The ABC has lodged a formal complaint with Sky News Australia after Bronwyn Bishop said the public broadcaster was “aligning themselves with the policy of Germany’s national socialist party for the elimination of Jews” in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
A regular guest on Sky, the former Liberal senator was responding to the Sky News host Sharri Markson’s claim that the ABC was “so biased, so one-sided, so anti-Israel”.
“They [Nazis] were against the establishment of the national homeland [Israel],” Bishop said on Thursday night’s program.
“So [the ABC] are aligning themselves with the policies that were in place with national socialism during world war two. And there’s no two ways about it, it’s in the DNA of socialism. And unfortunately, we have lost any balance in the ABC; any reasonableness for proper debate and for proper balance of justice.”
Bishop’s assertions were not challenged by Markson, who told viewers she personally had been “so upset” with the coverage by the national broadcaster. The segment was removed from the Sky News YouTube channel on Saturday morning.
ABC News director Justin Stevens has asked Sky News for an apology in a letter seen by Guardian Australia, writing “these comments and their characterisation of the ABC are not only wrong and deeply offensive but went completely unchallenged”.
Bishop returned to Sky News on Friday night, and said: “If I offended anyone, I’m sorry. I will remain committed to calling out atrocities and my support for the people of Israel is unwavering.”
Sky News was approached for comment but did not go further than Bishop’s statement.
The former senator’s comments came on the same day the ABC ombudsman, Fiona Cameron, published her investigation reports regarding viewer complaints about the ABC’s Israel-Hamas war coverage.
Cameron found no breach of standards for accuracy and impartiality in three interviews conducted by the 7.30 host, Sarah Ferguson, or 47 complaints about unfolding coverage on all platforms about the Gaza hospital explosion last month.
The ABC received 164 complaints about one interview – with the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert – and a social media post of an excerpt from the interview uploaded to X by ABC News.
Some viewers said the ABC was platforming Israeli propaganda and others that it was demonstrating a pro-Israel bias.
Cameron found that Ferguson had not breached standards in the Olmert interview and had conducted a range of interviews on the Israel-Gaza war and presented a range of perspectives. She said the removal of the social media post after it attracted complaints “adequately addressed the concerns” as it lacked the context of the entire interview.
Two other interviews, with Majed Bamya, the deputy permanent observer of the state of Palestine to the UN, and with Mark Regev, a former Israeli ambassador to London and now Benjamin Netanyahu’s adviser, were also cleared.
Commenting on the hospital explosion, Cameron said reporters faced constant challenges during breaking news and “coverage should be transparent about what the ABC knows and does not know”.
Of the 47 complaints about the hospital coverage, 35 alleged an anti-Israel bias and said it “was inaccurate as it either explicitly or implicitly attributed the explosion to an Israeli airstrike”; and 12 alleged a pro-Israel bias in the coverage “because it reported the responsibility for the explosion as disputed and did not attribute it conclusively to Israel”.
Cameron said ABC news had made two updates to correct a headline and a caption that unequivocally attributed the hospital explosion to an Israeli airstrike. She said particular care had to be taken “where there is a risk of losing context, for example, with headlines and photo captions”.
“We are satisfied that ABC News made reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of the reporting and that later news broadcasts acted to clarify the earliest bulletins,” she said.
