The ABC stands accused of failing to comply with its own charter, which fundamentally requires it to be the most reliably independent source of news in the country. That the accusation comes with equal ferocity from both sides of the ideological divide is a strong indication that both are wrong, but the organisation itself has lost the plot completely.
Consequently, the ABC stumbles around, punching itself in the head. As the detail sitting behind Antoinette Lattouf’s win in the Fair Work Commission (FWC) yesterday illustrates, forget about independence — even basic competence seems to be beyond the national broadcaster.
The FWC was adjudicating on the ABC’s claim that Lattouf’s wrongful dismissal claim is fatally flawed because she was never actually dismissed. The commission has ruled she was, clearing the way for her to pursue her case in the Federal Court.
Lattouf’s claim is she was dismissed from her casual radio gig last December, after three days of a five-day contract, because of her race, national extraction and/or political opinions. Terminating an employee for any of these reasons is unlawful under the Fair Work Act.
The timeline of this unfolding debacle is telling. Lattouf had been engaged to fill in as a radio presenter between December 18 and 22.
Trouble struck immediately, but not from anything Lattouf did on air. The ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, emailed the chief content officer, Christopher Oliver-Taylor, on December 18, passing on email complaints about Lattouf being put on air.
The complaints kept coming — not about anything Lattouf had done that day, but her past activities on social media, where she had been expressing her opinions criticising Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people for some time.
Oliver-Taylor apparently decided the complaints were valid, because he triggered instructions down the line with the intention of getting Lattouf to not post “anything that would suggest she is not impartial”. In an internal email, Oliver-Taylor expressed his concern that “her public views may mean that she is in conflict with our own editorial policies”. He also asked this intriguing question: “Can we also advise why we selected Antoinette as stand-in host?”
It was still the 18th when Elizabeth Green, who had hired Lattouf, told her the ABC had received “heaps of complaints from pro-Israel lobbyists who are not happy that we have put you on air”. Green asked Lattouf not to tweet anything during that week.
Lattouf said that seemed unfair, and asked if it would be okay for her to post clearly factual information, such as a report from Amnesty International. Green agreed that would be okay.
The next day, Lattouf posted on her personal Instagram account a link to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), commenting that HRW was reporting that starvation was being used as a weapon of war in Gaza. The ABC reported on the same HRW report, on the same day.
According to the evidence, Oliver-Taylor thought Lattouf had been directed by Green not to post on social media at all, whereas Green said she had only “advised” Lattouf to that effect. The FWC’s factual findings are that no direction was given, leaving open the ultimate question of exactly what infraction Lattouf committed.
Anyway, Oliver-Taylor decided that she must be taken off air, and on December 20 Lattouf was called into a meeting after her shift and told the bad news.
Both sides agree that what was said to Lattouf included that her HRW post “could be considered controversial” and “in the context of your other posts, this is considered a breach of ABC policies”. When Lattouf protested that her post was factual, she was informed that “it was a post about Israel-Gaza, and that she had been asked not to post about that while she was on-air with us this week”.
Later that day, after clearing her desk and leaving the ABC for the last time, Lattouf wrote asking for clarification of specifically which section of the ABC’s social media policy she had allegedly breached. She never received a response.
What a mess, but one thing is clear: if the ABC has a consistent understanding of its own social media policy and its expectations of how its people are to conduct themselves publicly, it sure is keeping that well hidden. Good luck, reading the Lattouf decision or the ABC’s incoherent public statements regarding its “counselling” of Laura Tingle, working out what their offences are alleged to have been.
The ABC made this stick for its enemies to beat it with when it allowed itself to be panicked by News Corp and the then Coalition government into radically altering its social media policy in 2021. The policy is one to which it is impossible to guarantee compliance, except by not posting on social media at all. It’s no wonder those in charge give every impression of not having a clue what they’re trying to achieve.
The Lattouf case catches the national broadcaster uncomfortably wedged between two stools. However, remember this, if you’re feeling sympathetic to it: the complaints about Lattouf were flooding in, and ABC management was demanding she be muzzled and openly asking why she’d even been hired, before she posted what they now claim was the justification for her sacking.
