In July 2026 Jillian Segal AO Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism accused the ABC of systemic bias against Israel to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, and proposed the creation an oversight committee to guide its editorial policies and practices to be in line with her beliefs.

Jillian Segal is a long term, persistent and vocal lobbyist against the ABC’s coverage of Israel, in her role as (now past) President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, more recently as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism and advisor to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. 

You may recall that Ms Segal’s controversial Plan to Combat Antisemitism was released in July 2025 and recommended targeted editorial interference into the ABC. The ABC Alumni made a strong submission to the Royal Commission in March this year arguing that this recommendation was fundamentally against the notion of a free and independent ABC.

Read the submission

When asked to appear before the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion on July 17, Segal reiterated much of her Plan. She accused the ABC of bias against Israel in its coverage and analysis of the fighting in Gaza, an allegation refuted by the ABC Ombudsman, who is entirely independent of the news service and has found that only four news reports were inaccurate over the course of several years and upheld not one claim of bias. (1)

Segal testified that the ABC gives too much time and prominence to the Gaza war and that its coverage and online content include criticism of Israel that cause “a ‘conflation’ such that Australian Jews face increased antisemitism”. (2)

At an ABC Friends Southern Bayside panel discussion on July 26, Zoe Daniel, former ABC broadcaster for 27 years, Middle East correspondent and former Independent Federal MP for Goldstein, disagreed. 

“[The ABC] tells legitimate stories and unfortunately, as Jonathan Holmes said in his commentary (3), what's happening in Gaza is contributing to antisemitism. I think that's a reasonable link to make, but it doesn't mean that you cannot report what's happening in Gaza. If it's happening, it's happening; the truth is the truth” she said. ”During my time as a foreign correspondent the vast majority of complaints that came in to the ABC's international department were in regard to coverage of Israel, so there's already an outsized sensitivity around that issue”.

Segal alleged multiple inaccuracies by the ABC, all of which have since been refuted by fact checkers (4, 5). Her statement that the Gaza death toll figures from the Gaza Health Ministry reported by the ABC were “grossly inflated,” and that this was “well known and even accepted by the United Nations” was immediately called out by the UN (6). Responding on behalf of Secretary-General António Guterres, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said: “For us the Ministry of Health in Gaza is a source we, and many others, often cite. Independent validation … has found no significant discrepancies in their numbers.”

But it was Segal’s proposal of an independent oversight-monitoring committee to review and vet the coverage of the Middle East conflict by the ABC that drew most outrage. 

“I'm shuddering, honestly... You can't have a standover committee influencing editorial decision-making; it's just totally inappropriate” said Daniel.

Sharing the ABC Friends panel discussion about threats to the ABC with Zoe Daniel were Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication at Deakin University and Denis Muller. 

“It goes worse,” Muller said, “because this oversight committee would have the power to monitor the ABC's coverage and that would be linked to its funding because in the report produced in July of last year it was proposed that the public broadcaster's funding should be terminated if the media monitoring of it was found to be deficient in this respect. It beggars belief that a proposition like this was not knocked on the head on day one by the prime minister.”

Ricketson clarified “And this proposal would be equally unacceptable if it was being put by a pro-Muslim person. If you were concerned about deeply Islamophobic coverage, the same problem would exist. So it's not particular to antisemitism.”
The panel identified the failure of clear and consistent media regulation across public and commercial media in Australia as a partial cause of the misinformation and bias published by many commercial outlets. 

“The Australian Communications and Media Authority (is the regulatory body), but they were set up to fail,” said Muller. ”They were set up by Paul Keating as what is called a ‘co-regulator’, which is to say they cannot really regulate independently. It gets bogged down in legalisms, in court cases, in politics.” 

The Australian Press Council is no better because it could be seen as having allegiance to the Murdoch Press, according to Ricketson, ”Long story short, it doesn't work... about two-thirds of its funding comes from News Corporation. The ABC isn't part of the Press Council because it's publicly funded. It's a fairly uncontroversial thing to say based on my experience that they tread very carefully whenever it comes to a decision to do with News Corporation outlets.”

“I think you've got sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy going on in that the Australian Communications and Media Authority has very little power and the Press Council has power that it won't use” said Daniel. ”[Commercial] journalists then feel very emboldened, unaccountable, and become extremely defensive... The problem with all of that is that it's feeding distrust in the press.”

The independent ABC is the most trusted media in Australia and it needs to stay that way.

Dr Gael Jennings AM, former ABC journalist and current member of ABC Alumni Board

(1) https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/07/no-case-for-muzzling-abc-and-sbs-reporting-on-israel - Greg Wilesmith, veteran journalist and former ABC Middle East correspondent reporting from Gaza and the West Bank.

(2) Ibid.

(3) https://www.abcalumni.au/accuracy_the_special_envoy_and_the_public_broadcasters

(4) https://www.abcalumni.au/antisemitism_the_special_envoy_and_the_abc 

(5) https://www.abcalumni.au/accuracy_the_special_envoy_and_the_public_broadcasters

(6) https://michaelwest.com.au/un-refutes-jillian-segals-gaza-death-toll-claim-before-royal-commission