Palestinian voices silenced: 14 months of ABC’s RN Breakfast Coverage
By Richard Bean
Dec 19, 2024
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is widely regarded as one of the most trusted brands in Australian media. This trust is underpinned by the ABC’s editorial policies. Among these policies, the principles of independence, impartiality, and diversity of perspectives are foundational.
For example, two principles are “Do not unduly favour one perspective over another” and “Ensure that editorial decisions are not improperly influenced by political [interests].”
I downloaded, transcribed (with AI), and closely analysed over 450 interviews about Israel and Palestine from ABC Radio National’s flagship Breakfast program over the past 14 months. My analysis revealed significant biases in coverage.
Israeli guests were featured more than twice as often as Palestinian guests and reinvited repeatedly. Guests supporting Israel were universally permitted to make lurid, unverified claims without being challenged. The single exception was when Karvelas corrected Deborah Conway’s claim of a “gas the Jews” chant.
Conversely, every instance of the host using the word “challenge” with a guest occurred with Palestinian supporting guests (eight cases for six guests). Any guest mention of the word “genocide” resulted in an interruption from the host or an editorial note.
In total, Israeli guests were featured 92 times versus 40 Palestinians. Israeli guests were invited 12 (Akiva Eldar), eight (Tovah Lazaroff), seven (Jonathan Conricus, with IDF and FDD), and six times (Alon Pinkas). No Palestinian guest was invited more than three times (Nebal Farsakh, Nasser al-Kidwa, and Izzat Abdulhadi).
This imbalance aligns with findings from Al Jazeera’s program “Failing Gaza”, which reported that Palestinian guests on the BBC were routinely “vetted” through exhaustive scrutiny of their online profiles, while Israeli guests faced no such examination.
At a November 2023 meeting reported by Al Jazeera, ABC staff warned about biased coverage of the conflict. They commented “We seem to accept Israeli facts and figures with no ifs or buts … Several examples were given during yesterday’s meeting highlighting our tendency to afford Israeli spokespeople a wide berth to shape and tell the story, virtually unchallenged, while distrusting Palestinian/Arab sources.”
This pattern is evident in RN Breakfast interviews and persists to the present day.
For example, on October 11, 2023, host Patricia Karvelas interviewed Francesca Albanese, stating:
“We’ve got these new details of a massacre of civilians at a kibbutz in southern Israel. This is unthinkable stuff, the beheading of women and children, toddlers, babies, by Hamas militants.”. Albanese responded that the claims, including the beheading of children, were unverified.
This pattern continued with another 22 instances of guests presenting lurid, unverified claims of babies being beheaded, burnings, rapes and human shields. None of these claims were challenged. As “Failing Gaza” highlighted, BBC producers observed a similar phenomenon: “Israeli guests were given free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback.”
On October 18, 2023, Karvelas introduced another Israeli talking point as a fact during an exchange with guest Zoe Daniel:
Karvelas: “What happens when Hamas uses sites like hospitals, though, to launch rocket attacks?”
Zoe Daniel: “Yeah, it’s really challenging. I mean, Hamas habitually uses the Palestinian people as human shields. … I was a foreign correspondent for almost 30 years.”
In contrast, when a Palestinian supporting guest mentioned the word “genocide” or “colonialism”, even once, the host would either immediately interrupt to state that Israel contested this, note this at the end of the interview, or an editorial note would be added to the online version of the interview (nine cases). This again parallels the BBC approach: “people were terrified of using the word ‘genocide’ in coverage … if an interviewee says the word genocide … the presenter will almost always panic.”
The ABC’s editorial policies have been disregarded repeatedly in 14 months of Palestine-related coverage. RN Breakfast went beyond mere stenography: Israeli talking points were presented as unquestioned facts.
A similar pattern emerged on the 7.30 program. For instance, host Sarah Ferguson “questioned” Ambassador Majed Bamya by stating:
“We also understand they [Hamas] use civilians as human shields”.
Despite these biases, the accessibility of ABC interviews online and the availability of AI transcription software enabled this longitudinal analysis. The bias can now be demonstrated across guest selection, host challenges, and the language used.
The ABC staff meeting noted that “Failing to offer different perspectives has [young audiences] turning away from the ABC to alternative media sources.”
The processes to address this failure are the complaints system, the Ombudsman, and Media Watch. However, these consider only individual programs, and the process has been a dead end with the ombudsman not finding breaches of ABC policies.
Due to this approach, the review process misses systematic biases. Media Watch has offered the best critiques, recently noting that the media has been “cowed” on the Palestine issue. This had been previously observed by Crikey in commentary on the Antoinette Lattouf case.
The way forward to regain public trust is clear. The ABC must ensure that its reporting aligns with its own editorial policies.
This includes balanced representation of guests, critical engagement with unverified claims, and a consistent approach across all perspectives.
Failure to do so will result in audiences continuing to turn to alternatives.
Editors’ note:
The ABC was provided a copy of the author’s research and primary data prior to publication. “For accuracy, context and fairness” ABC staff refer readers to the:
“2023 report and the 2024 mid-year report by the ABC Ombudsman’s Office, which independently investigates editorial complaints against the Editorial Policies.
“2023 report:https://about.abc.net.au/who-we-are/abc-ombudsman/
“Relevant findings include:
- “Of the 5220 individual content complaints the ABC received in the 12 months, 51% of all issues raised related to the Israel-Gaza war. However, an organised campaign about one Q+A episode (alleging bias in favour of Israel) accounted for 1974 of these. (Those complaints were not upheld.)
- “Discounting that campaign, the war was the subject of 30% of issues raised. Of these, 78% alleged bias in ABC reporting, with 58% claiming content was pro-Israel/anti-Palestine/anti-Hamas and 41% claiming content was pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas/anti-Israel.
- “Despite this, no breach findings were made about ABC NEWS Israel-Gaza coverage. All the complaints were either not upheld or were able to be resolved.
- “The Ombudsman’s overall finding is that the ABC’s Israel-Gaza coverage was “professional, wide-ranging and reflective of newsworthy events”.
“2024 mid-year report:ABC Ombudsman mid-year report January to June 2024 – About the ABC
“Relevant findings include:
- “The Israel/Gaza war represented 24% of all complaints over this period (January to June 2024).
- “The majority of complaints about the war concerned bias or lack of balance with 35% suggesting content was pro-Israel and 63% concluding pro-Palestine (2% other).
- “Over the 6-months, no breaches of ABC editorial standards were found in the war coverage.”
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Richard Bean is an academic and data scientist who has published extensively in the fields of energy, transport, health and classical cryptography. He specialises in large-scale data analysis and the integration of data sets from different areas.
https://johnmenadue.com/palestinian-voices-silenced-14-months-of-abcs-rn-breakfast-coverage/
