Antoinette Lattouf’s unlawful sacking exposed the power of lobbying on the Australian media

Last weekend, I wrote a piece of news collection model and media literacy.

He talked about how governments, soldiers and lobby groups tried to stop the media stories, and he wondered if the news audiences wanted great media organizations to talk more about it:

“They may be shocked to learn about the orchestration bullying designed to determine the stories of editors and journalists on certain issues and to frame stories by talking to some people.” He said.

“If the media had written these issues openly and regularly, would the media improve its literacy?”

Then three days later we heard about the news.

On Wednesday, the Federal Cout decided that ABC dismissed Lattouf in December 2023, including the political views against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, an illegal journalist.

Justice Darryl Rangih found that external pressure from “pro -Israeli lobbyists” played a role in ABC’s decision.

Ms. Lattouf was employed by ABC as a small five -day contract as a filling summer radio server.

However, Justice Rangiah found that Mrs. Lattouf started to receive complaints from ABC members shortly after presented her first program that summer.

“Complaints claimed that he expresses anti -Semitic views, lacking impartiality and was not suitable for offering any program for ABC.”

He continued: “The complaints were a campaign organized for the removal of Mrs. Lattouf, the pro -Israeli lobbyists.”

This is an important case study for journalism students. Many of you will discuss in the class last week.

But everyone should read Justice Rangah’s decision.

When the E -Post Campaign against MS Lattouf begins, he details what happened behind the scenes in ABC and how some senior ABC executives contribute to a “panic state”.

He also showed how such printing campaigns work.

Pro-pro-Israeli lobbyists only sent dozens of e-mails to ABC, who wanted MS Lattouf to be removed from the air, but also found the way to News Corp’s Australia Later, the newspaper said that ABC plans to report that ABC received complaints (ABC’s growing panic).

The game is played like this.

People are not responsible for reducing confidence in the media

After the Federal Court’s decision was published on Wednesday, ABC’s new General Manager Hugh Marx said that ABC’s personnel and viewers disappointed.

“Any unnecessary impact or pressure on any of the ABC management or employees should always be protected against against.”

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Many articles have been written about the decision of the court.

Alan Sunderland, former Editor of ABC, said that the public broadcaster has lessons to be learned from the epic.

He continued: “Nowadays, the world is full of those who try to control public interest journalism in all ways, to make bullying and pressure,” He wrote.

“The role of senior executives is to strongly resist this pressure and to protect journalists as much as possible.”

Paula Kruger, General Manager of Australia (and an former ABC radio server) of media diversity.

He said that news audiences have to rely on what news organizations can tell the right stories, but the effect of the orchestrated printing campaign on ABC was “shaking confidence in internal and external”.

He continued: “A group of interests can go to the summit of an organization when you can go to a wider community. Lobbyists skip the process that everyone should follow,” He wrote.

He also brought the issue of media literacy and trust.

He said that we often talked about the ways to improve the media literacy of the people, but that the decline in the media should not be a problem for the audience correction; It was the responsibility of news organizations.

“Silence to silence one side of the story is not success. Closing sounds is not ‘social harmony’,” he wrote.

“However, silence and closure was the preferred responses of the senior ABC administration under the pressure of pro -Israeli lobbyists. We need a different approach to our most difficult speeches.”

This last point is worth thinking.

Impartiality and impartiality

I got a reference to Hannah Arendt’s in his last weekend article FAMOUS 1971 Essay In the Pentagon newspapers.

However, in 1967, he wrote another article that deserves a reference today.

In that previous article, Truth and PoliticsArendt defended that “objectivity” and “neutrality” are revolutionary concepts that help to initiate the modern world.

In fact, he left his readers with the impression that these concepts were “Western civilization”.

“The search for unrelated truth has a long history,” he wrote.

“I think Homer can be watched until the moment when he chose to praise the actions of Trojan horses than Achaans and to praise the splendor of the enemy and defeated man, not less than the magnificence of the Achilles, but the hero of Kinfolk […]

“Homeric impartiality inspired the first major narrator of the first great facts, the father of history throughout the Greek history: Herodotus says in his first sentences to prevent ‘from losing the glory of the Greeks and barbarians’.

He continued: “This is the root of the so -called impartiality … No science would not emerge without it.”

Therefore, according to the logic of Arendt, we will abandon a column of “Western civilization” when we report about the great global conflicts and make certain sounds privileged and silence other sounds.

And this was the same article in which Arendt wrote his famous line about the impact of the relentless propaganda on the human brain.

“It is often noticed that the longest term of brainwashing is a strange cynicism-without considering how well this truth can be established, an absolute rejection of believing in the truth of anything.”

“In other words, the consistent and completely substitution of lies for the facts is not to be accepted as real and the truth will be darkened as a lie, but that we take our beds in the real world and that the category of mistakes against the truth is between mental tools for this purpose.” He said.

Arendt said that we could try to hold our beds in the world and fight this propaganda by building and protecting “some public institutions” that respects the truth on politics.

And an independent judiciary, historical sciences and human sciences and journalism, he said.

Critical Analysis of the Media

But let’s complete something.

It is naive to think that the “media” is obsessed with the “real” every time and everywhere. There are many players motivated by other things in the media.

But think about the editors and journalists who really try to tell the truth.

As we discussed last week, there is a global global industry dedicated to catching, controlling and mixing the “reliable stories” that the media tells every day:

Different governments, soldiers, multinational and lobbying groups are always called.

ABC participated in a different debate that was internally expressed in concerns six years ago. Adani’s visible talent To crush an ABC radio story about the economy of Adani’s Carmichael mine.

When readers begin to realize such things about the media, they can harm the media’s stories.

If you spend any time on social media these days, you may have noticed how millions of people have taught the fine ways of using language and images to make certain perspectives of media organizations privileged and reduce others in daily news reports.

He jumped from the academy of the critical media analyzes that you will receive at the degree of journalism and communication at the university and jumped to people’s phones.

For example, consider the following titles and see if you can identify the differences in the language:

Why is the language in the first title so passive and vague? Why is the language in the second title active and sensitive?

Modern viewers are now interested in “code -solving” on such a media, so they shift the apocalypse, so offer the opportunity to start having more deeper talks about what media organizations want with their audience.

These conversations may be uncomfortable for some. However, they can lead to more accurate storytelling.