The challenge presented by the free flow of ideas and information in the digital world, to those accustomed to maintaining control of the narrative, defines our moment in history and the fragility of democratic freedoms.
Those calls for less freedom of speech and for more consistency in messaging to the public by the Fourth Estate, come at a time when large sections of the public have lost trust in a legacy media too consistent in its messaging, and incapable of providing the information and analysis that will enable them to know and fully understand what’s happening.
Many have turned to social media where they are alerted to the work of independent journalists and experts whose commentary is not welcome in the western mainstream press but which provides a multitude of perspectives that are more useful in navigating our world, in understanding our place in it, and indeed how we might be responsible for some of its very significant problems—perhaps that we may be on the wrong side of history.
With respect to foreign policy the legacy media have an unacknowledged partisan perspective, the rectitude of which is reinforced through the validation of all singing from the same song book.
We have learnt to pay attention to messaging emanating from the U.S. political class, because its allies will be expected to concurrently tackle the same issues, in this case, to reign in the problem presented by free speech (the freedom both to speak and to hear) common to western democracies, rendering the population less manageable in its thinking, importantly in the level of its support for war, and at the ballot box.
In Australia, where there is no constitutional or legislated protection for free speech, the 18c ‘hate speech’ provision of the Racial Discrimination Act which made ‘insult’ and ‘offence’ a test for breach of the law, was introduced by a Labor government.
The criteria for breach make this law rife for weaponisation and efforts led by George Brandis under a Liberal government to amend the provision failed, with significant opposition coming from Pro-Israel Lobby groups.
Under the current Labor government further efforts to curb free speech are gathering momentum including the possibility of criminalising ‘hate speech’. Not only will a vexatious litigant be able to bankrupt you, you may also land in jail for insulting or causing offence.
At the same time, independent journalists and commentators in the UK and U.S. including Jeremy Loffredo, Asa Winstanley, Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Medhurst, have being raided by police under antiterrorism laws. I have little doubt that possibility is being considered here.
Extensive efforts to shape public discourse around Israel policy in the U.S. by pro-Israel Lobby groups were ratcheted up in the past year in the face of university encampments. Those efforts include the push to redefine antisemitism.
Similarly, serious consideration is being given to redefining antisemitism here to include criticism of Israel—of Israeli government policy and of Zionism.
In the Attorney General’s view—stated days before a complaint against me was lodged with the Australian Human Rights Commission under Australia’s hate speech law, anyone holding Israel to a standard they are not holding other countries, is antisemitic, though there is no other nation conducting a genocide of a people under its occupation, and a live streamed genocide at that.
But the stipulation by the AG renders it dangerous for anyone to criticise Israel’s live streamed genocidal acts if they are not resourced to become similarly engaged across the board, lest a similar crime is being committed elsewhere, or perhaps if they have not engaged in a similarly robust way during past war crimes and past crimes against humanity.
This is not only unreasonable, it is Stalinism masquerading as democracy and a transparent attempt to enable a state to conduct a genocide with impunity—with the full support of western governments and their silenced people, removing the focus from a serious crime, by criminalising advocacy against it.
The International Court of Justice has similarly called Israel out for its crimes and has elicited the same claim from Israel—it too is antisemitic. As are International Criminal Court Prosecutors and UN Rapporteurs and the UN Secretary General. So though they have called out war crimes and crimes against humanity by actors other than Israel, this has certainly not prevented any of them from being branded antisemites. Individuals and organisations resourced to hold bad actors across the board to account, and who mostly do, are similarly accused. Sharing a post by such an organisation—HRW in the case of journalist Antoinette Lattouf—can lead to being sacked—because this is the environment of retribution for free speech involving criticism of Israel that has been created. Regrettably, it is being nurtured by the government which plans to bolster it further with new legislation.
Why quarantine Israeli government policy? Why should it be exceptional? Because of the influence of the Pro Israel Lobby. But why stop there if it is achievable? Why not American or Chinese or Australian policy?
The current Labor government is advocating an Orwellian Disinformation Misinformation Bill—again opposed by Brandis, and Peter Dutton, and others including Peter Craven and Arthur Moses—because it will inhibit the expression of political opinion.
The latest raid by counterterrorism police in the UK was that of investigative journalist Asa Winstanley, following his latest report on How Israel Killed Hundreds of its Own People on October 7. All of these raids involve the confiscation of electronic equipment, placing journalistic sources at risk.
Glenn Greenwald posted on X: ‘The amount of authoritarianism and erosion of rights in the West to protect Israel–by censoring criticism of that foreign country and punishing its critics–is almost impossible to overstate.
Mass firings in the U.S. and speech-restricting laws. The UK, as always, is worse:’
And Double Down News: ‘In the UK you can glorify Genocide. You can even fight for the IDF, a foreign country, and actually commit genocide, then come back like you never left.
But, make a post on social media…
Solidarity with Asa Winstanley. Journalism is not a crime’
Over a period of some years, journalists and experts whose views became unpopular with editors of legacy media started up their own independent news, investigative reporting and analysis platforms—Greenwald one of the first and the latest Mehdi Hassan. They are journalists who take a position, one with which we are all free to disagree.
In public discourse about what constitutes journalism, there is much agonising about impartiality, balance, bias, and neutrality. Anyone who has lodged a complaint with a media organisation listing each breach of its code will know the final defence against bias is ‘editorial discretion’. The recent inquiry into racism at the ABC found the organisational culture was racist. It heard from many non-Anglo-Celt staff who described their treatment at the public broadcaster. Well done ABC for conducting the enquiry and publicising the result. However, the 64-million-dollar question is does the culture of racism manifest itself in reporting? Many would argue it does, as it does at the BBC and other major mastheads.
When I was about to take up my position as presenter of SBS World News in the mid 1980’s, an astute radio journalist asked me whether the service would take a perspective other than the Anglo-centric one available on all other networks.
While it may have run material from a greater range of sources, and longer background stories in its earlier days, the prism through which the world was examined in its News, was Anglocentric—the perspective of the backgrounds of its Chief Producers and management. This determined the perspective on every war covered in the 20 year period I was there, including the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with the Middle East seen thru an Anglo and Israeli lens. The junkets to Israel and free lunches for Chief Producers were par for the course, one Chief Producer freshly returned from Israel fobbing off my request to have a Palestinian guest on for a change with “Why? They’re all mad”. So, an Anglo-centric perspective because.. well, we were Australian.
Journalists like Robert Fisk—and our own John Pilger—among others, did not shy away from taking a position that set them apart. Their approach aligned with my own view of how journalism should be practiced and where its responsibility lies: to hold power to account, to embark on inquiry objectively, being wary of remaining partial to the perspective of one’s own culture’s prism, and never to use neutrality to compound an injustice for the victims of the wrongful exercise of power.
In our rapidly evolving digital world, experts with specialised knowledge of a particular area are no longer restricted to writing books or articles in academic journals, and to waiting to be called upon (if selected) by the media to comment.
They, along with independent journalists and well-informed commentators, now produce output that links them directly with the public on a regular basis, on multiple platforms. The notion that a basic who-what-when-where-how report, or a one minute 30 second duration interview that relies primarily on a government press release or an IDF PR officer, might be regarded as journalism, but the rich multiplicity of choice available online that might refute the facts presented in all such reports, or explain their context, should be regarded as both suspect and not ‘real’ journalism is alarming.
Two separate universes operate today—the legacy media and social media, the latter a conduit for a multitude of perspectives and an enormous enabler of connection between people, evidence, and ideas.
It is the latter universe that has diluted control of the narrative by those desperate to reclaim it..
However they are aided in this aim by proposals put forward by Peter Greste’s Journalism Australia, which would reserve the authority to deem who is a real journalist to a body other than the MEAA and IFJ, and therefore whose work will be protected under law. In concert with this regime, editors of major mastheads would meet regularly with Intel officers to be ‘appraised of their perspective’. In other words a (perhaps unofficial at first) permanent D Notice regime to control what is publishable by ‘real’ journalists. Journalism departments at universities around the country should laugh this in its entirety right out of town. The whole proposal is an Intel Service wet dream that snookers independent journalism.
Today’s public want information from a broad range of sources, including in developing situations—where truth can be and is contested, indeed can only prevail because it has been hotly contested. There is enormous frustration with a legacy media constrained by their own policies such as the avoidance of certain words with respect to reporting on Israel, and headlines that lay bare double standards.
With respect to the issue of fake news and misinformation, yes this can occur, as it does in legacy media. But the social media environment has a way of rapidly self-correcting—word gets around very quickly flagging information is incorrect, with sources that prove it—or without.
Legacy media also make mistakes. The press publishes corrections though not often enough, and in my 20 years presenting a news bulletin, apologising and correcting a story was par for the course. Noone was axed for a mistake, let alone prosecuted.
And there is ample testimony by former agents available on YouTube regarding the planting of disinformation by Intel services with trusted journalists in legacy media over the decades.
To whom are we prepared to entrust decisions about where truth lies, what we can and can’t know, who we are entitled to believe, what we are permitted to think and say?
We only have freedom of speech when we are free to express and to hear what this minute may be an unorthodox view. And because those who disagree with us are also free to do just that. The battle over ideas in a democracy should occur in social discourse not resolved through the weaponisation of laws.
While individuals have paid a heavy price for their defence of the Palestinian cause in the past—the UK’s Jeremy Corbyn and Australian Senator Melissa Parke here are just two, extraordinary widespread efforts have been made to hound those who have criticised Israel’s actions over this past year—a barrage of complaints intended to disrupt lives, to have people sacked, to destroy reputations, to bankrupt individuals in their defence of free speech, or prosecute them under antiterror laws. Those cases that are known publicly are the tip of an iceberg. While there has been publicity around attempts here to silence journalist Antoinette Lattouf, pianist Jayson Gillham and myself, many Australians have been subjected to harassment and have been the subject of complaints, whether to the AHRC, in universities, councils, schools and other institutions, perhaps for wearing a keffiya, questioning Israeli govt policy or condemning IDF actions.
The complaint against me by the Australian Zionist Foundation to the Australian Human Rights Commission is based on my posting of a speech by Nasrallah, with a comment pointing to the threat of escalation in violence that violence begets, that Nasrallah’s threats were mirroring Netanyahu’s actions toward Palestinians, and that Netanyahu has started something he may not be able to finish.
For the alleged offence and hurt caused by such post I maybe forced to embark on a legal process in the courts that will likely go all the way to Australia’s highest court.
No one is complaining about my or others’ posts of the genocidal and messianic speeches of senior Israeli officials, though they are indeed carrying out their threats. No doubt hearing them will be distressing to Palestinians here, whose families may lie under rubble or be among the dismembered and disembowelled or beheaded children. What Palestinian would listen to the words of Netanyahu, Ben Gevir, Smotrich, Daniella Weiss or leading Israeli Rabbis among others, and not feel terrorised? When has anyone suggested we should be barred from hearing them speak, as rabid as their calls might be? It is in fact imperative we do hear them, to understand the personalities driving these extremist policies, their explicitly stated aims and the ends to which they are determined to go to achieve them.
The irony of this double standard in deeming whose feelings deserve to be protected and whose do not, whose threatening rant we will applaud or politely ignore, and whose we will not be permitted to hear, is lost on both the government and the complainants, many of who organised themselves into WhatsApp group chats to plan and coordinate attacks on critics of Israel, including myself.
I have been denounced as an antisemite, with the assistance of the Chief Reporter of The Age, once deemed to be Australia’s leading intellectual mainstream Centre-Left publication, though I have spent my entire career in one form or another working to protect our right to know and to promote the principle of human rights for all.
We must defend our right to choose whether we wish to hear and see both sides of a conflict. I will defend both my obligation as a journalist to expose important information in aid of this, as well as my right to express an opinion about a matter I happen to know something about, having been involved in this geopolitical space (among others) for almost 4 decades professionally in one way or another. Important information and perspectives should not be withheld. That would be a subversion of democracy.
I recently posted a revealing interview with the late Yahya Sinwar because we are entitled to some insight into why millions in the Arab world mourn him as they did Nasrallah, and because we are entitled to make up our own minds about him and his place in the history of the Palestinian resistance movement. Nelson Mandela spent years in jail and was a proscribed terrorist. In the end, he was deemed to have been a freedom fighter and became a President.
To expect journalists to demur from asking uncomfortable questions about government policy including the proscription of an individual as a terrorist, is not defensible, and Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s attempt to bully a young ABC journalist for doing so was inappropriate. Given it is perfectly legitimate to review policies as well as laws, it is a legitimate function of journalism to ask pointed questions about these matters.
Public discourse around the banning of the Swastika, the purpose of that law and the application of the law, are equally legitimate.
The Swastika, a symbol banned in Australia in response to its use by supporters of the genocidal Nazis, was used in a poster in Israeli colours at a rally.
Confronting as this may have been to those supporting the policies of the Israeli government, its use here was not to generate support for Nazism, but to decry it.
Yet the holder of that poster was arrested and charged because it is a ‘prohibited symbol’.
Are we to burn all books containing images of the swastika? Paintings? Cartoons?
It appears the application of the law in this case is achieving far more than its intended purpose, which was to deter those publicly supporting Nazism. Instead, it has led to the prosecution of someone using the symbol to criticise what they deem to be criminal behaviour similar to that of the Nazis.
The Labor government’s incantation around social cohesion and harmony is a weaponisation of that policy against one community. Words and symbols evidently offend and hurt more than bombs and starvation or volunteering to fight in an army conducting acts deemed genocidal by the ICJ, even when that country is a signatory to the Genocide Convention as Australia is.
The Prime Minister, Opposition leader and others say protesters are bringing a conflict ‘over there’ to our streets. As has been pointed out by others, pro-Palestinian supporters can’t bring something here that has been here all along and disregarded. Historically Australia has contributed significantly to the formation and continuation of the problem ‘over there’. It has been a participant in UN processes and continues to be a great supporter of Israel despite its larceny of land, ethnic cleansing over decades and current genocide.
Senior government figures persist in condemning the term ‘From the River to the Sea’ as divisive, even violent, ignorant or feigning ignorance the term has been central to the Likkud Party and is also enshrined in Israeli law as a right reserved for Jewish people only. There are calls from senior figures in Israel to finish the project of Greater Israel, ‘from the Euphrates to the Nile’—a clear threat to the sovereignty of numerous other nations, while it is once again bombing Beirut, purportedly to eradicate Hezbollah.
Whilst the political class and mainstream media have no problem with double standards, courts may take a different view in the matter of free speech.
In a landmark case in the UK that will reverberate here because the reasoning and principles apply equally, an employment tribunal earlier this year found Prof. David Miller was wrongfully dismissed by Bristol University for allegedly making antisemitic remarks. In recent days the tribunal published its judgement which found it was not antisemitic to criticise Israel for apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide, that in fact this position was ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society.’
The judge stated that Miller’s ‘opposition to Zionism is not opposition to the idea of Jewish self-determination or of a preponderantly Jewish state existing in the world, but rather, as he defines it, to the exclusive realisation of Jewish rights to self-determination within a land that is home to a very substantial non-Jewish population’.
Miller’s comments were accepted as lawful, found not to be antisemitic, did not incite violence and did not pose any threat to any person’s health or safety (though feelings may have been hurt and offence was clearly taken).
We have yet to see how this may play out here where a law states that to offend is to cause harm, in concert with other planned moves that will restrict free speech further, including criminal penalties.
One of the first things I was told when I started working in a newsroom was ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. At the time I thought it was a statement of the obvious. Decades later we have now arrived at the point where this idea is dangerously controversial. It is one that may land you in prison as an antisemite and supporter of terrorism.