Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment. John Lyons. Monash University Publishing
All journalists, especially editors, make choices, sins of omissions and commissions. Secondly, all journalists, especially editors, will be lobbied, cajoled and sometimes abused by people or groups seeking to fashion those choices. The question is, to what extent does the latter dynamic influence the former?
In Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment, John Lyons argues, with a force fuelled by decades of experience and in a style best described as cool rage, that when it comes to reporting Israel, Australia’s news media has been beaten into submission by the local “pro-Israel lobby”.
This is especially true, he argues, about reporting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Unlike the rigorous debate going on inside Israel’s own media, we editors here have been brainwashed and cowed.
Editors are so scared of being labelled anti-Semitic they’ve been pulling their punches and, most troubling of all, hiding from “most Australians” the extent and intent of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank (in fact, they run scared of using the o-word).
Stories are pulled or missed, coverage slanted and biased, hacks are lulled with trips, Israeli atrocities under-reported and journalists censored, contradicted and abused (sometimes by their own colleagues). One senior journalist even suggests to Lyons the “Israel lobby” can have a young reporter fired.
The lobby’s personification is Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). So powerful is he that he gets to control what gets a run about Israel in the pages of The Australian. That sets him up in an exulted triumvirate with Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch.
But it is not just the Oz. The very utterance of his name strikes trepidation in the heart of newsrooms the country over, Voldemort-like. Very few editors, says Lyons, will say no to Rubenstein; the phrase “Colin won’t be happy if you run that story” echoes across newsrooms far and wide.
So, is all this true? Lyons is a credible witness: senior journalist, former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and former Jerusalem-based correspondent (for The Australian).
His Walkley Award-winning Four Corners story “Stone Cold Justice” (2014) about the mistreatment of Palestinian kids by Israeli authorities in the West Bank certainly unleashed what he calls a “propaganda fatwa” against him and the ABC. More on that later.
Lyons has a place from which to speak. But does he speak for all editors — he says he’s spoken to “scores”, though neither myself nor longstanding editor of The Age Michael Gawenda are among them — and is what he’s saying right?
In large part, no; in some part, yes.
Let’s start with Colin. That Rubenstein lets editors know when they are wrong from an AIJAC perspective is no big reveal. Editors come to expect a call. He demands, and often gets, an opinion piece as rebuttal to “offensive” copy. Rubenstein plays the game hard and long. He can be a total pain in the arse, but that’s his job — and he is good at it.
(In fact, after reading the Lyons monograph, he should be asking AIJAC chairman Mark Leibler for a pay rise, or demand a top-10 stop on the AFR’s list of the country’s most powerful people.)
But are Rubenstein and a few other radicals, mainly from Melbourne, basically running the joint? It’s here where Lyons stretches credibility and the limitations of my willingness to go along with his critique.
Are editors aware they will upset the pro-Israel lobby from time to time? Yes.
Does the threat of being called an anti-Semite or worse lead to wide scale misreporting, non-reporting and self-censorship? No, not in my experience.
Do they say “no to Colin”? Well yes, I have on numerous occasions — and I am sure I am not alone.
What about the reporting?
For a start, Lyons largely ignores the scores of hard-nosed reporting done from and about Israel by the likes of Paul McGeough (SMH/Age), Sophie McNeill (ABC) and, of course, himself, just to name three. Such reporting is not commissioned or edited in a vacuum.
An example: in 2010 as editor of the SMH I agreed to having McGeough and photographer Kate Geraghty travel on a flotilla bound for Gaza. That flotilla was intercepted at sea by the IDF, protesters were shot, McGeough and Geraghty detained.
Did I and other editors expect to incur criticism from AIJAC and Jewish readers? Of course. But we did it anyway. In fact, worse criticism was to come. In a subsequent editorial, and after I had been called an anti-Semite by numerous readers and community leaders, the SMH published an editorial arguing that it was a pity that debate about the Middle East and Israel was so monochrome here, as opposed to in Israel where it is deep and wide, and touchy subjects such as occupation of the West Bank often feature.
This is the sort of piece that Lyons says doesn’t happen here. Of course, discussion about settlements and so on will happen on a far, far more frequent basis in Israel: there, citizens are dealing with existential daily threats, front-of-mind issues.
Here, a diaspora, still largely informed by the experience of surviving the Holocaust, is seeking to support the existence of a Jewish homeland against threats, real and perceived, of antisemitism. The rest of us are observers, interested and often otherwise. In short, editors in Australia and Israel are dealing with different audiences, with different interests.
Most examples cited by Lyons as pro-Israel lobby interference are post-publication: the furore over the 2014 Glen Le Lieve cartoon (again in the SMH) which showed a Jewish man watching the shelling of Gaza from his armchair; Lyons’ own “fatwa” after the Four Corners’ “Stone Cold Justice” program. Of course, you can’t see what isn’t published. But if the editors were so scared, you wouldn’t see any pieces at all.
The fact the reaction to such pieces so fierce and prolonged doesn’t mean such pieces are not being published. They are.
Much of Lyons’ essay relies on anecdotes. That is his call. But a few more facts wouldn’t have gone astray.
Dateline Jerusalem starts with Lyons running, attempting to get fit after the broadcast of “Stone Cold Justice” so as to beat off the coming personal vilification. (A stylistic note for John: the lead is left hanging — it is not clear to me why being physically fit helped or hindered your cause. Is running a metaphor? Is there a link between weight and beating off anti-Semitism?)
The reaction to that episode clearly annoyed Lyons and has stayed with him ever since. As Gawenda has observed in The Age, this essay certainly isn’t about Jerusalem being journalism’s toughest assignment. Don’t read it if you want deep insights into Lyons’ time as a foreign correspondent. (He has done another book for that, Balcony Over Jerusalem.)
It is essentially about a bunch of people who got up his nose, big time, and who have a very hard-line view of what should and shouldn’t be said in the Australian media.
But who doesn’t have such a view these days?
I agree with Lyons that Australia’s media should employ more Arabic-speaking journalists and that newsrooms should be more diverse.
On reading the essay, I found myself thinking about whether Western media spends too much time reporting the Middle East. The world is awash with atrocities and injustices, geopolitical challenges and diplomatic intrigue. Why spend so much time on Israel?
In an Australian context, for good or bad, the answer may be more about the likes of Colin Rubenstein than John Lyons. Because we all know what’s worse than being talked about in a negative way.
This review first appeared on the website Plus61JMedia
The writer shows no grasp of the profound influence the pro Israel has had on US foreign policy and defence actions which affect us in the same way. That’s the real story.
Fray know full well but that is why he’s paid the big bucks, to hose bromide all over the issue and assure us that there is “…nothing to see, go back to sleep.”
This response to John Lyon’s essay by Crikey’s editor in chief is just another illustration of how the Australian media (even this ‘alternative’ outlet) covers the Israel-Palestine conflict from a Jewish perspective. This paragraph gives it away:
‘Here, a diaspora, still largely informed by the experience of surviving the Holocaust, is seeking to support the existence of a Jewish homeland against threats, real and perceived, of antisemitism. The rest of us are observers, interested and often otherwise. In short, editors in Australia and Israel are dealing with different audiences, with different interests.’
Palestinians don’t appear in this analysis, let alone have a legitimate voice. Reminds me of the mainstream view of South Africa in the late 1960s when we were expected to empathise with the minority white South Africans.
“Here, a diaspora, still largely informed by the experience of surviving the Holocaust”
Experience of surviving ? 95% of the diaspora fortunately never experienced the holocaust. They weren’t even born then and unless they are 85 years or older would be unlikely to remember.
Then as now, Palestinians were/are irrelevant and of no consequence to the decision by WWI victors, specifically France & Britain, to carve up Ottoman territories.
For sound historical reasons British called one bit Mandate Palestine – known as Palastinia since Roman times.
The same peoples had lived there, in numerous cities, whilst the Euroids were still wearing woad & uncured animal skins.
It contained the same people and their ancestors’ graves from Time out of mind but it was more of a booby prize compared to the oil rich lands argued over and delineated over many a boozy lunch by Sykes & Picot.
After WWII the same victors plus the new bully on the block, the USofAholes, decided to give a chunk of that otherwise useless chunk of real estate to a fractious segment of their own populations with whom they had never been comfortable, mostly East Europeans for at least the previous 1500yrs.
It was a European solution to a long standing European problem.
Done & dusted – “no further correspondence would be entered into” as the old radio competitions used to say.
A few exceptions never disprove a general rule. This article, with its rather stretched ‘logic’ and cherry-picked examples, is a good example of exactly what Lyons was describing.
Colin doesn’t even have to bother picking up the phone – they do it of their own initiative.
“The fact the reaction to such pieces so fierce and prolonged doesn’t mean such pieces are not being published. They are.”
……..and doesn’t mean there is no self censorship…….
just read the reports of the Israeli human rights groups……but don’t tell anyone you’ll be called anti Semitic ❓
https://www.btselem.org/
Thanks for the link. Morrison’s bullinchinashop behaviour in foreign affairs matters, over moving the embassy, suggests a high level of government capture which is perhaps as much the point as journalism capture. I guess the common denominator is Murdoch.
My observation of The Guardian UK’s treatment of comments (erased) at all critical of Israel supports the posited high level of editorial censorship even in nominally liberal news sources.
Try today’s article in the Guardian by Louise Adler which raises the key issue of ” When Israel’s policies are criticised in the public sphere, the reflexive accusation is antisemitism. The defenders of Israel “right or wrong” share with antisemites a belief that the actions of the state are inextricably bound up with Jewishness. This ensures that Zionism and antisemitism remain the focus of debate and the issue of Palestinian suffering under an illegal occupation is conveniently ignored. “
PS https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/09/why-are-australia-and-its-media-so-fearful-of-debate-on-israels-treatment-of-palestinians
If it is true that Fray taught student journalists then we are screwed.
Same as with Quisling Greste, the Establishment toadie being given the tawdry bauble of professor of journalism – professing one is something worthwhile does not make it so, Q.E. bloody D. in his case.