ABC Producer: "It will be difficult to
proceed without appearing unbalanced..."
Arnold Roth writes (Sep 2003) from Jerusalem:
 The most influential media channel
in Australia is very likely the government-owned Australian Broadcasting
Corporation (more familiarly the ABC, or "Aunty").
In
August 2001, the then-head of the ABC's Middle East bureau, Tim Palmer,
emailed me. This was a few days after Malki's murder. He asked me to join him for a press interview in Jerusalem. I immediately agreed. For reasons
described below, that interview never
took place. In
fact Palmer and I did not meet then and, despite efforts on my part, we never
met subsequently or ever. He has since been posted to Indonesia. But the
after-effects of the correspondence between us, and of statements he later made
inside the ABC and in emails to me, continue to be felt now (September 2003).
Just before I visited Melbourne in August 2003, the ABC contacted me
again. I was invited to be an on-air guest on the Radio
National breakfast program to speak about the work of Keren Malki. This early
morning interview was set to take place some ten hours after my arrival from Israel. But late
on the night before the program, just as I reached my mother's home from
Melbourne airport, a phone message and an email were waiting for me.
The key part of
that
email message, sent to me by a radio producer at the ABC, was this:
"Given the coverage we gave on today's programme to
the latest explosion in Jerusalem - my executive
producer and I agree that we will have to cancel. This morning we
devoted considerable time to representatives from both Jewish and
Palestinian organisations, and always seek to put both views forward.
Although your foundation is working to benefit both
Israeli and Palestinian families, it will nevertheless be difficult to
proceed without appearing unbalanced."
This message (which I have quoted verbatim) upset
and astonished me.
Balance, whatever view you take of how to achieve it, cannot mean
what this ABC producer interpreted it to mean. (Her mention of "the latest explosion" is
a reference to the terrorist massacre of 23 Israelis, most of them children and babies, on a
city bus in Jerusalem a night earlier. That outrage had in fact happened as my daughters
and I were leaving our Jerusalem home to drive to Tel Aviv airport at the start
of our Australian visit.)
Piers
Akerman whom I did not know until this visit and had never met previously, took up
the issue
in his weekly newspaper column a few days later.
Aunty trips up
on its balancing act
Piers Akerman
The Daily Telegraph, Sydney
August 25, 2003
FIFTEEN-year-old Australian-born Malki Roth
was murdered by a suicidal bomber as she sat among her girlfriends in a
Jerusalem pizzeria two years ago. PIERS AKERMAN writes.
Her killer, Izzadin Al-Masri, 23, a member
of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, came from a middle-class Palestinian
family with investments in Jenin and Nablus.
He'd been hinting for about a month that he
planned to become an Islamic "martyr".
Young Palestinians are encouraged to hate
Jews and to believe they are destined to martyrdom (with a complete suite of
virgins, in the case of the young boys) from their earliest childhood by the
Palestinian authorities.
Al-Masri's father, Shaheel, was subsequently
quoted expressing pride in his son's suicide and at his son's slaughter of 14
Israelis.
Arnold Roth, the father of the murdered
teenager expressed his outrage at the barbarism in The Washington Post. This
prompted the ABC's then-Middle East bureau chief Tim Palmer, to ask him for an
interview.
Mr Roth said he would "have no
objection at all to speaking with you on the record, and if it can help get
out the story of how sad Malki's loss is, then I would like to do it".
But in a response which reveals either an
appalling absence of any moral compass on the part of the ABC's senior
staffer, or a total lack of any understanding of the conflict, Palmer said he
intended to bracket Mr Roth with an interview with the murderer's proud
father.
Can it be that this is what ABC boss Russell
Balding has in mind when he babbles about "balance" at the national
broadcaster?
Does it believe there can be some
"balance", some symmetry, some moral equivalence in presenting the
father of a murdered teenager who spent her school holidays providing care for
severely handicapped children and the father of a young man who believed it
was his religious purpose to murder innocent people?
Palmer promised to get back to Mr Roth but
did not.
Last week, Mr Roth, who has set up the Malki
Foundation to raise funds to assist families with severely retarded children
in memory of his daughter's passion, arrived in Melbourne from Israel to find
a message from an ABC radio producer, who had earlier asked him to be a guest
on a morning program.
The note said: "I'm writing to let you
know that unfortunately we are going to have to cancel arrangements to
interview you Friday morning on our programme.
"Given the coverage we gave on today's
programme to the latest explosion in Jerusalem, my executive producer and I
agree that we will have to cancel.
"This morning we devoted considerable
time to representatives from both Jewish and Palestinian organisations, and
always seek to put both views forward.
"Although your foundation is working to
benefit both Israeli and Palestinian families, it will nevertheless be
difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced.
"My apologies and best wishes for your
trip."
How a discussion with Mr Roth about the
Malki Foundation – which places no religious or racial qualifications on
those it helps – affects the ABC's "balance" is bewildering. The
second family it assisted was in fact a Jordanian Palestinian.
Could it be that the ABC searched for an
equivalent Palestinian charitable organisation but drew a blank? Perhaps it
could ask Federal Labor's pro-Palestinian lobbyists Leo McLeay and Julia Irwin
to point them to an Arab organisation as even-handed in its approach as the
memorial to the murdered Australian Australian volunteer child care worker?
It might produce a program explaining that
Israeli children are taught peace education while the Palestinian Authority's
approved curriculum and Palestinian television teaches hate and prepares young
people for "martyrdom". Or would such a program also fail the ABC's
nonsensical idea of "balance"?
Mr Roth says the Malki Foundation (www.keren
malki.org) is his retaliation at those who killed his daughter.
"These people, Hamas, radiate
hate," he said. "We cannot out-hate them but we can help Palestinian
Arabs and show them that their strategy of hate has failed. If they choke on
our aid, so be it.
"They are non-entities, when they
murder they will be forgotten, but my daughter will live in the memories of
those we help."
In the warped ABC culture, however, Malki
Roth will be forever marked as the equivalent of murderous "martyr"
Izzadin Al-Masri – all in the interests of "balance".
Responding later in the same week, the ABC's managing
director (equivalent to its CEO), Russell
Balding, published the following letter in the
same newspaper. A longer version of the letter was posted
on the ABC's own
website. (The longer version is copied below.)
Thursday 28 August 2003 |
Letter by the Managing Director to the
Daily Telegraph
Dear Editor Usually, it hardly seems worth the effort to respond to Mr Akerman’s
predictable criticisms of the ABC. It is better to trust in the readership of
The Daily Telegraph to decipher his unique form of prejudice. Unfortunately,
Mr Akerman’s latest exercise in poor taste, ("Aunty trips up on its
balancing act," August 26), demands a considered response. The article
criticises the award winning ABC Journalist, Tim Palmer, for attempting to
construct a story featuring the father of a suicide bomb victim (Malki Roth)
and the father of the perpetrator (Izzadin Al-Masri). The Daily Telegraph did
precisely this when it published two stories on the same page featuring the
respective fathers on August 11, 2001. The attack occurred in Israel two years
ago and Mr Palmer covered it extensively, including reporting on the reaction
of other relatives of the victims. According to Mr Akerman, the ABC has no
right to feature both fathers in a story, and such an approach reveals an
appalling absence of any moral compass on the part of the ABC’s senior
staffer. Not only was Mr Arnold Roth told about the other interview - he was
given the opportunity to reject having his words broadcast in a manner
unacceptable to him. This was done as a courtesy and out of respect for a
grieving father. The article’s conclusion then drew a startling analogy: in
the warped ABC culture, however, Malki Roth will be forever marked as the
equivalent of murderous martyr Izzadin Al-Masri. This is a disgraceful and
thoroughly unjustifiable slur on the ABC and Tim Palmer. The ABC never tried
to argue there was a moral equivalence between the death of Malki Roth and the
murder by Izzadin Al-Masri. In the end, Tim Palmer decided not to proceed with
the story and Mr Roth was not interviewed. The fact that Mr Akerman
acknowledges this and still continues with his theory of ABC moral turpitude
compounds the overall offence of his article. Malki Roth’s father, Arnold
Roth, was interviewed by the ABC’s 7.30 Report on August 21. He spoke of his
foundation to help Arab and Israeli disabled children. Also on the program
were Khaled Abu Awad and Robi Damelin, other parents of children killed in the
Israel-Palestine conflict. They were involved in organising camps for Israeli
and Palestinian children. Mr Damelin noted: “The idea is to get them to
interact for four to five days and to create a friendship by the end of this,
because they can go out and be ambassadors to their friends - and maybe that
will start to grow from that age-group”. I invite your readers to view the
transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2003/s929534.htm Does Mr
Akerman detect an `absence of any moral compass’ in this story?
Unfortunately, I suspect he does, as he quite simply lacks the capacity for
impartiality.
Yours sincerely
Russell Balding
Managing Director,
ABC
Believing that Mr. Balding's letter did not do justice to the issues, I
wrote and sent a letter of my own to the Daily Telegraph. This was published on 30th August
2003 in a highly edited version. The full text of my letter in the form I actually wrote it
now follows.
Thursday 28th August 2003
The Editor
The Daily Telegraph
Sydney
Sir: Russell Balding, the ABC's managing
director, criticizes Piers Akerman's very cogent column "Aunty trips up
on its balancing act". I'm sorry to be getting drawn into an unpleasant
conflict over the actions and policies of the ABC. But the mis-characterization
of events in the letter demands an answer.
Mr Balding makes no mention at all of what
occurred last Friday: an interview by ABC national radio with me, to focus on
the work of the Malki Foundation, was cancelled because, as the producer wrote
to me "it will... be difficult to proceed without appearing
unbalanced."
The Malki Foundation (www.kerenmalki.org)
exists to honour the memory of my murdered daughter, born in Melbourne and
murdered in Jerusalem at the age of 15. The Foundation provides equipment and
therapies for families, with absolutely no regard to their race or religion,
so long as they want to give their disabled children the best possible home
care. It does very decent humanitarian work. On Wednesday, this human interest
story was going to be a national radio feature. The following day -- not. What
changed? Just one thing: the fact that a terror attack -- the "massacre
of the children" -- took place on a bus a few minutes drive from my
Jerusalem home, proudly executed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.
Thus the question of whether a human
interest story about an Australian family is suitable for broadcast on the ABC
has turned into a function of whether or not a terror outrage occurred in
Israel that day. Was that the intention? Does "balance" have to mean
this?
Mr Balding's letter describes a conversation
that took place two years ago between me and one of his reporters, the
"award-winning" Tim Palmer (as Mr Balding carefully describes him).
In doing so, he has seriously mis-stated aspects of what happened, perhaps
because he took no part in that conversation himself.
My wife and I have been determined to ensure
that Malki's death two years ago never becomes a mere statistical blip. This
has meant we frequently meet with, and speak to, journalists from all over the
world. We talk publicly about Malki at every possible opportunity.
Thus, when Tim Palmer, the ABC's man in
Jerusalem at the time, approached me for an interview after the Sbarro
restaurant massacre, I agreed immediately. Then Palmer told me it would take
place only if I consented to his bracketing me with the father of the
murderer. He explained that this was a political story and had to be told in a
political fashion with both sides being heard. If you ask me what he meant by
"bracketing", I don't know. Did he mean to put the murderer's father
and me in the same room, or have us both on the same phone line? Most likely
not, but I don't know. We never got to the part where he explained it to me,
because I told him right away I could never give a hand to his attempt at
false comparisons and bogus moral equivalence. And if you wonder what the
other side of the murder of a fifteen year-old could possibly be, then you can
join the club. I'm simply baffled by this way of looking at things.
The ABC's MD says his organization
"never tried to argue there was a moral equivalence between the death of
Malki Roth and the murder". But Tim Palmer himself said in one of his
emails that he dropped the interview with the murderer's father because he
"was unable to present the counterpoint". To many people, the notion
that there is a counterpoint to the murder of a child will be grotesque. It
greatly hurt my wife and me.
Mr Balding's letter says that whatever the
ABC did, the Daily Telegraph did the same or worse, and seems to imply this is
good for the ABC's case. But I have carefully read the Telegraph's report of
my daughter's murder [The actual August 2001 page is
posted online - AR] and it is perfectly clear to me that Mr Balding's
assertion on this point is wrong. The Telegraph's treatment of the story is
fair and reasonable. The ABC's treatment of me was not.
Finally, I'm puzzled that Mr Balding's
letter does not seem to address the question of whether or not Palmer and the
ABC acted properly towards me. I think it is inappropriate to raise matters of
this kind in a newspaper, so I am preparing a brief for Mr Balding which will
include copies of all the emails passing between Palmer and me over the past
two years. I will be asking him to inform himself about the judgement and
approach of the journalist he seeks to defend. His answer will be very
important to me.
Arnold Roth
Jerusalem
I have not heard from Mr Balding since this letter was
published.
Piers Akerman provided his own commentary on Balding's letter
in another Telegraph column published the following week:
It's someone else's ABC ignoring facts
Piers Akerman
The Daily Telegraph, Sydney
September 2, 2003
ABC boss Russell Balding is in serious need
of a reality check. His response to my column last Tuesday was full of
argument but light on facts, as Arnold Roth, the father of murdered Australian
schoolgirl Malki Roth, lucidly demonstrated in his letter published in The
Daily Telegraph on Saturday.
The bean counter's tasteless attack and
threadbare defence clearly illustrated how profoundly the public broadcaster
has lost its moral compass.
Unfortunately, such brainless bluster from
the top appears to be in keeping with much of the ABC's warped culture of
denial. Take the numerous complaints made about a Radio National broadcast
just over a year ago in which reporter Peter Cave unequivocally asserted a
massacre had taken place in Jenin in April, 2002.
The issue is of importance to Australian
audiences as some Australian Muslims still believe that Israeli troops
participated in the fictitious massacre, just as they choose to believe the US
was behind the attacks on the World Trade Centre, despite Osama bin Laden's
jubilant claim of responsibility, and that the US is a colonising power.
The ABC refuses to correct the record
despite the fact that there have been two investigations, one by Human Rights
Watch and the other by the UN, which have failed to support the claim.
The Human Rights Watch report, based on
interviews with people present during the Jenin fighting, is straightforward.
It states it "found no evidence to sustain claims of massacres or
large-scale extrajudicial executions by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] in
Jenin refugee camp".
The UN report, compiled without a visit to
Jenin, typically does not rule decisively either way. It appears to draw
heavily on the Human Rights Watch report but does allow that an allegation by
a Palestinian Authority official that some 500 people had been killed
"has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has
emerged".
Not good enough for the ABC, however, which
remains the sole Western media outlet to maintain its curious but inflammatory
view that a massacre took place.
A rational national broadcaster would
recognise its serious error and atone and any examination of the record and
the investigators' reports would indicate that the ABC has a clear
responsibility to correct Cave's report.
But those who have asked for a correction
have been treated very shabbily indeed.
When ABC listener Ralph Zwier sought a
review of Cave's explicit report, he was told that the Independent Complaints
Review Panel (ICRP) would first see whether it would accept the complaint. It
did not.
In a patronising response, ICRP convenor Ted
Thomas tartly told Mr Zwier: "You and I surely cannot be certain how all
Western media dealt with the story."
He then went on to split hairs over whether
the ABC's charter meant it was required to be a "mainstream" or a
"specialist" broadcaster and dismissed the charter's requirement for
balance and impartiality with the thought that "it does not require them
to be unquestioning . . .".
Mr Zwier then asked if the
"independent" panel would clarify the criteria on which it
determined whether to review complaints. He was told that it's up to the
convenor of the ICRP – that is, it's arbitrary.
Under the ABC's risible complaints
procedure, either the managing director or the convenor of its ridiculously
titled panel call the shots if they are of the opinion that a complaint
"alleges a sufficiently serious case of bias, lack of balance or unfair
treatment to warrant independent review; or is a matter of public notoriety
which warrants such a review".
While some Muslims in this country continue
to claim a massacre took place in Jenin, despite all the proven facts, and use
this assertion to reinforce their ridiculous claims about a global conspiracy
against their religion, it is obvious the matter is serious.
That it is a matter of public notoriety goes
without saying.
Mr Zwier is now considering whether to take
his complaint to the Australian Broadcasting Authority, the next link in the
chain.
It is to be hoped that he will pursue this
option – and forward copies of all his correspondence to Communications
Minister Richard Alston, Senator George Brandis and Opposition leader Simon
Crean.
The ABC's refusal to correct the record and
apologise about the Jenin claim indicates "our" ABC belongs to
Yasser Arafat's propaganda unit.
ABC journalist Tim Palmer, who sought to bracket me with the
father of my child's murderer, has emailed me several times in the past two
years, most recently on the day Akerman's first column appeared. I have been
puzzled and very bothered by some of the things he wrote and did. I am preparing a letter and a dossier for Russell Balding now. After
that, I will consider publishing my correspondence with the ABC's Palmer here.
When a politically charged issue has to be covered, there's room for debate about whether and how the media achieve a balanced
presentation of the competing versions of the facts and opinions. In the case of the ABC's coverage of my
daughter's murder and of the work of the foundation we set up in her memory, I
feel that the
failures and mistakes of ABC management and staff are plain and clear. They
call, it seems to me, for lessons to be learned and changes to be implemented. I
intend to do what I can to advance that process.
Arnold Roth
/ Jerusalem
June 2003 |
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