Australia’s  mainstream media have ignored and distorted the genocide in Palestine. A recent Australians for Humanity forum, chaired by former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis, and featuring Margaret Reynolds, Stuart Rees and Peter Slezak, tackled the issues and discussed what needs to be done.

The ABC has let us down badly – former parliamentarian and national president of Friends of the ABC, Margaret Reynolds

If we’re going to rely on [independent journalists’] work we’ve got to … support them – journalist and former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis

Well, I would want to treble the number of people who read Pearls and Irritations, that would be a start. – Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize winner Stuart Rees

(The following is an edited transcript of the Australian for Humanity webinar)

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Kostakidis: There’s been a sense in the community or in much of the community that the media is failing us on this issue. One question is does the panel think that a mass campaign of complaints to ABC chair Kim Williams, the ABC ombudsman and to Media Watch might create a critical mass of outrage that could itself become a media story about the lack of coverage the national broadcaster has given to clear evidence of IDF war crimes and genocide in Palestine? So that question’s specifically targeting the ABC I suppose because we’re funding it, we’re all funding it. Is there anyone who’d like to comment about that particular question.

Reynolds: The ABC can be very responsible and independent in some of its reporting and I certainly would like to mention John Lyons, the journalist who has, you know, done more than any other ABC journalist to to bring us at least some of the truth. But yes, the ABC has let us down badly. SBS has been marginally better on occasions, but not on others so I do think that we have an obligation to complain to the ABC and SBS and to the government about the way the mainstream media just ignores so much reporting and even if they try to report they’re so ill-informed that they get it wrong from the word go. But great idea, go ahead I’ll join you.

Kostakidis: Anyone else like to comment?

Rees: I just wonder if face-to-face conversations with key journalists, not just with Kim Williams and the senior management and different media outlets, wouldn’t be helpful, Mary, and I sense you’re the best person to answer that question because my experience with them is that they frequently don’t know about the sort of issues that Margaret and Peter and myself have been talking about and they either don’t know or the Zionist Lobby is so powerful that they can’t afford to appear to know.

Kostakidis: I think it’s their business, it’s their job to find out if they don’t know and I think the culture is set at the top really, so I think the suggestion in that question is excellent. One of the functions of media is to inform the public and to hold the powerful to account. One of the areas in which they failed is the decisions by the International Court of Justice, the orders of the International Court of Justice, so by not holding our politicians to account with respect to the responsibilities Australia has as a signatory to international laws and conventions, it means the public also are not informed about this. [We should explain] these laws and conventions that we have signed up to and what Australia’s obligations are and to put politicians in the difficult position of having to explain why we’re not acting as as we should be.

The next question is also about the media. How can we achieve a more balanced Western media about Palestine? Would someone like to tackle that before I before I have a go.

Rees: Well, I would want to treble the number of people who read Pearls and Irritations, that would be a start. I think we have to demystify to people of my age what is meant by social media posts because we’re told that people of a certain age group never read any newspapers, don’t watch or listen to the news, but derive most of what they think is going on from social media posts. So one needs to demystify that last comment really, Mary, about the discussion that goes on in places called universities and so that the freedom to read and think and debate and criticise on the campuses of Australian universities is crucial to the media because many journalists have grown out of university-based newspapers and yet at the moment there’s this absurd fear by cowardly vice-chancellors to suppress that freedom of speech.

Slezak: Let me add something to that if I can, Mary. We’re all fans of [Noam] Chomsky so you would forgive me for quoting him again. He’s written a lot about the universities and I think Stuart is being a little bit optimistic. His view is that they’re actually institutions for generating conformity and obedience and it’s a myth that they’re not.

Rees: Not when I was there.

Slezak: No, Stuart, that’s true, when all of us were there we had this illusion that they were centres of free thought and independent critical thinking. I think again I’ve been impressed with Chomsky’s evidence of this. It’s an illusion that we all enjoy about ourselves but that’s relevant also to the earlier question from Mary about the media which he’s written a lot about. The reality, I think, is that social media have become a much more important source, depending on how you choose what you watch, because there’s a lot of rubbish on there. But I think the ABC is no longer relevant, and for good reason. Even, surprisingly, if you watch American corporate television [like] CNN and MSNBC they’re doing long-form interviews. I mean, with people that are never asked onto the ABC you know. Rashid Khaled from Columbia University, any number that I can think of, people who are expressing dissident views of the current situation and for whatever reason the ABC can’t find them.

This is a very interesting reflection on our public broadcaster, the independent broadcaster where even commercial broadcasters in the US are running long interviews. Even Piers Morgan, these awful ideologues are actually giving a lot of time to people that deserve to be heard that they disagree with. That’s not happening here.

Kostakidis: No, yeah, I agree. And social media is a bit of a misnomer really. I see it as civic media because of the way I engage with it. People use it for all sorts of reasons, to post photographs of the meal that they’re having, but it’s also the place where news breaks without a doubt. It breaks there first, it’s the place where we hear perspectives and from experts, whether they’re academics or journalists or experts of all different kinds who are banned now. In the mainstream media people of enormous stature like Jeffrey Sachs, like John Mearsheimer, academics like Glenn Diessen, journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Chris Lynn Hedges, people, you know, who are serious journalists. They are now operating in the social media space through with their own websites, with their own podcasts.

But going back to the question, I think we do have to complain about coverage with respect to the ABC and SBS, they’re funded by taxpayers so they really are obliged to listen to to your point of view about their coverage. With respect to the the newspapers, write letters to the editor, just keep persisting and ultimately what hurts is when it hits the hip pocket so advertisers won’t advertise if they’re not selling newspapers and have digital subscriptions. So cancel subscriptions [and] fund independent journalism. You know, we we get our news from a variety of of amazing websites and in Australia we’ve got Pearls and Irritations, Declassified Australia, Michael West. Consortium News operates largely in Australia also and a great number of other sites that are not based in Australia.

So why aren’t we funding, why aren’t we contributing to journalism produced there? Some of the best independent journalists that have broken stories on Palestine on 7 October have been from independent news sites and I’ve been attacked by the [Sydney Morning] Herald and The Age because I’ve quoted their work. So you know, it’s about putting your money where your mouth is. If we’re going to rely on their work, we’ve got to also, I think, support them. Would anyone else like to make a comment before I wrap up because we’re running out of time and there is some information that I’d like to give people.

The Australian for Humanity webinar was held on 28 April.