Disagree with Antoinette Lattouf, but silencing her wasn’t the answer

Friday marks one year since the ABC sacked journalist Antoinette Lattouf. By reflecting the intolerant times we live in, the episode has been an indictment on the public broadcaster.

The details surrounding the controversy are well known. In the lead-up to last Christmas, Lattouf began week-long work as a fill-in presenter of an ABC Radio Sydney program. After one shift, she posted on social media a Human Rights Watch report alleging Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.

On December 20, 2023, the ABC terminated Lattouf’s contract and cited her social media post for her dismissal.

Since then, the Fair Work Commission found that the ABC dismissed Lattouf. On February 3, 2025, the matter goes to the Federal Court, with Lattouf’s lawyers arguing she was unfairly dismissed on the basis of her race or political opinion. Outgoing ABC managing director David Anderson and former chairwoman Ita Buttrose are likely to be cross examined in the witness box.

It’s probably true that ABC journalists should refrain from posting political opinions on social media. Prime-time presenters, editors and senior reporters at any public broadcaster have a duty to uphold principles of impartiality. It’s not their job to follow or adopt a particular opinion.

The problem is that many ABC journalists have flouted these principles all too often and there is rarely any attempt to bring them into line.

For example, a few years ago 7.30 political editor Laura Tingle took to Twitter (now X) to accuse Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison of “ideological bastardry”.

Four Corners reporter Louise Milligan used social media to give her opinions which, in one case, defamed a federal Liberal MP. The ABC stood by her, poured res­ources into her legal defence and, after it lost the case, paid for the defamation damages Milligan had incurred.

What’s galling about the Lattouf case is that she was shafted for a social media post about a topical news story that the ABC itself saw fit to report while protecting more high-profile staff reporters who posted far more offensive mes­sages about less newsworthy events. This selective support undermines the broadcaster’s claims of independence and impartiality.

You might say Milligan and Tingle were protected because they’re Caucasian while Latouff is an Arabic-speaking journalist (with Lebanese Christian heritage). Lattouf herself makes that claim. To me, racism does not explain the ABC’s decision.

Aunty is under pressure to hire more ethnically diverse journalists to reflect not only the country’s changing cultural mix but also trends set by British and American public broadcasters. So firing her because of her ethnicity made no sense.

A better explanation for Lattouf’s sacking lies in understanding that ABC management bowed to pressure by a pro-Israel lobbying group called Lawyers for Israel. Like other lobby groups, this group has every right to put its complaints to the public broadcaster. Lobby groups are Australian taxpayers, too, and they help fund the public broadcaster.

None of this, however, justified the ABC’s decision to fire Lattouf. The sad reality is that management panicked, bowed to lobby pressure and sacked a perfectly sound presenter.

Ever since, the ABC has made a bad situation worse. Rather than admit it badly mishandled the affair and settle the case, the broadcaster has doubled down — at great taxpayer expense — to defend its original decision, which hardly any staff member, to the best of my knowledge, justifies.

This is not surprising. As the Heston Russell defamation case demonstrated, the ABC has a troubling history of pouring tax dollars into costly legal fights with little to show for it.

The Lattouf case is yet another chapter in this saga of wastefulness. Lattouf (whom I know and with whom I worked on a board) is intelligent and articulate. She closely follows a wide range of news sources in relation to the Middle East and other important global and local stories. Add in her ethnicity and her western Sydney upbringing, and she’s precisely the kind of journalist the ABC should be promoting.

Besides, it’s not as if criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza is confined to the fringes of public discourse. According to B’Tselem (a Jerusalem-based human rights group) and Human Rights Watch (which from 1993 to 2022 was led by Kenneth Roth, whose father was a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany), Israel is an apartheid state. A recent Amnesty report claims Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza.

Whatever one thinks of these reports, it’s entirely legitimate for any serious journalist to report their findings or post them on social media.

In the US, a leading group critical of the Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank and US arming of the Israelis is called J Street, which styles itself as ‘pro-Israel’ but is for a two-state solution.

If US public broadcasters NPR and PBS can report J Street’s criticisms of Israel, why can’t our ABC tolerate a social media post from a fill-in presenter about a Human Rights Watch report that the ABC’s own news and current affairs division deemed important enough to report?

In recent years, those on the right spectrum of opinion across the Anglosphere have railed against threats to free speech, especially on Western college campuses. Genuine liberals and conservatives alike have warned that, thanks to what’s called cancel culture, the free exchange of information and ideas is becoming more constricted. We rightly lament an intolerance of opposing views.

Yet too many on the right have been curiously absent in defending Lattouf. Just because they may disagree with her original social media post about Israel does not excuse the ABC’s treatment of Lattouf. If they disagree with her critique of Israel, let’s do so by argument and persuasion, not by trying to silence her or wish her away.

In a free society, we should be allowed to hear and debate different points of views about any given subject, however controversial. Otherwise, we run the danger of undermining liberal democracy in Australia.

Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies and a former presenter at the ABC’s Radio National.