Gael Jennings
Dr Gael Jennings AM, ABC Alumni Board member, calls on the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion to protect the independence of public media.
I was sitting in the studio of ABC Radio Vic 774, broadcasting the Afternoon Show with our regular expert on rocks, a famous Professor from Melbourne University, when the 774 station manager flew towards me, arms flailing, panic in his bulging eyes. He bashed on the far side of the glass studio wall, made cut-throat gestures against his gullet and Fawlty-Towered his way out of sight en route to the production booth to try to stop the live broadcast.
It transpired that the sin we had committed on air was to allow our expert to give his expert opinion on a rock formation in Turkey. The Prof had travelled there with the creationist group Ark Search, who believed it was Noah’s Ark; our expert found it to be a boat-shaped rock. When he went on air and said so, the 774 switchboard lit up with incensed Ark Searchers, calls which were all directed to the station manager who turned red and in the interests of balance, flew to shut us down and get a Creationist on. I refused.
That was 1998. The infamous Lattouf affair was 2023. In both cases, one small, one massive, both wrong, the ABC reacted to intense pressure from a lobby group by trying to shut down its journalists. Removing stand-in presenter Antoinette Lattouf at the behest of a sector of pro-Israel lobbyists cost the ABC upwards of a million dollars after she won an unfair dismissal case at the Federal Court in 2025, but cost the ABC arguably more by the loss of a good chunk of its reputation.
This hounding is not new. “To any ABC journalist or editor who has had anything to do with the coverage of the Middle East in the past five or six decades, that (lobbying, and the accusation of being antisemitic) will be a familiar experience” according to one of the ABC’s greatest journalists, former executive producer of 4 Corners, Foreign Correspondent and 7.30 Report, now Board member of ABC Alumni, Jonathan Holmes (see here). The ABC’s current America’s Editor John Lyons and The Australian’s Jerusalem correspondent for six years describes “how journalists who accurately report what they see can be hounded and vilified, part of a practice of intimidation, harassment and influence-peddling that is designed to stop the truth from being told.” (Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism's Toughest Assignment by John Lyons, Monash University Press).
It is the remit of ABC Alumni to fight for a fully funded, high quality, independent, fearless, ethical and free public interest media in Australia. It is a particularly fraught mission in the current climate of incendiary rage both here and in the middle east caused by the Gaza conflict.
The ABC Alumni has sought to protect and support the ABC from being “hounded and vilified”, to allow it to find and tell the truth, by the strength and focus of our submission to The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, penned by Jonathan Holmes with contributions from other Alumni, submitted on 25 February, 2026.
Our submission focusses on the first of the Royal Commission’s terms of reference, which requires it “to tackle antisemitism by investigating the nature and prevalence of antisemitism in institutions and society, and its key drivers in Australia...”. Our prime focus is on the preservation of the independence of public media in the face of The Plan to Combat Antisemitism by Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Ms Jillian Segal, published in July 2025 (The Plan).
The Plan makes sweeping proposals to monitor the public broadcasters’ output. Ms Segal now has an advisor’s role to the Royal Commission and whilst The Plan’s proposals to potentially interfere with editorial policy and practice at the ABC have not been included in the government’s responses to The Plan, her proposals are still part of The Plan and she is an official advisor to the Royal Commission.
Ms Segal alleges that the ABC has fomented antisemitism in Australia by creating a “false/distorted narrative” in its news output – an allegation which the ABC Alumni submission reveals to be patently untrue. Our submission also addresses the wilfully misleading omission as a contributing factor in the rise of antisemitism in Australia – that of the suffering inflicted on the people of Gaza by the Netanyahu government’s response to the 7 October 2023 atrocity by Hamas.
Our submission pushes back at the implication in The Plan that an external editorial influence is required at the ABC to keep antisemitism at bay, citing ABC Editorial Policies and Standards, which insist on accuracy and impartiality, and which are more comprehensive than those of any other media organisation. We note that the ABC’s editorial policies and Guidance Notes deal comprehensively with racism, hate speech and terrorism, and that the ABC is also obliged by law not to exclude significant strands of thought or belief – including sometimes strident criticism of Israel. This should not be equated with antisemitism.
We also address the issues noted above in this article, the influence of the “pro-Israel lobby” and its remorseless criticism of the ABC’s Middle East correspondents and coverage. The ABC will frequently disagree with criticisms coming from one side of a contested conflict .
In conclusion, the ABC Alumni asks the Commissioner not to accept or reinforce the Special Envoy’s proposal that she should be given a special role in shaping the public broadcasters’ Editorial Policies or in monitoring their implementation.
I attach a link to our submission to the Royal Commission which is available on the ABC Alumni website. The lead author is Jonathan Holmes with input from other Alumni, with special thanks to Helen Grasswill and Greg Wilesmith.
ABC Alumni Limited represents a community of nearly 300 former staff and contracted employees of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) – many of them experienced reporters, editors, and senior news managers. We support fully funded, high quality, independent, ethical and free public media in Australia. Our objectives are to promote excellence across all media platforms through advocacy, education, mentoring, public forums and scholarships. No serving officer or Board member of the ABC has been consulted in the compilation of this submission.
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