Anette, Welcome to Maam. First of all, how are you going? Oh?
That is such a big question.
When journalist Antonette ler Toofe was fired from her casual job at ABC Local Radio purportedly for sharing a Human Rights Watch post, she could have just let it go and moved on, but instead she chose to fight, and her landmark win against the ABC has implications not just for the rights of casual workers, but for how all journalists in Australia report on GAZA.
I am relieved, I'm exhausted, I'm a bit shelf shocked. I guess I knew that this was significant, significant for a bunch of reasons, but I didn't quite anticipate just kind of the amount of shock waves and conversations that it would inspire around the country but also around the world. And a little bit exposed.
Her case laid bare the efforts of lobby groups and how those who should be upholding independence and impartiality failed, with the judge finding senior ABC managers had panicked after an orchestrated campaign by pro Israel lobbyists to have Miss Latouff taken off air. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven Am Today, co founder of at Media and applicant in the legal case against the ABC and Network two on why she fought at the future of journalism
in Australia. It's Thursday, July tenth, an Tonette. I wondered if you could perhaps just take me back to where all of this began, the day that you were fired from the ABC. What happened?
So I was contracted a short stint before Christmas to do ABC Sydney local radio. So this is outside of the remit of news and current affairs. I had been a freelance journalist for a few years, so it wasn't uncommon for me to be called in to go and do local radio. And so it was day three in which I was called into a room with my managers, three of them that essentially fired on the spot, and
told to get my bags and leave. I was told at the time it was for a Human Rights Watch post, but I had also been made to wear a couple of days prior that. As soon as I had walked in it to the ABC, there was an email campaign, lots and lots of complaints to the ABC board and management about ever hiring me.
The paper ob tenned dozens of leaked messages from a WhatsApp group called Lawyers for Israel, whose members route to ABC calling for Latouf to be sacked and threatening legal action if she wasn't.
And it was subsequently established by a leak from two WhatsApp groups, but the one that's referred to most as Lawyers for Israel. And these were lawyers and barristers and heads of organizations or orchestrating to put pressure on the ABC to fire me because they didn't like my views on Gaza.
Antoinette Latoufe was sacked this afternoon, as she should have been for her anti Israel social media posts. Here's one of those posts.
Have a listen, Israelis get killed, Palestinians just die. Language matters, Israelis are always killed. You can also use the word slaughtered, barbarica tas victims and terrorism when describing their tragic debts for Palestinians. Given the body can't exceeds ten thousand, best to keep it ambiguous.
How the hell did she ever think she was going to keep a job at the ABC by doing that.
I guess some people might think, oh, this has been a big deal, and this has been a lot of coverage and a lot of taxpayer dollars and legal fees and whatnot over what is a five day contract, And you know, to that, I would say it was never
about five days. More about what my treatment said about the ABC's independence and also the implications for journalism more broadly, if the ABC, which is our best of the best, can't withstand pressure from external lobby groups at a time when we're witnessing an unfolding genocide.
And as you said, you've worked at the ABC many times. You've been a journalist for a long time, for more than fifteen years, and as part of that you've covered court cases, and so you would know, as many journalists would know, that in taking legal action against the ABC, you're doing something that I think has the potential to publicly define you, at least to some people. So when you were weighing up whether to take this action, how did you decide that doing this would be worth the fight?
That's a really good question, because you are right as a journalist and you cover court proceedings or you cover defamation or whatever it is, you know it's a very taxing and sometimes unduly unfair process, particularly on a woman or someone from a minority in the way that they're treated or represented. I think what I decided to do was I knew that I would have to take hits.
I would have to take hits from tabloid press, I would have to take huge financial hits because the phone stopped bringing, the work stopped coming in as a freelancer. But I guess I was driven because I knew that this gonna sound so cheesy, but honestly, it's how I was feeling that this is something that was far more significant than just myself. That this was for the integrity
of our taxpayer funded public broadcaster. This was because I had a position to do something to hold somebody accountable when people feel really helpless with witnessing the human rights atrocities daily ongoing in Gaza, and that anything that I suffered, I'd be able to cop because the greater benefit and the public benefit would be And I know that makes me sound like I want to be some mother Theresa, but like, if this was just an individual workplace grievance,
Like if it was just me and a manager and we didn't get along and they were a bit rude and someone bullied me, I probably would not have litigated. But given the context, and given the time in which we're in, I just felt it was more significant than myself and I.
Want to go through the trial blow for blow. We all watched it play out. There was an incredible scrutiny on your case. But I think one of the big questions that I have for you is that after sitting there and seeing all of those emails and messages that were sent between people at the very top of the ABC, what do you think now about the way that the public broadcaster.
Operates based on the actions and the words and the testimonies of that board. I mean absolutely appalling, not just in its treatment of me, in the descriptions of.
Me asked about latouf Ida, Buttro's told the court in relation to the Israel Garza conflict she was an.
Activist wishing COVID it on me.
In an email, the ABC chair asked whether the two had been replaced, suggesting she could get COVID or a stomach upset.
Referring to me as the Antoinette issue. We have an Antoinette issue, like appalling, but just in terms of governance of a board, like a real lack of integrity, lack of leadership. They had eighteen months ample opportunity, and instead of fixing it, the doubling and tripling down has done irreparable damage to those particular individuals and their legacies, but also to the organization writ large.
After the break, my journalists are leading user rooms to go independent.
Today, the court has found that punishing someone for sharing facts about these war crimes is also illegal. I was punished my political opinion. I won't be taking any questions. I'll have more to say in due time.
Thank you.
And the federal court found that the ABC contravened the fair work at by terminating your employment for reasons, including that you held a political opinion opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. So when that judgment came down, what was that like for you in court?
I mean, it was vindicating. I always knew that that's why I was treated the way I was treated. I always knew that I had done absolutely nothing wrong, that sharing the Human Rights Watch post wasn't a breach of a management directive, and so I didn't feel this great relief as I like, ah, you know, it was more
just like I felt the next vindication, but sadness. Sadness that millions of dollars were spent dragging me through the mud, and I think always assuming that I would just back off and that they would get away with it.
And none of the seeing A management who were involved in your case are at the ABC anymore at about true system there David Anderson, Grisoloda Taylor, but the current chair, Kim Williams, he spoke in the Press Club. He said that you were not sacked.
Miss Lettoof was not dismissed. Miss Latoof was on our five. Miss Latouff had a five day contract and under that contract the contract was brought to a close at the end of the third day.
What does that say to you about the way that the people who are currently at the ABC are thinking about what happened and where the organization sits now.
Yeah.
So Kim Williams obviously came in after all of this, and there was a lot of hope on outside that he would come in and fix it up. He had this kind of pr opportunity to go, this is a new leadership, this is a new year. We're going to do things differently. So when he stood at the National Press Club and reiterated that I wasn't sacked despite the Fairwork Commission finding that I was sacked. We were like, oh, and then he was like and unlike Miss Latooth.
We have been impeccably silent about the matter, unlike Miss Latoof and her representatives who seem to have been devoted to sharing on a regular basis with the media.
And so then try to kind of like categorize me as like why is she still talking? Like why is she complaining? And so hearing kind of that derision in his voice and him taking that stand really signaled to me, well, the ABC hasn't learnt anything, it's not sorry about anything, and it's not being held accountable.
And to speak more broadly, across the Australian media landscape, how common do you think it is for journalists to have their reporting and their social media surveiled scrutinized when it comes to the war at Gaza? What kind of stories have you heard from people in the last two years?
Oh? Yeah, across the board. And it's not only in the media, obviously, it's not only at the ABC. It's certainly not only in the media. It's across all sectors. There's a level of surveillance and in pinging on freedom of political opinion and freedom to assemble and freedom of speech, even though I know that that's not a constitutionally you know,
enshrined right. Unlike the United States, we have seen a stifling of an ability to voice, discuss, despair, concern about what we're witnessing, and have witnessed live streams on our phone in four K for the past two years. We've seen you overreach and meddling in creative institutes, Academics bullied out of jobs or stood down, doctors investigated by opera after bogus claims. You know, doctors who say, you know, we believe doctors and aid workers and healthcare workers shouldn't
be killed. But yes, I've heard currentless stories across the industry of people either leaving because they can't bear it, being pushed out, or just feeling really despondent about the future of the media and their role in it. Because we're meant to give a voice to the voiceless, We're meant to speak truth to power. Except it seems as though we can do this on like all topics, except this.
There's a big asterisk here. And yeah, and I guess that's part of why Janfran and I have started an independent media company we saw many of our friends and colleagues just leave in despair, and we thought, well, no, we don't want to We don't want to go because you know, then, I guess those people in those WhatsApp groups get what they want. They get us silenced and sacked and unemployed. And so we are seeing a few people trying to start independent offshoots.
Speaking of the WhatsApp groups, You've spoken about the role of lobbyists several times, and I just wonder over the course of the last couple of years, what you have taken, what you've learned about how lobbying operates in practice.
Well, like, lobbyists can lobby, it's what they do right, And there are lobbyists of all stripes. There are lobbyists across industries, across religious groups, across business groups, across government. Opposition like ABC has always been lobbied. It's not something that the pro Israel camp created. It's just when the lobbyists are the loudest and only voice heard that I
think we have a real problem. And also when it trickles down to audiences where they're like, we can see that influence the way in which stories are framed and who we humanize, and who we go to as an authority and whose lives we deem more important, and the adjectives we use to describe the loss of one life as opposed to the loss of twenty thousand other lives.
I think audiences are rightly skeptical and if the ABC wants to remain relevant and trusted as the most trusted news source in the world, it needs to show that it can withstand lobbying of any form.
And I just had one final question. There's been a lot of commentary around what makes a person a journalist or an activist, and I wonder if you have thoughts on who decides where that line is and what it's based on.
Absolutely, I have so many thoughts on that. It's so funny because when the Murdoch Press want to do something like they'll call it a campaign. So they're like, we have a campaign to get work from home people, employees back to the office, back to the CBD because CBD cafes are struggling, And they're like, oh, that's cute. You call that a campaign. Is that activism journalism? There are certain topics in which we accept the journalists are allowed to have an opinion on now we accept that climate
changing systs. You know, for a long time, sections of the press denied it. And so if a journalist has views critical of polluters, that's not considered activism journalism. And so I see that that framing usually reserved for those
who have the least access to power. And so for me, as a woman, and as a woman of an Arab background, it's a way to discredit me, calling me an activist journalist, irrespective of my years and years of experience across many outlets and all these awards, and I've even started a media not for profit and I've done all of these things because I dare to have a political opinion rooted
in facts. Oh well, we can't trust her because she's an activist journalist, and it's just not applied as liberally to other journal So I think it's a convenient label that tries to discredit somebody who either has a different opinion or is getting too close to challenging power that wants to remain unchallenged. That's my view.
And Tonette, thank you for your time.
Thank you, thanks for having me.
You can hear more of Anette Latoof's work on the podcast. We used to be journos from ET Media. We asked Kim Williams to speak with us for this episode, but he declined. In a public statement, current ABC Managing director Hugh Marx said, we regret how the decision to remove Miss Latoof from air was handled and the distress occasioned her. We extend our sincere apologies to Miss Latouf and wish
her well in her future endeavors. Also in the news today, the Ambonezi government says it's urgently seeking clarity after US President Donald Trump warned countries can expect two hundred percent tariffs on all pharmaceutical imports. In twenty twenty four, Australia exported roughly two point one billion dollars of medicinal and pharmaceutical products to the United States, and Treasurer Jim Chalmers
says he's seeking more detail on Trump's announcement. And Victoria's Do Anti Hate Task Force has met for the first time following a series of incidents in Melbourne, including the fire bombing of the East Melbourne Synagogue. Premier Decenter Alan says the group has heard from the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, who says the force is ready to act and respond to the incidents in a strong manner. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.