Well-known journalist Chris Hedges, whose talk scheduled to be delivered at the National Press Club was suddenly cancelled, was confronted by the ABC’s Late Night Live host David Marr in an unexpectedly ferocious interview. One reader took exception to this.

Dear David,

I am writing to you as a respected senior journalist to express my disappointment at the hatchet job interview you conducted with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges in the wake of the cancellation by the National Press Club of the invitation to him to speak there on Monday, 20 October.

I am disappointed because this interview was marred (no pun intended!) by what I consider an otherwise good record in consistently bringing the horrors being committed by Israel against the people of Gaza to the attention of your listeners.

You tried unsuccessfully to shake Chris from his assertion that the Western mainstream media have betrayed Palestinian journalists and amplified the Israeli narrative or hasbara. These journalists, incredibly brave professionals of Gaza, are the only source of news on the ground about the genocide being committed by the Israel Defence Force, supported materially and diplomatically by the US and its allies, including Australia.

This is because Israel refuses to allow other journalists into that now mostly destroyed strip of land. These incredible journalists stay there under the bombs, along with their people, suffering starvation, deprivation of shelter, healthcare and all the basics for sustaining life. They stay there despite the terrible dangers because of their fierce commitment to getting the truth of Israel’s crimes and the courage of the Palestinians out to the world.

Hedges accuses the Western media of burying the truth by constantly highlighting and headlining the lies promulgated by the Israeli military to contradict them. This emphasis and bias is not reduced by the frame “Israel says”.

You came out fighting from the start. In a voice dripping with supercilious sarcasm, you challenged Chris on the sponsorship of his visit to Australia by an advocacy organisation for Palestine. Underlying your challenge was the central tenet of establishment journalism: “objectivity”; that the ideal journalist has no standpoint, no values, no perspective. Or at least s/he casts them aside while working professionally. That somehow the invitation to deliver the Edward Said Memorial Lecture from the Australian Friends of Palestine Association in Adelaide invalidated Chris’s reporting or comments.

As a former media critic on ABC Media Watch and a sophisticated journalist, you should know that no one can be outside their own perspective. The obligation of journalists is to be conscious of, and explicit about, their values and perspective, and be rigorous with the accuracy and factual basis of their reporting.

Closely related to this concept of “objectivity” is the concept of “balance”, reporting the views of the various “sides” in a contested issue. In trying to defend your profession and the National Press Club, you pressed Chris to admit that the National Press Club had hosted speakers “hostile” or “unfriendly” to Israel, as if this was the key issue. Chris asserted that telling the truth about Israel’s onslaught on Gaza was the issue. While agreeing that the views of key parties had to be reported, he repeatedly asserted the centrality of truth of what is going on. “Our job is to report the truth.” Simply giving space to various viewpoints doesn’t cut it as a journalist. A professional journalist must test these various narratives against the truth..

It seems that Chris’s cogent challenge to the mainstream media’s reporting on Israel and Gaza really got under your skin. Your treasured liberal media and profession were under attack! You sure lost your cool, Chris kept his. Again and again, he had to patiently correct your various erroneous statements of what he said or what happened with the National Press Club. In seeking to defend your profession, you plaintively asked if the mainstream reporting hadn’t improved through the two years of the genocide in Gaza. You disingenuously saw no significance in Chris’s critique about headlining stories with IDF lies, even if expanding on the truth in the body of the story. Nor in the significance of the regular lies by Israeli authorities, “adjusted” several days later. You are a sophisticated skilled journalist and media critic. You know that these devices shape the news and its impact. Such defensiveness!

Clearly, other listeners were also angered by the interview. Later in the week, you responded to what you described as “a lot of you [who] were disappointed” with your interview with Chris. However, despite the various errors you made in the interview, you were unapologetic in your response. With your liberal complacency unpunctured by Chris’s thorough deflection of your attacks, you doubled down, defending your conduct of the interview. In your elite media tones, you claimed to have simply “quizzed Chris on the evidence” for his assertions. You proclaimed that “on Late Night Live, we are as committed as ever to exploring tough issues that matter right now”.

It is such a pity that in your anxiety to deny the shortcomings of the mainstream media identified by Chris, you failed to ask the key questions. By focusing on Chris and seeking to tarnish his credibility as a journalist, you totally ignored the central issue: the cancellation of the National Press Club’s invitation to him to speak and what led to the cancellation.

The questions asked are central to journalism. Asking the hard ones is what a brave, truthful, candid journalist does. With this interview, you failed the test.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.