The ABC’s first Middle East correspondent, who said his mother was sent a letter calling for his death during his tenure at the broadcaster, has warned ABC management to back their staff during the current conflict.
Peter George, the national broadcaster’s Middle East correspondent in the 1980s, told Guardian Australia he faced a lot of pressure during his time in the role, particularly for a Four Corners story entitled The Palestinians in 1984.
After it aired, his mother was sent an unsigned letter stating “your son should die”, he said. But the former correspondent said he felt the broadcaster at the time had supported him.
“I was in awfully secure hands at the ABC when I was in the Middle East. I never worried about any form of criticism so long as I felt that I had gotten it right,” he said.
Based on his conversations with ABC staff now, he does not believe that is necessarily the case any more, he said.
“They do feel that management does not as energetically protect them as it used to,” he said. “If journalists start feeling that their backs aren’t being protected, then self-censorship starts to become a bit of an issue.
“And that’s what worries me most about the ABC: to what extent is it just trying to peddle a middle-of-the-road view rather than actually looking at the issues and reporting them as they see them?”
This week, ABC union staff passed a resolution of no confidence in managing director David Anderson, stating the broadcaster’s leadership team had failed “to defend the integrity of the ABC and staff from attacks”. The board later passed a vote of confidence in Anderson.
The union resolution was passed amid fallout from an unlawful termination claim lodged by journalist Antoinette Lattouf against the ABC on 22 December. Lattouf said she was dismissed from a fill-in hosting role on ABC radio after she shared a Human Rights Watch post about the Israel-Gaza conflict on her personal Instagram account. Reports emerged on 16 January that pro-Israel lawyers had coordinated complaints against her in a WhatsApp group chat.
George’s comments were echoed by the broadcaster’s global affairs editor, John Lyons, who reportedly said in a union meeting on Monday that staff were thrown under the bus by management and had begun to self-censor.
Another ABC employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Guardian Australia they backed Lyons’s position.
“If journos aren’t supported to be fearless by managers, then obviously a culture of fear and timidity arises,” they said. “That’s the very reason great newsroom leaders are famed for always backing their staff.”
Linda Mottram, who also reported for the ABC from the Middle East, faced strong pressure from the Howard government over her reporting on the Iraq war in the early 2000s. She said the support from management felt lacking back then.
“We expected we would be defended but what we ended up with was a situation where we were sort of defended, but then management decisions led to an opening up of new opportunities for the government to complain,” she said.
“That issue has never been discussed inside the ABC, and it’s like a rotten relationship … if you don’t talk about it, it just festers.
“I just think the organisation was cowed.”
Mottram said there seemed to be uncertainty over how to respond to the extreme levels of pressure on the ABC, which could leave a journalist vulnerable.
George said the situation is exacerbated by social media, where the feedback is immediate and can be “fairly aggressive and antagonistic”. He said younger reporters might be concerned that if they’re being attacked from the outside, it might result in management believing they were the cause of the trouble.
George said ABC management could be more public in their defence when complaints are lodged, and management should face up and speak to reporters in each of the states to relieve their concerns.
In an email sent to ABC staff on Tuesday and seen by Guardian Australia, news director Justin Stevens said he rejects completely “the characterisation that ABC News does not defend its journalists”.
“The safety of our employees, defending and supporting our people against unwarranted attack and criticism and ensuring the quality of our work are fundamental to who we are,” he said.
He said he would work with staff on any issues they had. Stevens said he was proud of the “good job” of coverage the ABC had done on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
“If you spend too much time on Twitter/X, which represents a minuscule portion of our audience, you wouldn’t know that.”
He said members of the public are entitled to make complaints about the broadcaster, but as director of news he follows the ABC complaints process, and the ABC works hard “constantly to defend our journalists against unjustified attacks, often multiple times in a day” both publicly and privately.
“We’ve lodged complaints with social media platforms and other media outlets over the publication of abusive content,” he said. “We complain on behalf of employees over their treatment in external media stories.”
On Wednesday, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced former News Corp chief executive Kim Williams would replace ABC chair Ita Buttrose, stating he continued to have confidence in Buttrose and Anderson.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said the ABC had been “forthright in ensuring that its journalists have support, continues to improve itself with regards for support for its workforce and all media organisations should seek to foster diversity in all its forms”.
