By Joe Lauria
A judge in a federal court in Sydney, Australia has ruled against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for wrongly dismissing a radio presenter after she shared an instagram post from Human Rights Watch that accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon in Gaza.
Judge Darryl Rangiah awarded journalist Antoinette Lattouf AU$70,000 and possibly more in damages on Wednesday in a case that undermines an organized campaign in Australia, like in many countries today, that is attacking legitimate critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza as being anti-semitic.
Senior ABC executives had testified at trial that they had been flooded with complaints — even though none of the contested content had been discussed on air — and that pressure had mounted to get rid of the presenter, which they did.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers later revealed that the flood of complaints was the result of a coordinated campaign by pro-Israel lobby groups via WhatsApp. The campaign targeted the ABC’s chair and managing director to have Lattouf sacked. The Australian journalists union MEAA stood behind Lattouf, questioning the national broadcaster’s independence from outside influence.
.
Antoinette Lattouf arriving in federal court in Sydney on Wednesday morning. (Mary Kostakidis)
.
The judge’s decision on Lattouf’s wrongful dismissal suit was based on the question of whether she was terminated because of her political opinions. ABC argued that Lattouf, who had been hired for one week as a fill-in presenter, was not terminated, but rather had her work hours reduced to zero for the remaining two days of her five-day contract.
That decision to effectively fire her was taken after ABC executives determined that Lattouf held anti-semitic views, the judge told the court. The judge found that ABC violated the Fair Work Act by ending Lattouf’s employment because “she held political opinions opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.”
He said: “I reject [ABC executive Christopher] Oliver-Taylor’s evidence that his decision to terminate Lattouf had nothing to do with her political opinions.” Judge Rangiah rejected Latouff’s allegations of discrimination based on her ethnicity. She is of Lebanese origin.
The judge said pro-Israel lobbyists created an “orchestrated campaign” against Lattouff by writing to the ABC complaining that she had “expressed anti-Semitic views, lacked impartiality and was unsuitable to present any program for the ABC.”
“The complaints caused great consternation amongst the senior management of the ABC,” he said. But he found Latouff was given no direct order not to post controversial matter on social media but “was merely provided with advice that it would be best not to post anything controversial about the war.”
During her one-week stint at the ABC, Latouff simply shared the Human Rights Watch instagram post on Dec. 19, 2023, with the words “HRW reporting starvation as a tool of war.”
Outside the court after the ruling Latouff told reporters that the court found that “punishing someone for sharing facts” about “war crimes” is not legal. “I was punished for my political opinion,” she said.
Her attorney, Josh Bornstein, told reporters:
“The court has decisively upheld her claim the ABC illegally dismissed her from her employment. The court has made important findings that in doing so it capitulated to a campaign of lobbying. Organisations like the ABC that fold in the face of bad faith complaints about the Israel-Gaza conflict ultimately end up facing perverse consequences or in perverse situations.”
Bornstein said the ABC had refused to settle for AU$85,000 and instead spent AU$1.1 million of taxpayer money defending the case.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
Featured image: Lattouf speaking to reporters outside court after her victory. (Cathy Vogan for CN)
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire