Achi news desk-
Israel and Others
The now regular trip to Israel by the Australian/Israel/Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) usually includes a cavalcade of journalists and politicians. But this week, Media Briefs discovered the most unlikely of names on the list of recent attendees: cricket writer Gideon Haigh. Haigh, who departed The Australian last year in dire circumstances after 12 years with the broadsheet, now penning Substack called Cricket et al alongside former Cricket Etc podcast co-host Peter Lalor and The Degree Cricketer Sam Perry.
Haigh’s most recent piece, a 6000-word read-along entitled “Highways to War”, recounted his recent AIJAC-sponsored trip to Israel, which he says “engaged [his] long interest in trauma and its consequences”. Haigh said that until he got back from the eight-day trip, he had no intention of writing anything, but on his return he felt compelled to do so.
Writing that “no journalist could resist an opportunity to … be there, at this crossroads of the world, at this crossroads of history”, Haigh concluded his journey and writes that “to account, it Israel is too busy giving up on its failures. ”, while “Israeli pullers are loathe to acknowledge the company they keep”.
Haigh told Media Briefs that he had received a “mixed” response to the article, including “some apoplectic abuse, but mostly from people who show no evidence of having read it”. Media Briefing understands a number of Cricket et al readers have unsubscribed over the article.
When asked what his views were on the conflict and whether they had changed during the trip, Haigh said his views “were not worth very much before I went … they were no more informed than anyone who reads the daily media”.
When asked what his response would be to those who would criticize the trip as unethical, Haigh said: “AIJAC is not a government, a political party or a corporation. There is nothing sinister or underground about their agenda; it is public and transparent, and so is my acknowledgment of their participation.”
Haigh said he had not been asked to write anything and had met “many interesting and important people in Israel” whom he chose not to quote as they did not require elaboration.
“I listened to the grieving, the scared, the angry, the disillusioned,” he said. “I know there are many, many more in Gaza. But sympathy is not a zero-sum game. Extending it to one person does not deprive another person of it.”
In the months since your reporter published a running list of journalists and politicians who have taken sponsored trips to the region (many of which have done so without any form of disclosure), Haigh appears to be the only journalist who has gone on the public record as having traveled on the latest AIJAC-sponsored expedition. A number of politicians and media figures went with him, but the journalists in particular have been extremely quiet about it. Some, including members of Haigh’s former News Corp stable, have continued to publish content about the region without revealing the trip.
Sky’s aversion to facts
Sky News Australia is often forced to make corrections, but its latest set caught your reporter’s attention. The channel, as well as hosts Andrew Bolt and Danica De Giorgio, were forced to apologize after legal threats from lawyer Adam Houda, after airing a segment Houda claimed portrayed him as a “Jew hater”. Sky said it “has since been suggested that these publications suggest that Mr Houda is unfit to practice as a solicitor and that he is threatening and engaging in litigation against the police without proper cause. Indeed, Mr Houda runs a successful legal practice. ”
Sky also apologized for commentator Bronwyn Bishop, a former speaker in the House of Representatives, who said that Sophie Scamps, the member for Mackellar (Bishop’s former seat) was “an integral part of an anti-Semitic movement” for calling for federal funding to be restored to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
“This does not make her anti-Semite,” Bishop admitted in a statement posted on the channel’s website.
It is the latest in a long line of corrections made by Australia’s Sky News – last year it was forced to apologize for a segment which claimed then-ambassador-to-US Kevin Rudd was against an alliance AUKUS.
ABC settles with an antitransverse operator
The ABC has settled with British anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen over a 7:30 interview with Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto from March last year, admitting in a statement that “some viewers may have taken the interview to suggest that [she] … He has connections with neo-Nazis”.
“The ABC understands that Ms Keen denies any association with neo-Nazis and the ABC does not endorse any account that may have been conveyed to that effect,” the statement read.
The settlement is likely to have significant implications for the ongoing defamation proceedings being pursued against Pesutto. He is being sued by Keen, as well as expelled Liberal MP Moira Deeming and activist Angela Jones. Tybio was booted from the Liberal party room after Pesutto circulated a brief of social media statements and media reports that accused her of “organising, promoting and attending a rally where [Keen] he was known to be publicly associated with far-right extremist groups including neo-Nazi activists.”
The defamation case between Deeming and Pesutto is currently set down for a 15-day trial in Federal Court from September 16.
Move
- ABC Radio PM host David Lipson has become the new politics editor at the ABC’s Canberra bureau, almost a year after Nine’s current national affairs editor Andrew Probyn was sacked from a similar role.
- He replaced Karen Middleton as chief political correspondent at The Saturday Paper has been unveiled, with Karen Barlow taking her place. Former Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s spinner Jason Koutsoukis will also join the champion as a special correspondent.
