the ABC's social media moderator had been especially vigilant:
In the lead-up to and in the wake of the broadcast of Stone Cold
Justice, the social media moderator paid heightened attention to comments made
on the program's Facebook page. It is not possible to pre-moderate comments on
Facebook. However, all that is possible is done to ensure that offensive posts
are deleted as soon as possible.
This occurred when any unsavoury, anti-Semitic or offensive
comments were made. In such cases, the contributors were also banned from
commenting on the page.
Spencer then flatly
denied that comments had been left on the page without being deleted, before
saying how offended she was by Nathan's allegations and stopping just short of
accusing Nathan of lying:
The article also states that "many anti-Semitic comments have
remained online for more than a week". This is incorrect, as moderating
has occurred on a daily basis since the broadcast.
If you visit the Four Corners Facebook site today, you will find a
mixed and very robust debate about the issues raised in the report. What you
will not find is anything that incites hatred or breaches the ABC's editorial
policies. To suggest that the ABC moderator is lax in tolerating racism is not
supported by the facts and is offensive.
Given that Spencer chose to categorically deny any lax
moderating on behalf of the ABC, it would perhaps have occurred to her to make
sure that the comments which Nathan mentioned were no longer on the Facebook
page. Not so, it appears. Not only were many of the comments mentioned by
Nathan still up when the letter was published, they are still on the Facebook
page as this is being written, two days later. Yet no one seems to have
noticed, and Spencer's claims have not been corrected or even questioned in
the Australian.
No room for doubt
In her article, Nathan mentioned a post saying "Judaism is
increasingly looking like a very ugly religion hiding behind a false conception
of god."As of today, that very comment from Ian
Joyner has been on the Facebook page for more than two weeks:
Nathan also noted the
comments which compared Israelis to Nazi Germany, observing that:
By any academic standard, such comparisons are historically
ludicrous. These comments do not seek to engage in debate or analysis but only
to demonise Jews and Israelis, and to minimise, justify or excuse the suffering
and mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust, a standard technique for
assuaging or blocking out any sense of guilt.
Glancing over at the Four Corners page, it did not take long to
find Dave Scott intimating that
Israel was worse than the Nazis, and Richard Doumani making a comparison between
"Zionists" and Nazis, but throwing the word "Jews" in as
well to avoid any doubt:
Another example of antisemitic comments which Nathan brought up
were ones employing the theme of, "You Jews of all people should know
better". This morning on the Four Corners page were two separate comments to that
effect from Brad Burke, saying that Jews cannot call themselves God's chosen
people and are going to hell; and one comment from Kate Hayes, saying that God did
not expect such "disgraceful" and "blasphemous" behaviour
"of the Jewish [sic]":
Nathan also mentioned comments propagating "the age-old
calumny about a 'world Jewish conspiracy'." There were plenty of those to
be found too, such as this post from Tim
Bradford talking about Rupert Murdoch's "Zionist puppet masters",
which was particularly ironic given that the Four Corners episode was made by
an employee of Murdoch's flagship Australian newspaper:
Other comments still up this morning did not necessarily fall
under the categories mentioned by Nathan but nevertheless contained overt or
implied anti-Jewish racism. For instance, Gary Wilson opined about what
"the Jews" should realise and then wished shame on them for good
measure.
Fact-check failure
When explaining why it was "not possible" that
antisemitic comments had remained on the page for over ten days, Spencer
mentioned that "moderating has occurred on a daily basis", and that
those comments should have been deleted by the moderator. On the strength
of those two facts, she apparently felt comfortable categorically denying that
the comments were there.
There was a step missing
in her reasoning. It would occur to most people that if the moderators were
supposed to delete the comments, but a national newspaper prints a claim that
the comments are still there, then perhaps the moderators have not been
adequately performing their job. The obvious step to take would be to check the
facts before deciding how to respond to the allegations.
Spencer's disregard for
the facts in this instance appears to be reflective of the ABC's attitude to
the Four Corners episode. In both cases, there was a severe lack of
fact-checking and a refusal to second-guess ABC colleagues. The denial in this
case was perhaps even more embarrassing as the falsity of Spencer's claims
could be ascertained by simply visiting the Four Corners Facebook page and
scrolling down.
The fact that she
apparently did not do so is troubling. The staff at our national broadcaster
can and should do better.
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