On this United Nations-designated International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) stands in solidarity with journalists and media workers around the world who face intimidation, harassment, violence, imprisonment and death for doing their jobs.

We maintain that targeting journalists is an attack not only on individual journalists and their families, but also on the public’s inalienable human right to information and freedom of expression, which underpins the foundations of democratic society.

When journalists are silenced through violence and intimidation, the stories they tell, the abuses they expose, and the questions they ask are silenced with them.

• READ MORE: UN puts media giants on notice over Gaza as journalists’ death toll spirals
• Al Jazeera – its vital place in the global media landscape is more important than ever
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• Other media freedom reports

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 2565 journalists and media workers have been killed since 1992. Of these, 1053 have been deliberately targeted and murdered for their work; 842 of these murders have not received justice.

The scale of such impunity remains deeply concerning, and its further erosions deeply troubling. The global UNESCO impunity rate for journalist killings has risen to a staggering 86 percent. Almost six out of seven killings remain judicially unresolved.

Journalists working in conflict zones continue to be particularly vulnerable, and the use of drones in targeting and killing journalists has added a particularly alarming dimension to conflict reporting.

In 2024-25 UNESCO reported 50 journalists had been killed in drone attacks across six war zones. Journalists in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan speak of horrendous accounts of how drones have stalked and killed their colleagues.

Gaza deadliest conflict
The war on Gaza, now widely acknowledged as the deadliest conflict for journalists in recorded history, continues to exert a heavy toll. The Cost of War report published by Brown University’s Watson Institute in April 2025, stated that Gaza had been turned into a “news graveyard”.

In her July 2026 Truth Under the Rubble report, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese describes the assault on Palestinian journalism as “mediacide” — the systematic destruction of the media’s public function.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Israeli military has been responsible for approximately two-thirds of all journalist and media worker deaths worldwide since October 2023, with killings documented in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

We acknowledge that impunity is not confined to armed conflict. Journalists investigating corruption, organised crime and abuses of political and corporate power also face threats, physical attacks, legal harassment and assassination.

The UN Secretary-Generals’ August 2025 report cites UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists figures stating “44 journalists covering environmental issues were killed over the past 15 years”. The same report notes “UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists have recorded 353 physical attacks against environmental journalists between 2009 and 2023”.

We further acknowledge that female journalists are disproportionately exposed to gender-based threats, online abuse, sexualised harassment and doxxing. The International Center for Journalists’ 2020 The Chilling shows 73 percent of respondents had experienced online violence in the course of their work, with 25 percent reporting threats of physical violence and 18 percent threats of sexual violence.

The 2026 Tipping Point report found that 45 percent of women journalists and media workers surveyed had self-censored on social media, while 22 percent had self-censored in their professional work because of online violence. These findings demonstrate that the impact of such threats extends beyond the psychosocial harm experienced by individual journalists, compromising their capacity to undertake independent public-interest reporting, which ultimately restricts the public’s access to information.

Importance of education
As an association representing journalism educators and researchers, JERAA also recognises the importance of education in sustaining a culture that respects press freedom and the safety of journalists. We maintain that press freedom begins with robust journalism education that equips future journalists to understand the value of fearless reporting, to uphold professional ethics and protect sources, and to recognise the importance of solidarity and collective action when colleagues are targeted.

We call on Australian universities to invest in journalism education and acknowledge the important role journalism educators play in challenging the normalisation of violence against journalists, defending the principles of independent public-interest journalism, and building resilience in future journalists.

JERAA emphasises that protecting journalists requires more than condemning attacks after they occur. We call on governments, media organisations, civil society and the international community to ensure crimes against journalists are investigated, perpetrators are held accountable and journalists can report freely and safely, without fear of violence or retribution.

We support the International Federation of Journalists’ (IFJ) call for a for a binding International Convention on the Safety and Independence of Journalists and other Media Professionals, and urge the Australian government to support such a convention in the international theatre.

Dr Kasun Ubayasiri is vice-president (networks) of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA). This article was first published by JERAA to mark International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists on 2 November 2026 and is republished with the author’s permission.

From the moment I first became conscious of my identity as an Arab, Al Jazeera was in the background.

It was as vital to my upbringing as SpaceToon, Captain Majid and Ramadan soap operas, a familiar presence on the TV sets of every family gathering, every diaspora grocery store and barbershop, almost always on silent unless something big was happening.

Being from this part of the world meant something big could happen at any moment, and we grew up mistrusting state media channels as well as Western outlets, but remaining informed felt like a responsibility. It felt like survival.

• READ MORE: Al Jazeera marks 30 years of transforming news in Middle East and beyond
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And there was consistently one channel that felt as close to the truth as we could get. The only one challenging the narrative. Asking difficult questions. Refusing to look away.

When protests erupted in Tahir Square on January 25, 2011, a few minutes away from my grandmother’s house, there was only one network broadcasting the news. The reporters were young Egyptians, like me. Their accents sounded like mine.

The region they spoke about felt like home, not an orientalist fantasy of one. State media meanwhile showed rolling images of the Nile as if history wasn’t taking place metres away.

From that moment on, there was no doubt in my mind what I wanted to do with my career, and where I would one day hope to work.

As I mark my first year as a senior producer with the brilliant Al Jazeera English team here in Doha, the network is celebrating its biggest milestone — 30 years on air!

Its place in the global media landscape is more important than ever, and the trust it’s won with Arab and non-Arab audiences is rare in a world where people feel betrayed by the news. So here’s to another generation shaped by its coverage, and to a region getting to speak for itself and on its own terms.

Happy anniversary Al Jazeera.

Mohamed Hassan is a senior producer and presenter with Al Jazeera’s digital team. He is also an Aotearoa New Zealand author, podcaster and poet from Auckland and Cairo. This commentary was first published as a social media post.

REVIEW: By Aleta Moriarty

Israeli forces have killed between 209 and nearly 300 journalists and media workers in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories since October 2023, depending on when data was collected, and Western outlets routinely omitted or downplayed Israel’s responsibility in their headlines, according to the latest United Nations Special Rapporteur report.

The report, Truth under the rubble: media in the time of genocide, by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, was presented to the General Assembly recently and publicly launched yesterday.

It finds Israel’s failure to stop incitement on its airwaves is a continuing breach of the Genocide Convention and defies the International Court of Justice’s January 2024 order to prevent and punish it.

• READ MORE: The BBC and Western media have a case to answer over Gaza
• Other Gaza genocide and media reports

It also puts broadcasters and social media companies on notice: since that order, saying no platform can claim ignorance of the risk, and where a company knowingly provides practical assistance that has a substantial effect on international crimes, “questions of complicity arise”.

Massive toll on Palestinian journalists and their families
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls Gaza the deadliest war for journalists ever recorded. Israeli forces have wounded more than 400 journalists, and the report finds around

70 of those killed were killed as reprisal for their work.

More than 150 journalists’ homes and media offices and institutions have been destroyed, and Israel has completely destroyed 81 percent of Gaza’s information and communications infrastructure.

This devastation has not just been focused on the journalists, with around 710 journalists’ relatives also killed, 436 of them in the first four months alone.

Deliberate targetting
Photojournalist Fatma Hassouna was killed with five family members when precision-guided munitions struck their apartment in April 2025, a day after her documentary about life during the genocide was selected for Cannes.

In August 2025 a “double-tap” strike on Nasser Hospital killed 22 people. The first strike killed Reuters cameraman Hussam Al-Masri, and the second killed four more journalists who had rushed to the scene.

Israel said it had hit a “Hamas camera” — it belonged to Reuters.

Israel’s military says it does not intentionally target journalists. In October 2023 the Israeli military reportedly set up a “legitimisation cell” that has systematically recast Gaza-based journalists as “Hamas operatives”, the report says, creating a pretext before attacks and a justification after them.

More than 100 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been detained since October 2023, and around 30 are still held. Those released describe physical assaults, sexual violence including rape, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation and medical neglect.

Dehumanisation and incitement to genocide
Under Article III of the Genocide Convention, direct and public incitement to commit genocide is a crime in its own right, the report explains, “complete upon utterance or publication and applicable to officials, broadcasters and private media actors”.

No one has to act on it. Albanese finds that some statements broadcast in Israel meet that threshold.

Most people picture arms manufacturers when they think of business entities complicit in genocide. However, according to a 2024 Israel Law Review paper on Ben & Jerry’s exit from Israeli settlements, only two cases before international criminal tribunals since Nuremberg have held individual corporate defendants accountable, and both arose from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

The best known is the Media Case. In December 2003 the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted RTLM executives Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, whose station became known as “Radio Machete”, along with Kangura owner and editor Hassan Ngeze.

A third case, against RTLM founder Félicien Kabuga, collapsed when he was found unfit to stand trial.

Broadcasters culpable
Albanese leans on the Nahimana judgment to argue that when presenters’ calls for genocide go unchallenged and unrepudiated by the broadcaster, the people who control the outlet carry the responsibility.

There are several worrying examples cited in the report. Channel 14 aired singer Eyal Golan’s call to “erase Gaza, don’t leave a single person there”, along with statements calling for a “Holocaust”, including “gas chambers”, and urging viewers to “destroy, kill, and obliterate”.

Three Israeli civil society groups listed hundreds of instances of incitement on the channel in a May 2025 High Court petition, yet the broadcasts continue unchecked. Channel 12 journalist Yehuda Schlesinger, who argued sexual violence against Palestinian detainees should become state policy, was temporarily suspended, then joined Channel 14.

Mainstream and pro-government Israeli media have described Palestinians as “Amalek”, “monsters”, “a cancerous growth” and

even “cannibals” who “must be eradicated”.

The report says this rhetoric comes with a denial of civilian status, with Israeli media asserting that “there are no innocents” in Gaza, that Palestinians are “not civilians” and that Gaza is inhabited by “two and a half million terrorists”.

Double standards and censorship
The report highlights how Western outlets widely reported unverified claims, including that Hamas beheaded babies on October 7 and that Palestinian journalists killed by Israel were “terrorists”, the report says, while corrections received far less prominence.

German broadcaster ARD’s editorial guidance presents civilian casualties as primarily a consequence of Hamas’s alleged use of “human shields”. Much of the media reproduced what Albanese calls “humanitarian camouflage”, presenting so-called safe zones and evacuation orders as civilian protection.

Content analysis cited in the report found the BBC downplayed or omitted Israeli responsibility in 83 percent of relevant headlines, and The New York Times in 65 percent. The BBC still runs its story on six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed by Israeli forces, under the headline

“Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help“.

Between October 2023 and August 2025, The Times invoked Hamas “human shields” 176 times and the BBC 81 times. The Times mentioned sexual violence against Israelis 76 times and against Palestinians four times across two sample periods.

At Germany’s ZDF, 90.7 percent of uses of “barbaric” referred to Israeli victims, and the word was never applied to attacks on Palestinians. Palestinian children made up about 99.7 percent of child deaths, yet appeared in just over half of CNN’s personalised stories about child victims.

Israel’s most important ‘weapon’
Alongside propaganda, high levels of censorship are also reported. Israel’s military censor banned 1635 articles in 2024 and redacted another 6265, 21 interventions a day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described social media to US-based influencers as Israel’s most important “weapon” in what he calls the “battle for truth”.

The report also explicitly names Antoinette Lattouf,

unlawfully dismissed by the ABC after reposting a Human Rights Watch report on starvation in Gaza.

The report saves some of its sharpest findings for tech companies.

With Palestinian journalists killed and foreign media shut out of Gaza, Meta, X and Alphabet Inc. (Google) became the principal gatekeepers of information on Palestine, and the report finds recurring patterns of discriminatory moderation, censorship and amplification of Israeli government narratives.

Leaked Meta data shows about 38.8 million Facebook and Instagram posts have been removed, banned or suppressed since late 2023, and engagement with major Palestinian news outlets has fallen 77 percent. TikTok and Meta reported compliance rates of 99.2 and 94 percent with Israel’s takedown requests.

Meta had been warned before.

In 2018 the UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar found Facebook had been “a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate,” a conclusion Meta’s own commissioned assessment accepted.

Israel signed contracts worth roughly US$50 million, including with Google and X, for ads dismissing famine reports, among them a message telling viewers “There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie“.

Platforms kept taking that money after famine had been confirmed and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ordered aid let in. Google reportedly concluded the famine-denial ads didn’t breach its policies, and it carried paid ads calling the ICJ genocide case a “blood libel”, discouraging donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and attacking Albanese’s previous report.

Platforms also left up campaigns smearing Palestinian journalists before they were killed, including claims that Reuters and AP reporters had advance knowledge of October 7, which both agencies refuted.

What the report demands
Albanese wants the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor to investigate direct and public incitement to genocide by government officials and media figures, and the UN General Assembly to set up an independent mechanism to preserve evidence of crimes against journalists, secure the release of detained journalists and open Gaza to international media and human rights monitors.

Governments are urged to prosecute attacks on Palestinian journalists, treat their footage and archives as evidence, and review public funding and partnerships with media organisations and platforms that spread incitement or help conceal atrocity crimes.

Media organisations and platforms are told to stop “laundering propaganda through the journalistic form”, verify belligerents’ claims before publishing, run corrections as prominently as the original story and stop retaliating against journalists.

“Accountability depends on the survival of the record,” the report concludes. “Without it, neither justice nor the prevention of future atrocities remains possible.”

The arrest of Philip Lustre Jr. is an attack on press freedom in the Philippines, says the veteran investigative journalist’s lawyer Dino De Leon.

Lustre was arrested at a restaurant in Quezon City yesterday for alleged cyber libel. He was served an arrest warrant issued by Branch 10 of Davao City’s Regional Trial Court.

The 72-year-old is the author behind Kill, Kill, Kill: Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines, which documents former president Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly war on drugs.

• READ MORE: Veteran journalist Philip Lustre Jr. arrested for alleged cyber libel
• Other Philippines media freedom reports

Duterte is in jail at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague awaiting trial on crimes against humanity charges.

“This is a sad day for journalism in the Philippines,” De Leon said in an “ambush” interview on the same day of Lustre’s arrest, as seen in a video by Bilyonaryo News Channel.

“Nararamdaman na naman natin ‘yung pag-atake sa mga members ng media. This is reminiscent of the Duterte administration na nanggaling sa Davao City again ‘yung complainant.”

(We are again witnessing the attacks on members of the media. This is reminiscent of the Duterte administration, where the complainant is from Davao City.)

Lustre had earlier mentioned that he did not know who the complainant was, and was also unaware that there was a complaint being lodged against him.

‘Laws protecting reputation must never be used to harass journalists’
Meanwhile, the Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFOMS) has expressed support for Lustre’s welfare, access to legal counsel, communication with his family, and medical assistance, given that he is a senior citizen.

“We urge the prompt handling of any application for bail in accordance with applicable rules, with due consideration for his age and welfare. His reported lack of prior knowledge of the complaint also warrants clarification through the appropriate legal processes,” PTFOMS said in its statement.

With Lustre’s arrest coming just a day after Davao City 1st District Representative Paolo “Pulong” Duterte filed a cyber libel complaint against several GMA Network journalists, PTFOMS also stressed that “laws protecting reputation must never be used to harass journalists, suppress legitimate criticism, or obstruct the public’s access to information.”

“The threat of arrest, prolonged litigation, and substantial legal expenses can discourage journalists from pursuing important stories even before a complaint is resolved,” it said.

It also said that it would coordinate with De Leon and the concerned authorities to gather official information on Lustre’s arrest.

Republished from Rappler with permission.

“You’re not just reporting on the story … you are the main character.”

That’s how award-winning Palestinian journalist and human rights defender Maha Hussaini sums up her experience while “documenting history” in Israel’s three-year genocidal war on Gaza.

In the latest episode of Middle East Eye’s “The Gaza Podcast”, host Hussam Tannera sits down with Hussaini, who shares what it means to report on starvation and displacement while experiencing them firsthand.

• READ MORE: Three years on, Israel still bars foreign journalists from entering Gaza
• How Palestinian reporters defied Israel’s genocide to redefine journalism
• Other Gaza genocide reports

And he discusses how her articles written during total blackouts ended up cited before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

From the psychological toll of survivor’s guilt to the unique layers of suffering experienced by women, Maha opens up about the reality on the ground during genocide.

She reflects on why documenting history matters, even when international law fails, and proposes the one human right Palestinians need most: “The right to live without having to prove that our lives are worth saving.”

Gaza journalists death toll
According to the Gaza Government Media Office, at least 263 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023.

Counts from major international organisations vary due to differing verification criteria and methodology:

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented at least 189 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reports at least 203 Palestinian media workers have been killed.

Reporting while starving.             Video: Middle East Eye

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports nearly 220 journalists and media workers have been killed.

The United Nations has verified 220 to 240+ deaths in the enclave.

Additional figures reported by the Gaza Government Media Office include 433 injured, dozens arrested or detained, and several missing.

COMMENTARY: By Shalveen Chand

I have encountered two types of dictators in the Pacific. The first was in my home nation when a military leader overthrew the government at gunpoint and ruled with an iron fist, his rule spanning from 2006 to 2014.

The second is a democratically elected leader whose rule highlighted the blatant lack of accountability and transparency. His grab for power literally defines the phrase “absolute power absolutely corrupts”.

There is definitely a difference in how Fiji’s Voreqe Bainimarama and Samoa’s Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt have come to be in power, but what makes them similar is the blatant disregard for accountability and transparency — the “my way or the highway” attitude — sacking of people who do not agree with their goals, disregard for the rule of law and, above all, media censorship and attacks on journalists.

• READ MORE: RSF calls on Samoan PM to lift ‘unacceptable’ ban on Samoa Observer
• Other Shalveen Chand media freedom reports

Bainimarama was clear and deliberate about restricting media freedom. He set up censors in newsrooms who would stop the publishing of articles that would be deemed anti-government and later enacted the draconian media law that governed media in Fiji.

That law, repealed in 2023 by the current Fijian government, led to the persecution of journalists and the self-censorship mentality that is still practised in some newsrooms in the country.

Laauli, on the other hand, made a promising start when he was elected prime minister in Samoa in September 2025. In his first press conference, he made a promise to be transparent and accountable. A promise that he never intended to keep, which has now resulted in the banning of Samoa’s only independent publication, Samoa Observer, from government events, government officials not being accountable to the media, bullying and assault on journalists, including on me in front of his house.

This intimidation was among the reasons I left Samoa and my job there to join Cook Islands News as a senior journalist.

Serious breaches
There have been serious breaches of due process, including in top-level government appointments. It is worrying when merit is no longer a requirement to hold a top civil service position. Nepotism is rife, and his own children are acting as if the nation were the family business.

This was seen a few weeks ago when Laauli’s son snatched a camera off a reporter and deleted photos, saying it was against the law to photograph his father. Last time it was checked, no such laws existed.

While Bainimarama used guns and the might of the military, Laauli uses a new tool: social media. Fake accounts carry out his propaganda and target journalists and their families with attacks. My toddler and wife have often been victims of these attacks, even though my spouse’s political allegiance is with Laauli.

Yes, she’s Samoan, and she occasionally reminds me of how “Sleeping with the Enemy” can be viewed in a whole new context. But I am thankful that despite being critical of the media, she has always stood up for me whenever I have been targeted, either physically or on social media.

People have approached and questioned me on why I was against their prime minister. It is hard to make some people understand that it was no personal attack on the leader but a journalistic attempt to keep him honest, accountable and transparent. Many times, these physical confrontations have been met with my personal bodyguard, my wife, willing to throw a few combinations like David Tua.

Similar attacks have been levelled against journalists who were part of the newsroom I managed in Samoa. Their families and children were targeted and sometimes maligned to their worst.

One of the things that sadden me the most is how the rule of law has been compromised in Samoa. Corruption was already rife; however, when you add in a leader who believes he is above the law, the rule of law starts becoming non-existent. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has dubbed Laauli as the “Trump of the Pacific”, and his behaviour often mirrors that of the American president.

Judiciary independent
Thankfully, one of the arms of the Samoan government, the judiciary, remains uncorrupted and has stood as the final wall in the attack against the rule of law, media freedom and the rights of citizens.

However, the judiciary is powerless when the enforcement agency does not do its work. Such was the case when I was assaulted outside Laauli’s house by a relative of his. A police complaint filed on 14 November 2025, the day of the incident, has not moved forward because the police officers who witnessed the assault do not want to give a statement for fear of retribution or losing their jobs.

I clearly remember the attack. The demeanour of the prime minister’s relative and his henchman gave away what they were going to do next as they rushed outside to where I was standing on the roadside. I came to drop off a camera lens for my journalist, who was trying to get comments from Laauli. The newly elected Samoan leader had just spent several weeks in New Zealand on a medical trip without communicating with the people of Samoa after photoshopped images of him were published by the Samoan government.

The two men rushed towards me. Their body language and aggression had been something that I had experienced during Fiji media’s dark days when the nation was under the control of the military junta. The haunting assaults and bullying by the security forces, and then having to spend a few nights in a police cell for highlighting a miscarriage of justice, came rushing back.

I braced for impact and told myself not to retaliate. The relative of the prime minister shoved me twice, trying to force me into my car. This was followed by him pushing the car door at least three times in my face. While he carried on, his short and fat henchman, probably another relative of the prime minister, held me by the collar and threw a few slaps.

A police officer aided the two relatives as well, shoving me into the car while throwing punches to my abdomen. All this was witnessed by at least six other police officers, my young journalist and a senior travel writer from the British Broadcasting Corporation. The words of the journalists were not enough to lead to any formal charges — instead, the young journalist was charged with criminal trespass.

This was the start of Laauli’s restriction on free and independent media who were trying to hold him accountable and get him to talk. This has now led to the continued ban on Samoa Observer and attacks on its journalists.

Many hoodwinked
It was also surprising that there were people who still support the Samoan leader’s actions. Many are hoodwinked by the social media propaganda. This was reflected when Samoa slumped to 59 out of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.

There are still a lot of people who do not realise that freedom of the press is a right and that a government should not interfere with this freedom or censor media critical of state power. For years, freedom of the press has been an essential part of democracy. A democracy cannot exist when people’s voices are stifled.

A free press fights for the truth, whether it is Fiji, Samoa or the Cook Islands. A free press uncovers the truth. A free press holds power accountable.

Many entities can benefit from the truth staying hidden, including governments. One of the free press’ main missions is to serve as a watchdog on power. The press is the bridge between the people and powerful entities. If the press is not free but instead beholden to power, it simply serves as an extension of that power.

As I begin a new chapter with the Cook Islands News, I hope that the weight currently being accorded to media freedom and accountability in this nation only improves. This is one of the best ways a government can serve its people.

Shalveen Chand is a former editor of the Samoa Observer and now works for Cook Islands News as senior journalist. This article is republished from CIN with permission.

COMMENTARY: By Mary Kostakidis

Three very apt words — Truth, Trust and Tribalism. Much of what I say will focus on the last. Because of it, the first and second often become casualties.

Our Holy Grail of journalism centres on four pillars: objectivity, impartiality, balance and neutrality. Four pillars that are all too often weaponised in the service of gatekeeping the Overton window, so that establishment interests aren’t threatened by a restless citizenry.

While this has operated somewhat more subtly in the past, it has become a charade in which allies who wield enormous power on the global stage, have dropped their masks — they have shed pants as well — and it has become harder to drink this glass of milk because there are big fat flies floating on the surface.

• READ MORE:  Israel funded the legal assault on Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis
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The world order intended to be based on international law, and one that has often failed to deliver accountability in the case of the most powerful, has now been comprehensively debased.

In examining the media’s role and its pretence at neutrality and balance — when it actually behaves in a most tribal, partisan way — I’ll share with you some of my own experience over decades, including where I have failed.

I will argue an important weapon in our arsenal are the principles of our shared humanity that underpin universal rights, and that adherence to those principles necessitates an ability to view and analyse the world through multiple lenses, not just that of the Global North.

This is not something we need permission to do. It is part of the core business of being a journalist if we are serious about impartiality and objectivity. It is also part and parcel of diplomacy, and should also be integral to the work of leaders, otherwise we have no chance of bringing an end to forever wars, to collaboratively resolve matters in a manner that has regard to equality, freedom and dignity for all.

Injustice perpetuated
In understanding conflict and embarking on an assessment of a situation, objectivity and impartiality are vital. However, it is not necessary for an experienced journalist to remain neutral in interpreting the significance of events. Indeed, most memorable works of journalism, such as Robert Fisk’s The Great War For Civilisation, cannot be described as “neutral”.

To hold journalism in a perpetual state of neutrality and continue to provide selective “balance” (there is little to no “balance’”in the coverage of China, Russia, Iran or Israel) is to render plausible deniability, to shield crime, to deliver impunity and to compound and perpetuate injustice, as has occurred in the way Israel’s actions have been historically and predominantly reported in Western legacy media.

This era is unprecedented — there has not been such widespread repression throughout the West, and not only in our profession — it is society wide. And what strikes you of course, is that contrary to this oft weaponised Code of Ethics, what operates — with a few notable exceptions — is an unacknowledged partisanship, as tribal as geopolitical protagonists themselves.

While we have achieved diversity in the media in terms of presence and visibility, we have not yet succeeded in injecting the diversity of perspectives required. Other than in independent media, we still must all use one lens: that of the Global North.

I had certainly hoped we would have multiple lenses in our toolkit when we started up SBS in 1980. It was, however, too ambitious, and we settled for the possible. And so here we find ourselves today.

I don’t wish to diminish the significant impact of the second public broadcaster. But our task is to look critically at our industry and how it serves the Australian public, our democracy, and how it equips us to be global citizens, in addition to being Australian citizens.

In today’s world, this type of dual citizenship is mandatory if we are to have any chance at putting an end to forever wars and belligerent partisanship to move to more respectful relationships as a multipolar world community, to look out for the survival of our fellow human beings and planet, where interests can coalesce rather than collide.

After seeing its identity and purpose reflected solely in the eyes of the British Empire, and moving seamlessly into subservience to the US, and after doing away with the White Australia Policy, our country went through interminable navel gazing in the media — who are we? What is our identity as a nation?

The answer it landed on, was “Multicultural”. Yes, we came from many cultures, and wasn’t that fab.

Hoped for something more
“Multiculturalism” was a word I studiously avoided including during my almost three decades at SBS. Not because I was a closet Pauline Hanson. But because in the very early days at the broadcaster, I had hoped for something more.

One of the early on-air promotional campaigns was centred around the Overton window metaphor: “Channel O — a Window to the World’. I was banking on a Door.

It was not to be. The debate settled on whether what was being provided was “ethnic” or “multicultural” television. Cosmopolitanism, a prism conducive to the practice of journalism, was a bridge too far for Australia in 1980. We were to celebrate our particularity — our food, dance, music and movies, but the serious work demanded by our shared humanity and diverse perspectives lay dormant.

I recall Melbourne ABC radio broadcaster Jon Faine asking me when I was appointed to present SBS World News, whether it would cover stories from a different perspective. It was a question I studiously circumvented by banging on about running background stories, which were in my view one of our strengths. I knew that our lens captured a greater part of the world, but feared it’s portrayal in the end remained comfortably within the Overton window.

On Day 1 of my induction to the newsroom, the then-chief producer made a remark I considered a statement of the obvious — that “One Man’s Terrorist is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter”. But it proved not to be obvious at all and it was soon forgotten. And she and it went the way of those background stories we used to run. We gradually transitioned from the possibilities and potential understanding offered by the perspective epitomised in that adage, to dividing the world into our allies versus an “Axis of Evil” against which a “War on Terror” needed to be fought.

This occurred in stages and among the various contributing factors was the purging of full-time staff in favour of contractors who were less likely to raise objections due to job insecurity, as well as selecting out anti-establishment views in executive roles which is the natural state of institutions. And the broadcaster slid into the natural state of the media club in manufacturing consent.

Validation was sought in sameness, the assurance you have got it right. An at times bellicose partisanship bubbled to the surface, due to both overt support for establishment views as well as a subliminal cultural bias, all of which became more pronounced with the passage of years as the organisation went through multiple changes.

SBS could have made a difference
There were times when SBS could have made a difference but chose not to, and I see that also as a personal failure. While I did not have editorial control, I did have influence.

It is true that decision makers in the newsroom were almost exclusively Anglo-Celtic, but the Board was not and we know culture is determined by the government-appointed Board which selects the CEO who appoints those beneath him or her etc.

Ethnic diversity on the Board did not prevent the organisation heading down the path it did. Visible diversity was an achievement, but it was a mere beginning, not an end in itself. It did not deliver the next stage because its ambition was limited. Whatever I did, it was not enough to have the impact required. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

In October 2006 (I left in 2007), you may recall The Australian sent a young Arabic-speaking reporter to a Lakemba Mosque expecting he would document incitement to terrorism by the Imam. He returned empty handed, but his translation of the sermon included a reference to women who do not dress modestly as “uncovered meat”. The story was front page news in The Australian and subsequently across all media mastheads and platforms in the country, including the SBS World News bulletin I presented, despite attempts on my part to explain this sort of comment was hardly unusual, didn’t merit singling out given what is routinely said by preachers of other faiths.

The incident was nevertheless used to fan the flames of strong anti-Muslim sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 and in support of US-led wars.

The atmosphere in the newsroom was at fever pitch, it was part of a pack that smelt blood. It was a day of great shame for me personally. I’d had two experiences with another organised religion that were significantly more egregious, but comments around acceptable standards of modesty, whether you adhere to them, or think they are backward and damaging for women, did not warrant singling out for public humiliation as a serious, unacceptable and unique threat to Australian society, posed by Muslim rhetoric.

The speech of Greek Orthodox Sunday school teachers or rabbis was never subjected to a public microscope.

Exceptional pressure
During my almost three decades at SBS, first in management and then in the newsroom, in discussions with the heads of programming, news, and television, I was aware of the exceptional pressure brought to bear on decision-makers when it came to purchasing and broadcasting a film, or running a story, that portrayed a Palestinian point of view as opposed to the non-negotiable version of the Israel lobby.

The programme would have to be of a higher standard than usual to justify the resources that would inevitably be required to defend it.

After a staff meeting in the newsroom in 2004, at which I argued strongly that we had to run a particular story that the news director had been asked to pull, he told me he believed his days were numbered. There would be retribution for him after the election if the Coalition won, because in the end, he had defended our right to run the report.

This marked the end of an era of possibility, with more evident influence of editorial staff by the Israel lobby.

The imbalance in our coverage became even more pronounced and entrenched and it became virtually impossible to include the perspective of Palestinians. For many years, we crossed to an Israeli spokesperson, usually an IDF or former IDF member — for a long time Mark Regev — for “an update” as if it was to a neutral observer.

I well recall an occasion during my last year when I suggested to the on-duty chief producer that we have a Palestinian on for a change. I have not forgotten his short response, though 20 years have passed. “Why? They’re all mad.”

He had just returned from a junket to Israel, par for the course for senior journalists across media organisations. Some years earlier, I had been baffled by the boasting of another chief producer about the size and quality of the steak and bottle of red he had just consumed in a long lunch shouted by an Israel lobbyist, before returning to his shift.

Legacy media struggled over Gaza genocide
It’s not surprising that legacy media has struggled with reporting on the Gaza genocide — even without using the word — because for decades we overlooked Israel’s modus operandi for demographic engineering, either in ignorance or complicity — both inexcusable.

Small victories in resistance to this diminished, along with the dilution of solidarity on the floor. In my specific role, I resorted to a kind of reverse weaponisation of neutrality. Because of my role as anchor, I argued, I could not use expressions like the much-loved “War on Terror”, it had to be “George Bush’s War on Terror”, or a dead pan “the so-called War on Terror”.

Personal family history led me — since childhood — to want to understand how power was exercised because of the catastrophic consequences for ordinary people. Interrogating the nature of identity and the function of tribalism were pieces in that puzzle, as my grandparents had come from a multiracial society at a time when such societies were being transformed into ethno-states.

The heritage of pluralism remained in my DNA and a cosmopolitan outlook was to remain my prism. Ethnic particularity, however, was just one aspect of pluralism, as it was also only just one aspect of personal identity. Furthermore, the centrality of ethnic particularity was a core characteristic of ethnonationalism and often provided fertile ground for chauvinism and racism.

So I was somewhat of a Martian in the newsroom because my background provided a perspective that my contemporary environment had no time for. In 1967, when Israel took the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Sinai, and the Golan Heights — which it ethnically cleansed, wiping out 100 villages — my generation at age 13 were reading The Diary of Anne Frank, soon followed by Leon Uris’s Exodus which documented the noble struggle of Jewish pioneers forging a new life, taming “a barren” land, creating an “egalitarian” society in “a land without a people for a people without a land”.

On this cultural and formal education, British historian William Dalrymple says he was “sold a lie”. This was the prism through which the creation of Israel was seen. Arabs were an inconvenient peripheral menace. How many adults in the Western world went on from Exodus to read Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine or Ghada Karmi’s Married to Another Man, or any of the books by Ilan Pappe? How many Western journalists?

For a variety of reasons, the media’s treatment of Israel is most exceptional. In general, holding our allies to the same standards as our foes would be laughed out of any newsroom — let alone questioning why said countries are considered “allies” to begin with. An attitude unhealthy in an ethnonationalist state, but in a multicultural one, it seeded problems that can’t be swept away.

Spawned discontent can’t be controlled
Certainly not with motherhood statements by politicians who avoid accountability for their policies or their obligations under international law. And the discontent spawned can’t be controlled with repressive institutional behaviour and authoritarian legislative measures.

Just as you can’t stop an oppressed group of people from rising up against its oppressors, the rest of us can’t allow our conscience to be criminalised, and so we will not be intimidated into silence.

I have made my anti-establishment views known across a raft of matters and have been trenchant in my criticism of the US government as well as our own government, but Israel was a no-no, no matter how flagrant its conduct.

The first “public” shot across the bow in this stepped-up phase of cancellation since October 7 was the sacking of Antoinette Lattouf. I say public because there are many cases that are not known about.

I was chosen because of my public profile and reputation, because I dared step outside the narrow Overton window we must all remain within at all cost, particularly in the case of Israel. I’m aware that my sharing of articles by many Jewish journalists and a range of other reputable experts who have been either shut out of mainstream media or would never get a look in, was making Zionists apoplectic.

The newly-minted young CEO of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and a compliant journalist in the legacy media decided they would smear me as an antisemitic rape denier and fruit loop conspiracy theorist. And because no decent smear ends without references to Holocaust denial, one of the two “exclusives” remarkably managed to end on that note.

Radio silence from that masthead ever since. They all have egg on their face because the ZFA had to drop the case knowing they had no prospect of winning.

Israel getting some of its own medicine
The two posts they selected for the alleged breach were a clip of a speech by the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah; one post with a comment from me that the Israeli government was getting some of its own medicine and that Israel has started something it can’t finish with this genocide; and the other a mere retweet of a post by British journalist Richard Medhurst who simply reported Nasrallah’s words.

It was an interesting choice for a number of reasons, not least of which was that Medhurst was arrested three weeks after the case against me was filed.

The affront at these posts was because I had the temerity to share a clip of Nasrallah himself — a listed terrorist in Australia — and draw some sort of moral equivalence between his threat and the conduct of the Israeli government, and to indicate the consequences of that conduct would continue to escalate. How dare I compare a threat by a listed terrorist with the conduct of a terrorist state.

But Israel must be spoken of with reverence while it couches its erasure of Palestinians and theft of their land as defending itself, and those defending Palestinians must be roundly condemned as terrorists and part of that Axis of Evil, when they are seen as neither by many millions of people around the world.

That we, as journalists, must take this position as if we were mouthpieces for the US alliance or the Australian government, let alone Israel, is preposterous. It dispenses with our capacity to view our own country’s perspective and that of our allies as critically as we would any other country’s, and to have media organisations participate in this journalistic malpractice as openly as they have is astonishing.

You will be familiar with directives and guidance given to staff here, and recall The New York Times leaked memo in early 2024 directing journalists to avoid even the use of the term “Occupied Territory”, and CNN staff revealing pressure resulting in credulous reporting of Israeli claims and silencing of Palestinian perspectives, with similar pressures reported at the BBC.

Over the last decade we saw distinct fragmentation of the audience — some still relying on legacy media while others accessing information and perspectives from independent media where we have seen an explosion of outlets including YouTube channels where experts and scholars publish information and commentary.

Two very different perceptions of reality
The result has been two very different perceptions of reality. However, this chasm between segments of the public is closing for large numbers of people as the situation in Gaza and in other spheres reach such extremes. Israel’s brutal colonialism in the West Bank and Lebanon, Donald Trump’s overt gangster-capitalism and proxy war on Iran, and the rise of the far-right cannot be glossed over with a comprehensive avoidance of reality in legacy media.

The consequences are too visible and too extreme.

We can take heart that on the whole the courts won’t back the suppression of political speech — with the exception of the disappointing Jayson Gillham decision where the judge did not have a problem with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra discriminating in the colour of political comment it endorsed, legitimising support for Ukraine as policy but not so for Palestinians.

NSW Supreme Court Justice Desmond Fagan’s judgement on the heels of this decision is a masterclass in calling out the lack of common sense, gaslighting and utter bullshit.

Mary Kostakidis is an Australian journalist, political commentator, and activist. She was a member of the management team that developed SBS Television in 1980. She anchored its World News bulletin for almost 2 decades before becoming an independent journalist. This address to the Media Diversity Australia Symposium was delivered on 13 October 2026 and republished from Deepcut News.

REVIEW: By Alex Salmon

An American photojournalist getting viciously beaten up the West Bank by settlers is small potatoes in comparison to the hundreds of journalists who have died in Gaza, let alone the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been slaughtered (and continue to be).

However, a group of young thugs pounding the crap out of a petite woman in her late 60s and taking her camera while the IDF stands by and doing nothing to stop them is a snapshot of the toxic country that Israel has become.

Heidi Levine, a celebrated photographer who at the time was shooting for The Washington Post, was taking pictures of masked Israelis setting Palestinian olive groves on fire as part of a surge in settler violence.

• READ MORE: Israeli settlers attack EU diplomats during West Bank olive harvest
• US ambassador urges Israel to prosecute attackers of American photojournalist
• Other Palestine genocide reports

“People who were at the scene described a mass-coordinated attack in which dozens of men in black came down from a hilltop settlement near the village of Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, where Palestinian families were picking their olives,” says The Washington Post.

“The settlers hurled stones with slings and set the groves on fire, chasing a group of journalists about 80 yards from the scene.

“Levine described being overtaken by a group of attackers, hit and knocked to the ground.

“A video taken by another journalist shows her being struck repeatedly while she is on the ground.

“They just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times,” Levine told reporters.

Netanyahu defends thugs
Not surprisingly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who is wanted on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity — defended the thugs who attacked both the olive groves and Levine, claiming “Arabs and far-left activists confronted approximately 40 Israeli youths”.

“We will not allow disputed incidents to be exploited to demonise the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said.

What a crock! Under what circumstance is it justified for Zionist hoodlums to beat the shit out of a tiny woman approaching 70 who dared to turn a camera on their criminal actions.

Welcome to Israel, the “only democracy” in the Middle East and the “defender of Western civilisation!”

Just leave your camera at home or we’ll smash your face in.

Mark Naglazas is a West Australian journalist specialising in Perth culture and the arts. Republished from his FB page with permission.

After Israeli settlers beat and severely wounded Palestinian farmers and a Washington Post journalist yesterday, settler violence continues on the olive harvest in the occupied West Bank.

Al Jazeera’s @mohammadfff_ reports. https://t.co/bVj4Xl04m1

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 17, 2026

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) head of news has threatened journalist and unionist Michael Slezak with disciplinary action over an October 5 opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review, written in his capacity as a union official.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said in a statement that it joined its Australian affiliate, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), in defending the right of union representatives to engage in public advocacy and called on ABC management to rule out disciplinary action.

The ABC’s recently appointed head of news Simon Robinson threatened ABC journalist and federal president of media at MEAA, Michael Slezak, with disciplinary action after an article he wrote was published by the AFR.

• READ MORE: Other Bondi terror attack and media reports

In the piece, Slezak suggested that the corporate regulator, the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), used the Bondi terror attack to support the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) push to restrict public and media access to directors’ personal information.

Slezak wrote the piece within his capacity as a union leader.

Last week, Slezak was called to meet with Robinson and Lee Glendinning, head of national and digital news, who advised the piece potentially infringed ABC’s external work policy which required staff to formally request external opportunities.

However, MEAA said Slezak had an existing arrangement with the ABC before Robinson’s appointment which authorised him to publicly engage in union-related advocacy. The pair did not rule out disciplinary action, including dismissal, during the meeting.

Open letter to ABC
MEAA called for ABC management drop potential disciplinary measures in an open letter to Robinson and managing director Hugh Marks.

The letter, sent on October 12, received 165 signatures from union members.

MEAA members on the ABC house committee said “the ABC cannot publicly champion press freedom while privately targeting a national union representative for doing the same thing”.

This follows a period of prolonged industrial action from the ABC’s unionised workforce.

Disputes over secure work and fair pay earlier this year caused ABC staff to strike for the first time in 20 years, calling on management to ensure fair pay, secure work, and improved conditions that protect quality public-interest journalism.

The MEAA said: “MEAA members at the ABC have overwhelmingly backed a motion defending the rights of elected union representatives to speak out and represent members.

“Members are calling on ABC management to respect legal union rights, commit not to undermine those protections, and meet with staff to discuss their concerns. Union representatives must be free to advocate for the members they were elected to represent.”

The IFJ said: “Threatening Slezak with disciplinary action for engaging in union related advocacy is an attack on journalists right to association and freedom of expression.

“The IFJ stands with the MEAA and calls on ABC management to drop potential disciplinary measures and to meet with union members to discuss their concerns.”

The Fiji Times has reaffirmed its commitment to serving as the voice of the nation and championing freedom of expression, access to truth and the rights of every Fijian.

In his Fiji Day message on Saturday, Fiji Times Pte Limited chairman Kirit Prabhudas Patel said the newspaper was humbled to have journeyed alongside the people of Fiji for more than a century and a half.

“At The Fiji Times, we remain deeply humbled to have journeyed alongside the people of Fiji throughout the years,” Patel said.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji Times reports

“For more than a century and a half, we have remained committed to serving as the voice of the nation, championing freedom of expression, access to truth, and the right of every Fijian to be heard.”

Patel, who is also chairman and chief executive officer of the Motibhai Group of Companies, said the newspaper’s longstanding “Your Voice Since 1869” message represented more than a slogan.

“‘The Fiji Times — Your Voice Since 1869’ is more than a slogan; it is a promise that has endured through generations,” he said.

“Through periods of change, challenge, and celebration, we have stood with the people of Fiji, sharing their stories, reflecting their aspirations, and supporting the principles of truth, fairness, and accountability that are essential to a vibrant democracy.”

Enduring spirit
Patel said The Fiji Times would continue that commitment under the enduring spirit of “For Fiji, Ever Fiji”.

“We reaffirm our pledge to continue serving the people of Fiji with integrity and purpose,” he said.

Reflecting on Fiji’s 56th anniversary of independence, Patel said every citizen had a responsibility to contribute towards the country’s success.

“Progress is achieved not by the efforts of a few, but through the collective commitment of all.”

He called on Fijians to honour the country’s past while working together towards a peaceful, prosperous and inclusive future.

“Let us honour their legacy by upholding the values they cherished and by working together to ensure an even brighter future for generations to come.”

Anish Chand is a senior Fiji Times journalist. Republished with permission.

Thousands of people took to the streets across Aotearoa New Zealand on Saturday, standing in solidarity with Palestine as part of the Global Day of Action. Yet where was the media coverage?

From Auckland to Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, and communities across the country, people turned out to demand justice, freedom and an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

These are not insignificant gatherings. These are people exercising their democratic right to protest, raising their voices against injustice and demanding accountability.

• READ MORE: Aotearoa marches, vigils kick-off ‘global day of action’ for Palestine with mass protests in dozens of countries
• Tens of thousands join pro-Palestinian march in New Zealand — coverage in 2025
• Death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza rises to 74,370, says Health Ministry
• Other Palestine reports

When thousands take to the streets for Palestine, that is news. When their voices are barely heard, that raises serious questions about media priorities.

Whose voices are being amplified, and whose are being pushed to the margins?

New Zealanders deserve journalism that reflects what is happening in their communities — not selective silence when the issue is Palestine.

The media cannot claim to represent the public while overlooking thousands of people demanding justice.

Palestine is not going away. Our voices are not going away. And neither is our demand for justice.

Do your job. Cover the protests. Let the public see what is happening.

Maher Nazzal is chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand.

EDITORIAL: By Michael West, founder of Michael West Media

On Friday, Mario Christodoulou, executive producer of ABC Media Watch, quoted two posts we had made on X regarding last Wednesday’s FlyDubai “terror hijacking” incident and asked two questions:

Do you believe this incident was an Israeli Government “false flag” event? If so, on what basis? If not, how do you explain your posts above?

Perpetuating unsubstantiated conspiracy theories like this, especially from an established journalist such as yourself, can help spread misinformation. Your post likely contributed to this. What is your response?

(Full email and X posts below.)

• WATCH MORE: Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post – Netanyahu’s fight for political survival: PR stunts and press control

Our response

Hi Mario,

Excellent questions. You are barking up the wrong tree, however. My take on both flydubai and RAF Fairford is clearly — and the word was used in one of the tweets — “probably” false flags, or at the least “beat-ups” concocted for political advantage.

This view is borne out by evidence of multiple false flag attacks in Australia, as belatedly admitted by police, and around the world.

The bigger story, the real public interest in media coverage of these incidents, is how they are leveraged by our politicians and a compliant mainstream media. The minute they occur, whether actual false flags or just suspicious incidents, they are branded as “terror plots”, “Islamist attacks … jihadis” etc.

This media branding of these events, *before* the circumstances are known and the evidence is established, has given licence to political actions such as the ramping up of hate speech laws in Australia and justification for passing the private data of Australian citizens to foreign parties as per the arrangements with Cellebrite and Palantir.

As a pilot for 20 years I have questions:

– where are the cabin crew here?
– where are the oxygen masks that automatically drop during a rapid emergency descent?
– how did the Capt manage to open the door while being stabbed?
– Omani pilots were not allowed to fly to Israel, why was he allowed?
– how did the offending pilot get a weapon onboard?
– why has this happened so close to elections?
– how are passengers walking around while apparently in a nosedive?
– who else was injured? Nose dives cause significant g force incidents
– why is there two perfectly positioned people recording the incident and not helping?
– why did a plumber take control and not the 2 pilots onboard who would certainly know when an aircraft was in a nosedive?
– why was the plumber speaking in English to Bibi after the flight
– why was he still in his blood soaked clothes 8 hours after the incident

False Flags have been a very effective mechanism to influence public opinion

Hitler burnt down the Reichstag just before his parliament elections and he won the election…changing the course of history.

A full and independent investigation should be carried out here.

Hopefully independent journalist will be allowed to view this too.

— The Long Investor (@TheLongInvest) October 1, 2026

flydubai X post retweeted by MW

Let’s say flydubai is not a false flag in a technical sense; that is, a ploy cooked up by the Netanyahu regime in Israel just a few weeks before the election. Let’s just say it was actually a fight between the pilots and a happy ending. The fact that the initial coverage branded the event as a terrorist hijacking demonstrates that the incident was used for political gain.

The Fairford incident was also branded as a terrorist plot in its initial coverage, egged on by Trump and Rubio and the usual people on social media. Why did they not wait until it became evident that it was 5 lads pilfering diesel before reporting it as terror?

Here in “evidence-land” we try to ignore the noise and report the truth. And the truth is that the mainstream media has blood on its hands, a lot of blood. Its failure to address the exaggerated claims of the October 7 Hamas attacks — 40 babies beheaded, mass gang rapes, babies in ovens, babies on clotheslines — has given licence to genocide, to the worst human atrocities of this century.

Lies have dragged us into war against Iran which is hurting every citizen via higher petrol and food prices.

The effect on humanity has been drastic, and much of that can be foisted home to a failure by a craven media to report responsibly. The media is culpable and the rise of new media such as MWM is due to plunging public confidence in the institutions of power such as the ABC and traditional corporate media.

We haven’t grown from scratch to millions in audience a month by making stuff up.

To be fair, the ABC has done better than corporate media but it is still culpable. Where is the Four Corners on the hasbara movement, the litany of false flag attacks in Australia such as the Dural caravan hoax and the other 12 or so “terror” acts which turned out to be no-hopers with no political ideology apparently paid for by foreign interests?

This is the real story, the culpability of media in genocide, not some guy on X raising credible doubts about the official narrative because the evidence for terror claims does not stack up and the historical evidence of false flags is so compelling it should not be ignored.

As we approach the three-year anniversary of October 7, it would be apposite for traditional media to contemplate its own epic failures, its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. You could start by analysing the lies which have already been debunked.

Here are some questions: how many Israelis were slaughtered by IDF Apache gunships on October 7? Why did Netanyahu ignore warnings of the Hamas attacks from Egyptian and Qatari leaders? What is the evidence for mass rapes and babies beheaded? How and why were the Nova Festival arrangements changed prior to the attacks? Why has there been no official inquiry by Israeli authorities?

And what role did the mainstream media play to give licence to genocide?

Cui bono?

Media Watch email
Thanks for your time on the phone just now. Here’s what I sent via your website portal. 

We’re writing an item examining the FlyDubai incident, which has been widely reported this week, where passengers managed to seize control of a 737 en route to Tel Aviv from Dubai. As part of that story, we are examining the conspiracy theories that have cropped up online, and we noticed you have been posting about this being a “false flag” operation.

There was this repost in particular: 

But also this:

We may mention this in the segment. To my knowledge, there is no evidence this was an Israeli “false flag”, and theories like this are unsubstantiated.

Questions below:

• Do you believe this incident was an Israeli Government “false flag” event? If so, on what basis? If not, how do you explain your posts above?
• Perpetuating unsubstantiated conspiracy theories like this, especially from an established journalist such as yourself, can help spread misinformation. Your post likely contributed to this. What is your response?

Deadline is 5pm today.  Let me know if you are having trouble reaching this.

 ‘Cheap 20 second opinions’
When the show aired last night, host Linton Besser didn’t hold back on the accusations of peddling conspiracy theories and “cheap 20 second opinions”.

We concede that in the absence of ABC’s $1.23 billion budget — even a dedicated team of researchers and others working for an entire week to produce 15 minutes of television for just 42 weeks of the year — that we may be cheap, at least in budget terms, by necessity.

Yet with our humble budget and the goodwill of the community we have managed to break a lot more stories than the ABC in relation to the crime of the century. Where is the ABC’s coverage of Australian charities funnelling money to the IDF and illegal West Bank settlements?

Nowhere, despite it being raised in Parliament.

Where is the coverage of Australians serving with the IDF, a story we broke with FOIs? Where is the coverage of the money trail of public grants to the Israel lobby?

We even beat this billion-dollar corporation on the story of Australian UN commissioner, Chris Sidoti, releasing an independent report for the UN on the systematic slaughter of Palestinian children by the IDF. We were literally first media in the world.

The ABC trundled along timidly a day late with its billion-dollar budget and, typically, buried the story anyway. This — an investigation about a rogue state engaged in genocide which Australia furnishes with weapons parts, to be found by the highest body in the world, to be deliberately murdering children.

Shamelessly buried.

And here they are with the gall, to sermonise about an independent journalist saying on social media that flydubai was “probably” a false flag or at least had been leveraged for political advantage. This, after three years of spinelessly tip-toeing around every single story which mentions the word Israel.

As Media Watch host, my former SMH colleague, and a first-rate journalist, Linton Besser did note in his piece, Benjamin Netanyahu was very quick out of the blocks when the story broke to get on the phone to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News to kick off his media campaign.

With zero evidence Israel’s PM pointed the bone at Iran. Was Iran directly behind the plot, asked career misinformation-spreader Sean Hannity? “Too early to say,” said Netanyahu. Job done, as with the RAF Fairford “terror plot”, Iran named. The rest of the corporate media followed.

This is the way it works and ABC is a part of it. “Israel says”. Frothing forth with every false claim uttered by a war lobby whose lies are established and far too prolific to list here. They are daily.

Is flydubai a false flag?
Is the flydubai incident a false flag? It’s too early to tell but the narrative has changed a lot, the evidence suggests the official story is not credible, even CNN had a pilot demonstrate why it did not stack up. Many questions remain.

“This is Hollywood on steroids … ordinary civilians became superheroes,” Netanyahu told Fox News. “If you’re next hijacked, make sure an Israeli is sitting next to you.”

Is not the story — the story for Media Watch — why are so many sceptical about Israel’s claims? The answer is clear: they lie and twist facts relentlessly. The suspicion is warranted. The propaganda is documented. Why does ABC not cover that, bigger, story?

Our personal favourite was the still glass of water after the 14,300 ft nosedive (no, not the heroic plumber who watched aviation rescue shows or the pilot, Hamam al Hamami, whose name has been translated by scallywags as Bathroom King of Bathrooms).

Why does the ABC continue to trot out the Israel lobby’s propaganda when it has been proven time and time again to be false? The mainstream media has literally, deliberately missed the story of the century.

They avoid the G-word like the plague.

And this cowardice, this complicity by our institutions of power, has degraded all humanity. Our leaders and our institutions, in not standing up to genocide, in perpetuating lies, even rewarding them, have let us all down.

At least we said “probably” a false flag. They can’t even bring themselves — with all their sanctimonious tut-tutting about journalistic integrity to say “probably a genocide”, let alone admit they’ve been captured to the point of even sacking at least one journalist for raising the question.

Just look at the pictures. Gaza razed by US bombs, a population starved and tortured, homeless, 70,000 to 700,000 dead, concentration camps, the largest population of child amputees in history.

You allowed this to happen.

Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker. This article was first published by Michael West Media on 6 October 2026 and is republished with permission.

Seeking to discredit reports of its unprecedented killing of journalists in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces last week published a list of 170 slain Palestinians it claimed were not legitimate media workers but members of “terrorist groups”.

Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, reviewed every single entry on the list.

He called it “the most sloppy shameless fraud possible.”

• READ MORE: Al Jazeera rejects Netanyahu’s attack on journalists in UN speech
• Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them — David Robie
• West Bank: RSF condemns Israeli army over escalating violence against Palestinian journalists
• Other Gaza media freedom reports

Israeli officials and Western supporters have trumpeted the IDF’s list as a counter to findings by groups like the International Federation of Journalists, which has described Israel’s nearly-three-year-old-war in Gaza as “the deadliest period in the history of journalism” and cataloged at least 240 journalists and media workers killed.

Other global media watchdogs have cited an even higher number while the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel has reported at least 270 killed — 12 of them being its own journalists.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has found dozens of cases in which it concluded journalists were targeted deliberately because of their reporting and filed multiple complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging war crimes against the press.

The database, which the IDF refers to as the “Press Files,” says “that claim does not tell the full story” and alleges that “individuals presented as innocent journalists were, in fact, militants in the military wings of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terrorist organisations.”

Investigating war crimes in Gaza                     Video: Al Jazeera

Claims ‘in-depth’ list
The IDF claims the list was the product of an “in-depth investigation” consisting of open-source information, documents recovered by Israeli forces in Gaza, interrogations of alleged Palestinian militants, and intelligence gathered during military operations.

But as Shehada explained in a thread posted to social media on Sunday, “in the overwhelming majority of those listed, the IDF presents ZERO credible evidence. In most of them, their pages are literally blank”.

In 59 cases, Shehada found that the IDF did not provide any evidence for its claim that a journalist was a member of Hamas or PIJ other than that the claim was “based on multiple intelligence sources”.

Shehada said this amounted to essentially saying “trust me, bro,” which is especially insufficient given the numerous instances in which the IDF has been found to have misled the public about its responsibility for certain attacks, like the killing of 5-year-old Hind Rajab in 2024.

In another 42 cases, Shehada found that the IDF provided only decontextualized “snippets” of files, which were “undated and unspecified”. Without more information, Shehada said, this is “not… evidence of anything”.

“Those snippets could be taken from random files; they could be outdated or fabricated,” Shehada said, pointing to previous cases in which purported Hamas intelligence circulated by Israeli sources was later revealed to be misleadingly presented as fabricated.

Shehada pointed to specific cases in which Israel’s allegations against specific journalists have been undermined by the underlying evidence.

Israel claimed that Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul, whom the IDF killed in July 2024, was an operative with Hamas’ elite Nukhba wing and released a supposed Hamas personnel document as proof.

Debunked by RSF
But as Reporters Without Borders has previously explained, the document says al-Ghoul, born in 1997, received a military rank in 2007, when he was 10, while elsewhere saying he joined in 2014.

It also identifies him as an engineer, contradicting the IDF’s description of him as a Nukhba fighter. Israeli troops also detained al-Ghoul at al-Shifa hospital months before he was killed but released him after 12 hours.

The case of Anas al-Sharif, another Al Jazeera journalist killed in 2025, is similar. As Shehada documented for +972 magazine last year, al-Sharif was seriously injured in 2017, listed in a military context in 2019, but described as “suspended” and “unassigned” by 2023 — while another document nevertheless portrays him as an elite Nukhba fighter. He was also reportedly detained and released by Israeli forces during the 2024 al-Shifa raid.

In other cases, the IDF’s evidence outright debunks the military’s own claims. For instance, Israel labeled photojournalist Hassan Aslih — killed by an airstrike at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in May 2025 — as a “military operative.”

But the 2019 Hamas document provided as evidence for this lists him as a “photographer” involved with “media services”.

While the document, if authentic, does establish a relationship between Aslih and Hamas’ Qassam Brigades at least six years before his death, this does not make him a legitimate target under international humanitarian law, which distinguishes between those who have a “continuous combat function” and those who provide political or other indirect forms of support, like media coverage.

Shehada found at least seven cases in which the only evidence provided by the IDF was photos of slain journalists holding guns. In another 12 cases, the IDF provided undated photos of journalists allegedly taking part in Hamas or PIJ military activities.

Israeli journalists’ military service
Shehada noted that many prominent Israeli journalists also have past military service, such as Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, who was an IDF reservist until 2023. “Does that make him a ‘legitimate target’? or a non-civilian forever?” Shehada asked.

The distinction between past military affiliation and active combatant status has been a repeated source of dispute for press freedom groups that have attempted to tally the number of journalists killed.

Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) completed a sweeping review of 229 deaths after Hamas and PIJ published obituaries identifying some people listed as journalists as members of armed groups.

CPJ ultimately removed 22 people from its list, including some it found had participated in combat — but retained others despite militant obituaries, gun photos, or past organisational ties when the evidence did not establish active combatant status.

The “Press Files” database contains 49 cases in which the main piece of evidence is one of these obituaries. Among them are people who CPJ examined and concluded were not active combatants, such as photojournalist Amr Abu Odeh — a 26-year-old freelance photographer for the Anadolu Agency and Reuters — whom the IDF database labels a Hamas “squad commander”.

CPJ examined photos of Odeh wearing a military uniform, which came from a 2021 military training course with Gaza’s Ministry of the Interior. The group noted that “No armed factions in Gaza have claimed Abu Odeh as being affiliated with them, and the IDF has not alleged he was involved in combat”.

‘NOT engaged’ militarily
“In multiple cases, despite obituaries by Hamas/PIJ, the Committee to Protect Journalists investigated thoroughly and concluded those journalists were NOT engaged in any militant activity during the genocide,” Shehada wrote.

“They may have in the past. That doesn’t make them combatants forever.”

He added that the flimsiness of the IDF’s evidence was more striking given the sophistication of the intelligence unit it uses to “dig up dirt” on journalists to provide post hoc justification for their killings, which has been referred to internally as the “Legitimisation Cell,” which was revealed in a +972 investigation.

“If that’s all they can provide as ”evidence“ (e.g. blank pages, random snippets, outdated docs) despite having formidable resources,” Shehada wrote, “then it’s a vindication of Gaza’s journalists!”

Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Republished under Creative Commons.

AGAINST THE CURRENT: By Steven Cowan

The ferocity with which sections of the New Zealand right have moved to discredit Nicky Hager’s new book Dirty Work before even turning a page tells its own story.

It is the same reflexive hostility that has greeted every major investigation Hager has produced over the past three decades: a rush to delegitimise, to sneer, to dismiss, all before the evidence has been examined.

But this time the haste has been almost comical. Within hours of the book’s release, Newstalk ZB’s Tim Beveridge — who could not possibly have read it — declared it “junk” and banned callers from discussing it on his overnight show.

• READ MORE: Other Nicky Hager reports

Beveridge’s contempt was not grounded in analysis; it was a strike against uncomfortable truths. His close association with Jordan Williams of the Taxpayers’ Union, a regular guest on Beveridge’s Saturday afternoon show, only underscores how tightly woven these networks of mutual reinforcement have become. When a book threatens the legitimacy of that ecosystem, the ecosystem responds like a single organism.

National Party MP and former minister Chris Penk, too, performed the same ritual denunciation. In a column for Stuff, he admitted he had not read Dirty Work — then proceeded to attack it anyway.

Penk reduced Hager’s investigation to a caricature: “a person with left-wing views disagrees with people with right-wing views.”

Penk’s dismissal was not an argument; it was another conservative signal that the book should be treated as illegitimate and unworthy of engagement.

But more revealing still was the intervention of Dane Giraud, a member of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and a committed Zionist defender of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. According to Giraud, those who take Hager seriously belong to an “elite intelligentsia” suffering from something he calls “Free Speech Union derangement”.  This “elite (liberal) intelligentsia” is apparently inherently hostile to an organisation like the FSU because it is an authentic grassroots movement representing everyday working-class people.

FSU’s dishonest portrayal
This is a thoroughly dishonest portrayal of the FSU. It is not a working-class organisation that has emerged organically from within the workplace. It is a rebranded conservative lobby group, born out of the Taxpayers’ Union in 2018 and co-founded by corporate and political operatives including Jordan Williams. Its board includes several committed Zionists, and its campaigns consistently align with the interests of the political right.

To describe such an organisation as “grassroots” is not merely dishonest; it is an appropriation of working-class language for elite political ends. Traditional unions are democratic institutions funded and governed by workers themselves. They exist to bargain collectively, to protect wages, to improve safety, to build solidarity.

The FSU, by contrast, operates as a top-down lobby group focused on legal interventions, media pressure campaigns, and cultural warfare. It is structurally indistinguishable from the constellation of conservative advocacy outfits that have proliferated over the past decade — groups that claim to defend “free speech” while consistently mobilising against progressive movements, academic institutions, and public broadcasters.

Giraud’s rhetorical manoeuvre — painting critics as elitist while presenting the FSU as authentically proletarian — is a classic deflection. It shifts attention away from the organisation’s funding sources, political alliances, and ideological commitments. It reframes scrutiny as snobbery.

But Hager’s work has never been about cultural disdain; it has been about mapping the hidden architecture of influence. Dirty Politics exposed how attack blogs, political strategists, and wealthy donors coordinated smear campaigns. Dirty Work continues that tradition by tracing how lobby groups like the Taxpayers’ Union and their offshoots shape public debate while presenting themselves as neutral civic actors. To investigate such structures is not “derangement”. It is democratic hygiene.

The right’s panic over Dirty Work is therefore unsurprising. Hager’s investigations threaten the mythology that groups like the FSU and the Taxpayers Union depend on: the myth of independence, the myth of grassroots authenticity, the myth of representing “ordinary New Zealanders” rather than well-connected political networks.

When those myths are punctured, the public can see these organisations for what they are — professionalised advocacy machines that weaponise culture-war grievances to advance conservative interests.

A shadow infrastructure
From a left-wing perspective, Dirty Work is invaluable precisely because it illuminates the machinery of contemporary conservative politics. It shows how consent is manufactured, how outrage is cultivated, how media ecosystems are manipulated, and how lobby groups coordinate narratives across platforms. It reveals the connective tissue linking talkback hosts, political operatives, advocacy groups, and sympathetic MPs.

Furthermore, it does not claim that these actors are engaged in a grand conspiracy; rather, it shows how shared interests, ideological alignment, and personal networks create a shadow infrastructure of influence that operates largely out of public view.

If the book has a limitation, it is that it stops short of connecting these dynamics to the deeper failures of capitalism itself — the structural incentives that reward polarisation, the economic interests that benefit from deregulation and austerity, the corporate funding streams that sustain lobby groups committed to shrinking the public sphere.

But even without that broader analysis, Dirty Work arms progressives with the factual ammunition needed to challenge the narratives that dominate New Zealand’s political discourse. It exposes the machinery behind the manufactured outrage, the faux-populism, and the relentless attacks on public institutions.

The right’s rush to bury the book before reading it is not a sign of confidence. It is a sign of fear. Hager has once again pulled back the curtain, and those who prefer to operate in the shadows are scrambling to turn off the lights.

Republished from Steven Cowan’s blog Against The Current with permission.

• Dirty Work: The Taxpayers’ Union and New Zealand’s Hard Right, by Nicky Hager, 2026 (Potton & Burton).

Al Jazeera has rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attack against the network during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, the news channel reports.

In a statement on Friday, Al Jazeera Media Network said it “categorically rejects” Netanyahu’s remarks, regarding them as the latest example of Israel’s “sustained campaign against Al Jazeera and its journalists”.

In his address at the UNGA on Thursday, where he attacked critics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and pogroms in the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu singled out Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: Al Jazeera rejects Netanyahu’s remarks about the network in his address to the UN General Assembly
• Al Jazeera decries ‘unfounded’ Israeli claims about its Gaza journalists
• ‘Baseless lies meant to sanitise his genocide’ – Mayor Mamdani hits back after Netanyahu’s attacks during UN speech
• Other Gaza media freedom reports

He called the network one of the world’s “toxic media outlets” that intends to “brainwash young minds to hate Israel”.

Al Jazeera said Netanyahu wanted to stop the outlet from “reporting facts from the ground, documenting events, providing context and ensuring that a range of voices and perspectives are heard”.

Further rejecting Netanyahu’s verbal assault, Al Jazeera said the fact that “such rhetoric was delivered from the podium of the United Nations is a matter of particular concern, given the threat such rhetoric poses to the safety of Al Jazeera journalists working in the field”.

“This rhetoric cannot be separated from the heavy toll borne by Al Jazeera’s journalists in Gaza,” the network’s statement added.

Israel’s war on journalists -targeting Al Jazeera               Video: Al Jazeera

270+ journalists killed in Gaza
More than 270 journalists have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s genocidal onslaught. At least 12 of the victims had been reporting for Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera said the network “has lost a number of journalists and camera operators while they were carrying out their work. Some were subjected to campaigns of incitement and vilification before being targeted”.

Of the more than 75,000 people killed in Gaza, at least 706 are family members of journalists of Palestinian journalists, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

Israel has repeatedly cracked down on Al Jazeera and used pressure campaigns against Qatar.

Two years ago, Israel’s cabinet voted to shut down Al Jazeera in the country, immediately ordering the closure of its offices and a ban on the network’s broadcasts. This came after Israel’s Knesset passed a law allowing the government to temporarily close down foreign media outlets it deemed a “threat to security”.

“These measures do not target Al Jazeera alone; they also undermine the right of every person to access truthful information and independent journalistic coverage,” Al Jazeera said on Friday.

It added that “the role of journalism is to provide the world with facts and context, while respecting the right and ability of individuals to assess sources and form their own opinions.”

Republished by Pacific Media Watch from Al Jazeera.

With the US midterm elections just weeks away, US President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to put a positive spin on a war with Iran that shows no sign of letting up, reports the Al Jazeera media watch programme Listening Post.

Climbing fuel and grocery prices, the president’s provocative social media posts and the Pentagon’s combative relationship with the media are making that story harder to sell.

Contributors:
Laicie Heeley – Editor-in-chief, Inkstick
Mark Kimmitt – Former US Assistant Secretary of State
Negar Mortazavi – Host, The Iran Podcast
Samira Mohyeddin – Founder, On The Line Media

On our radar:
Revelations from Israeli newspaper Haaretz about what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew before the October 7 attacks have ignited a firestorm in the country. Netanyahu calls the reporting fabricated and is threatening to sue. Ryan Kohls reports.

How covid coverage broke trust in the US:
Six years on from the start of the pandemic, covid-19 is back in the headlines — and so are questions about how newsrooms covered it.

The Listening Post’s Nicholas Muirhead on how the pandemic broke trust in the US.

Featuring:
Amesh Adalja – Infectious Disease Physician, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Frances E Lee – Co-author, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us
Jeanne Lenzer – Investigative Medical Journalist

The Listening Post, 13 September 2026.

Fiji Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has urged Pacific journalists to check and verify information before disseminated it to the public, warning that the rise of artificial intelligence, synthetic content and digital manipulation had added to the challenges facing journalists.

Speaking at the opening of the 8th PINA Pacific Media Summit in Savusavu, Fiji, yesterday, he said headlines could reach thousands of people before facts were properly checked and verified.

False claims, he added, could spread before accurate information reached the public.

• READ MORE: In the wake of MIDA, Fiji’s news industry has turned full circle for media freedom
• Other PINA reports

“This is why professional standards matter more than ever,” he said.

He said his call for caution was not a call for journalists to remain silent.

“This is not a call for silence. It is a call for responsible journalism.”

Inflamed social tensions
He called for greater caution, especially, when reporting issues that could inflame social tensions or contribute to conflict, particularly as information spreads rapidly online.

“Information can travel across the world in seconds or in fractions of a second,” he said.

He said digital innovation should strengthen public understanding and regional co-operation rather than become a tool for misinformation, disinformation or sensationalism that divided communities.

Rabuka also called for greater media literacy, saying citizens needed to question what they saw and heard, while journalists needed to verify information.

He said newsrooms also needed to adapt to emerging technologies while maintaining professional standards.

“Freedom also comes with responsibility.”

He said a free, independent and professional media remained important to a healthy democracy.

‘Check Pacific’ launched
Pacnews correspondent Pita Ligaiula reports that Cook Islands News editor Rashneel Kumar has called for Pacific media, civil society and universities to work together to tackle the growing threat of misinformation and disinformation across the region.

Speaking at the media summit, he introduced “Check Pacific”, a new platform aimed at bringing regional organisations and practitioners together to respond to misinformation.

“We want our civil societies, our media practitioners, and universities to come together and work together to actually battle this misinformation,” he said.

Kumar said misinformation and disinformation were major challenges for Pacific countries, particularly given the region’s geographical remoteness and separation.

Republished with permission.

After facing public scrutiny, some of the members of different Māori delegations to Israel have spoken out about the trip.

The trips were reported to have been organised and funded by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with conflicting claims over whether they were fully or partially funded. The Israeli Embassy has declined to confirm the details.

The trip was advertised under the banner of “business and innovation”.

• READ MORE: ‘Is it NZ First, or Israel First?’ Ormsby challenges NZ foreign minister Peters
• Māori delegation’s Israel trip under scrutiny over funding and itinerary
• Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission of Inquiry finds
• Other Gaza reports

But questions remained on why Māori leaders were going to Israel, while its government is committing a genocide in Gaza.

‘The other side of the story’
One of the people who have just recently come back from the trip was Iwi leader Renata Hakiwai, who believed the trip was to promote Israel and to “provide the other side of the story”.

He claims the trip was partly due to personal reasons as well.

“I have interest in business technology and innovation, and the cohort was about business technology and innovation,” he said.

“As a child, you learn around the Bible, and as a Christian, I thought, ‘Wow, this is a good opportunity for me to visit some of these sites’.”

Before going, Hakiwai stated he had “anti-Semitic thoughts”, but his mind was changed after the visit.

He called himself a “truth seeker” and pointed to social media’s algorithm for people believing certain stories over others, which was one of the reasons he went.

“One thing I found is that you get an algorithm on TikTok or social media, and it can totally consume someone’s brain with a certain subject, and I had to check myself.

“I started learning the other side, and some of the history, and some of the reasons as to why things have been happening, and that’s sort of the reason why I thought, ‘Actually, I need to go and hear what’s on the ground and some of the truths’.

“And so it changed my mind totally.

“I haven’t swung right to the other side, but I think my view is probably a little bit more balanced.”

Hakiwai admits he did not speak to any Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, but did visit the Gaza Envelope, an area of southern Israel bordering the Gaza Strip.

When asked by Te Ao with Moana whether he could present a balanced view without speaking to people in Gaza and the West Bank, he instead pointed to the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023.

“I think to myself, if my daughter or my young fellow or kids were at that concert, I would want ultimate revenge.

“Obviously, Israel came down hard. Have they come down too hard? Potentially,” said Hakiwai.

“I didn’t read too much into the UN stuff, because I even know at the UN there’s opposing views depending on what side of the board you sit on,” said Hakiwai.

He also said he did not believe a two-state solution would work because of Hamas.

Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN finds        Video: UNNews

‘They didn’t really like being asked the hard questions’
Indigenous lawyer Maui Solomon was invited on the trip but was later excluded for asking “hard questions”.

“I was maybe half an hour talking with [the organiser], and I just did not have a good vibe because I was asking the hard questions. And to be fair to Riki [Manarangi], actually, he said, ‘Ask the hard questions’. But yeah, they didn’t really like being asked the hard questions,” he told Te Ao with Moana.

Solomon said he had already intended not to go before being kicked out of the group.

He claims to have tried showing those in the delegation what happened to Māori who supported Palestine in Israel.

“I also posted to the group a video of Hāhona Ormsby, a Māori who had been there as part of the flotilla delivering aid into Gaza. He says in that video that he was captured, he was bound, he was beaten, he was tortured, he was kneed in the genitals. And he was singled out because he was Māori. He’s got a full mataora.

“As a result of that, I was excluded because I was ‘fear-mongering’.

“So I was merely highlighting what some of the concerns were, but then I was accused of just buying into all of the fear-mongering, and someone accused me of being an algorithm.”

He believes the trip was to promote the people of Israel as “Indigenous”, not a “business and innovation” trip.

“I’d also heard that Israel had been bringing Indigenous peoples from Australia and Canada and the United States over there.

“But that’s what seems to be the agenda is for the State of Israel to say they have the support of Indigenous peoples around the world, and therefore they are also Indigenous.

“Some of the comments I’ve heard from former delegates who have been there is exactly that. It’s all been pro-Israel, State of Israel, and that they are Indigenous to the region, so whether there’s been a brainwashing going on or whatever?”

Solomon said it’s concerning that the Israeli government was reaching out to Aotearoa.

In saying that, adding that he might have gone if there was more transparency and the delegation was allowed to enter Gaza to see what was happening first-hand.

‘I want to make decisions myself’
Former Broadcaster Neil Waka went on the 2025 delegation after being shoulder-tapped to join.

He told Te Ao with Moana he “hesitantly” said yes.

Waka said he did not regret going to Israel, despite the deaths happening in Gaza — more than 75,000, mostly women and children, have been killed since October 2023.

“People are very ferocious about their thinking around Israel and Gaza. I know they are, but I don’t have to agree with them because they think a certain way, and I certainly don’t follow trends.

“I want to make decisions myself over whether or not I believe certain things, and it all came back to the ideologies to me.

“It just came back to this organisation wants a complete eradication of Israel. This organisation wants to just exist,” said Waka.

When questioned on whether he spoke to any Palestinian people in their own space, Waka immediately said: “No, I never wanted to”.

“For me, personally, I didn’t trust that that was a place [Gaza] that I’d be safe.”

Similar to Hakiwai, the former broadcaster doesn’t believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“Yeah, look, some people can say it is, but a genocide is the absolute ethnic cleansing or eradication of a people. That’s not happening.

“That’s just not happening because Israel has the power to do that if they wanted to. Now, if they did that, if they threw in nukes and just cleaned up the whole of Gaza, evil. They’re not doing that.”

He instead blames the current state of Gaza on Hamas, not Israel.

Te Ao with Moana pointed out similarities between Waka’s talking points and those of the Israeli government.

“I’m just going on what my feeling is. Did I feel comfortable being there all the time? No. Did I feel comfortable that I could talk to whomever I wanted to? Yes. Do I agree with everything that happens on both sides? No.

“I don’t think anyone’s perfect in this. What I find the most fascinating is that one side is being globally attacked.”

First published by Te Ao Māori News and republished with permission.

• Watch Te Ao with Moana on Māori+, every Monday at 8 pm.

In 2023, Fiji’s Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) was scrapped, marking a significant moment for Fiji’s media landscape.

A year later, at the PINA Media Summit in Niue, Fijian journalists spoke openly about rebuilding — of a media industry that was learning to find its feet again, reclaim its confidence and, importantly, rediscover its freedom.

At that Niue meeting, we lobbied and won the bid to bring 2026 PINA Summit to Fiji.

• READ MORE: Other PINA Pacific media summit reports

This week, we are in Savusavu and with Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka choosing to attend and officially open the summit almost four years after his government threw out MIDA, it feels like a full circle has been completed.

The Prime Minister’s announcement that Fiji National University will partner with the Fijian Media Association to establish a media training centre in Suva was the icing on the cake.

It is a significant commitment to strengthening journalism skills, professional development and the future of Fiji’s media industry.

Allowed media space
Love him or hate him, Prime Minister Rabuka has maintained an open and accessible relationship with Fijian journalists. He has taken questions, faced tough interviews and allowed the media space to scrutinise his government and his decisions.

For an industry that has spent years navigating uncertainty, rebuilding trust and finding its voice, having the Prime Minister open the regional media summit in Fiji — and announce support for journalist training — was more than symbolic.

It was a reminder of how far we have come, and how much further we still have to go.

Republished from Fiji Times managing digital editor Anish Chand’s social media post with permission. He is a former Fiji TV news operations manager.

Pacific media leaders and journalists from across the region will tackle press freedom, newsroom survival, artificial intelligence, anti-corruption, climate change and the future of journalism when the Pacific Media Summit gets underway in Savusavu today.

Fijian Media Association (FMA) general secretary Stanley Simpson told PACNEWS the summit comes at a critical time as media organisations across the region face growing pressure from misinformation, disinformation, new technology and declining traditional advertising revenues.

“Newsrooms are not just fighting for their independence, they are fighting for their survival,” Simpson said.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific meda reports

The 8th Pacific Media Summit, organised by the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and hosted by the Fijian Media Association, will bring together regional media practitioners, researchers and leaders to discuss press freedom, media sustainability, climate and disaster reporting, artificial intelligence, digital inclusion and inclusive media leadership.

Simpson said the discussions would focus on how newsrooms can respond to technological change without losing the basic principles of independent journalism.

“We have really consulted widely about all the challenges facing both the big and small countries of the region, the challenges faced by newsrooms, brought about by the new technology, but also how we maintain the basics, the independence of the media,” he told PACNEWS.

The summit theme, “Reaching the Remote: Media and Digital Innovation for a Connected Blue Pacific,” reflects the need to ensure media and digital developments reach communities beyond capital cities.

Closer to communities
Simpson said Savusavu in Fiji was deliberately chosen as the venue to put the discussions closer to communities experiencing some of the challenges being discussed.

“We have come to Savusavu to talk about this, a place that is facing these challenges, as opposed to holding these meetings in a capital city where we may be far removed from the challenges we are aiming to overcome,” he said.

He said the growth of digital platforms and AI was also putting pressure on the traditional business models that have sustained news organisations.

“Many of the traditional ways of the media staying alive through advertising is under threat now with the digital spaces and AI,” Simpson said.

The summit will also examine how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used by newsrooms to improve coverage while maintaining editorial independence and journalistic standards.

Simpson said high-profile regional speakers would contribute to discussions on the future of Pacific media, including researchers working on AI and its application in newsrooms.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is expected to deliver the keynote address on Wednesday, while Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica will also attend.

Other speakers include former Fiji President and Tui Macuata, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere, who will address climate change.

Established media figures
Established Simpson said many of the region’s established media figures including PINA president Kalafi Moala, Johnson Honimae, John Woods, Leilani Reklai, Katalina Tohi and Solomone Finau — continued to contribute to the fight for media freedom, independence and professional standards.

“Some of these names we’ve heard for many years, and still contributing, still fighting the cause of media freedom, media independence, and better standards to tell the stories of our people,” he said.

For the Fijian Media Association, Simpson said hosting the summit also carried significance after years of pressure on the country’s media sector.

“We’ve come through a long period of suppression and struggle and facing hostility. And this is perhaps a symbolic event where we can declare that we are back,” he said.

He urged regional delegates to use the summit for frank discussions on the direction of Pacific journalism.

“We really have to have honest discussions about what needs to be done and where the region needs to go,” Simpson said.

He said the summit’s focus on technology and connectivity should not come at the expense of the core principles of journalism.

“Using new technologies that we have, but essentially keeping to the basics of journalism — accuracy, fair and balanced,” he said.

Simpson said the discussions in Savusavu could help shape the direction of Pacific media for years to come.

“This is where we set the direction for the next, I would say, five to 10 years for Pacific media,” he said.

Pita Ligaiula is a journalist with Pacnews. Republished from Pacnews.

COMMENTARY: Andrey X Khrzhanovskiy answers some emerging criticisms.

• READ MORE: Gaza documentary ‘NAZA’ Sets US theatrical release through self-distribution model

I watched NAZA. (Unlike 99 percent of people expressing their very strong opinions).

So here are my takes, which will make a lot of you very angry.

1. “Is the film antisemitic blood libel against the IDF?”

No, it is literally a series of confessions by IDF war criminals themselves, so that claim is laughable.

2. “How can Yuval and Rachel betray their country?”

Our loyalty must be to justice and humanity, not to systems of power that privilege us. It is your duty to resist your country if your country is committing genocide.

3. “Is the film good?”

Yes. And the vast majority of you will learn something new about the mechanics of the Gaza genocide, even if you’ve been following it closely. And for the people who haven’t been following — who will watch it now because of the festival award — it may be absolutely eye opening.

Democracy Now! features Yuval’s speech.                   Video: Democracy Now!

4. “Is the film good for the justice movement?”

It’s very good for the Palestine justice movement that a film on the Gaza genocide is getting so much attention. It forces the mainstream to confront Israel’s crimes once again, which is especially important now when the attention is dying down because of the so-called “ceasefire”.

The activist scene is still very focused, but the mainstream attention is decreasing, and NAZA winning festivals around the world will do a great job returning the conversation to what matters.

5. “Why didn’t they release the evidence as articles instead of a film?”

They did, over the course of the past three years Yuval published some of the most valuable investigative journalism on the Gaza genocide in +972 Magazine. The fact that you all didn’t know about it is all the more evidence for why this film was needed to be made.

6. “Is the film beyond reproach?”

Every piece of art, journalism or activism must be subject to criticism. And from the activist standpoint there is only one metric that’s important — its material impact. Not the identity of the artists, not the form, and not even the content. Only the material impact.

7. “The film protects war criminals, instead of delivering them to international courts.”

Providing a anonymity to whistleblowers is an essential part of investigative journalism. I also have sources in the IDF and the settler movement that I keep anonymous. Getting 24 people charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) — and likely never prosecuted — is much less useful than getting their testimonies heard by the entire world.

8. “The film didn’t show anything new, all of this has been reported by Palestinian journalists.”

This is largely true, as stated by Yuval himself. Nonetheless, confessions of the perpetrators are adding to the body of evidence of the Gaza genocide, and confessions always hold more weight than accusations. For many, this may be THE tipping point, unfortunately.

9. “Why not just upload it to the internet instead of going to festivals?”

Social media videos, written articles, feature films and many other formats cannot replace one another. They work for different audiences and achieve different goals.

Festivals bring the film to an audience that wouldn’t watch it on the internet, and provides credibility to a very damning account of the genocide.

10. “Yuval Abraham is too Zionist/too anti-Zionist.”

Yuval’s politics is beside the point. You can disagree with someone and still find their work valuable.

A comprehensive pressure campaign at all levels is very important for the Palestine cause.

Andrey X Khrzhanovskiy is an independent journalist and human rights advocate working in the West Bank. Follow his on-the-ground reports about settler and IOF violence.

INVESTIGATION: By Stephanie Tran and Michael West

The Zionist Federation of Australia’s chief executive Alon Cassuto has dropped his case against Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis, a high profile critic of Israel. The ZFA is the Australian arm of the World Zionist Organisation.

The World Zionist Organisation has a settlement division which is responsible for expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — in contravention of international law.

It also has extensive ties to United Israel Appeal (UIA) and Jewish National Fund (JNF), organisations which

raise funds for the IDF and illegal settlements.

• READ MORE:  Journalist Mary Kostakidis stared down the Zionist lobby – and courage won
• Other Mary Kostakidis reports

The Zionist Federation of Australia, whose chief executive Alon Cassuto brought a racial discrimination case against former SBS journalist and news anchor Mary Kostakidis, is financially dependent on the World Zionist Organisation and Keren Hayesod for the majority of its revenue, according to the federation’s latest financial report.

Cassuto is paid by the ZFA which is in turn funded by the WZO.

The ZFA’s 2025 financial report, states that the organisation is “dependent on the funding from the World Zionist Organisation and Keren Hayesod for the majority of its revenue used to operate the business”.

The ‘charity’ war chest
The report says the directors “have no reason to believe that the World Zionist Organisation and Keren Hayesod will not continue to support Zionist Federation of Australia Limited”.

The financial statements show that the ZFA received $3.44 million in total revenue in 2025, compared with $3.61 million the previous year. Of that 2025 total, $1.61 million was recorded as revenue and a further $1.746 million as subsidies.

It is cashed up, with a war chest approaching $5 million.

The report does not disclose the source of the subsidies nor does it identify the precise amount ZFA received from either Keren Hayesod or the World Zionist Organisation during 2025.

The ZFA has declined to respond to questions as to whether it also received “security funding” from ECAJ public grants.

The ZFA did not respond to questions about the precise amounts it received from the World Zionist Organisation and Keren Hayesod, or whether any of that funding was connected to the organisation’s legal action against Kostakidis.

STATEMENT RE MARY KOSTAKIDIS AND THE ZIONIST FEDERATION

After 2 years of utterly pointless legal proceedings against Mary Kostakidis, Alon Cassuto of the Zionist Federation pulled up stumps and ended the case on Friday.

There were no deeds, undertakings or apologies. There…

— XD LAW (@XDlawyers) September 12, 2026

Peak Zionist body
The ZFA describes itself as the peak body for Zionist organisations in Australia and represents more than 200 affiliated organisations.

The federation also maintains an office in Israel. In 2025, the ZFA spent $190,189 on its Israel office.

The ZFA’s directors in 2025 included president Jeremy Leibler, treasurer Benjamin Simon, secretary Lauren Blecher, vice-presidents Paul Gould, Jeffery Lin, Ehud Hauben and Elyse Schachna, and immediate past president Danny Lamm.

The federation’s principal activity, according to its directors, was to “uphold and foster the aim of Zionism”.

The ZFA is the Australian branch of the World Zionist Organisation, which describes national Zionist federations as umbrella organisations for Zionist bodies in each country.

The WZO has a direct role in Israeli settlement activity.

According to reports by Israeli advocacy organisation Peace Now, the Israeli government “finances and operates the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organisation”.

Established in 1971, the Settlement Division of the WZO has enabled Israel to “establish and develop settlements far from the public eye, using controversial means, with full funding from the state and without any oversight or control”.

Exhausted but victorious. Mary Kostakidis’ 2 year battle defending her right to free speech and political expression ended today with the case withdrawn at the federal court. From all of us at XD Mary, well done, get some rest…….hear from you soon! pic.twitter.com/HcLDahAZ59

— XD LAW (@XDlawyers) September 11, 2026

Ties to UIA and JNF
The ZFA’s constitution also commits the organisation to supporting the fundraising activities of the “National Funds”, defined as Keren Hayesod — United Israel Appeal and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael — Jewish National Fund.

The constitution states that one of the federation’s objects is “to support the fundraising activities of the National Funds”.

It also requires state Zionist councils to work with Keren Hayesod’s state directorates to ensure the “maximum success” of United Israel campaigns.

The constitution further states that, state Zionist councils must “stipulate that all its member Zionist Organisations commit their members to fulfilling their obligations towards the National Funds and stipulate that all members of its executive shall have an obligation to take part in the work of the National Funds”

Investigations by MWM have found that United Israel Appeal and the Jewish National Fund are among a number of Australian charities that are raising tax-deductible funds for programmes supporting the IDF and illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The federation has also publicly rejected international legal findings that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

It described a UN Commission of Inquiry report alleging Israel committed genocide in Gaza as “a baseless and biased assault on truth and justice”, and rejected the ICJ’s advisory opinion as “politically driven” and “deeply flawed”.

Stephanie Tran  is a journalist with a background in both law and journalism. She has worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where she assisted Crikey’s defence team in the high-profile defamation case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. Her reporting has been recognised nationally, earning her the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.

Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.

This article is republished from Michael West Media with permission.

Israel is holding 37 Palestinian journalists in its prisons, including 19 under administrative detention without charge or trial, says the Palestinian Prisoner Society.

The nongovernmental advocacy group said all 37 journalists were detained following the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023.

It said Israel continues to target Palestinian journalists through arrests, prison sentences, solitary confinement and prosecution over their work and freedom of expression.

• READ MORE: West Bank: RSF condemns Israeli army over escalating violence against Palestinian journalists
• Other Palestinian journalist reports

Among the latest detainees are journalists Muath Ammarna and Sabri Jibrin, who were arrested last Thursday after Israeli forces raided their homes in Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.

The group said Ammarna had been repeatedly targeted by Israeli authorities and was now being detained for the third time over his journalistic work.

It also cited the case of journalist and writer Mahmoud Fatafta, who was sentenced to 48 months in prison over what Israel described as “incitement,” one of the harshest sentences issued in such cases, according to the statement.

The society said Israeli authorities increasingly use “incitement” charges against journalists, alongside administrative detention based on what authorities describe as “secret files”.

Administrative detention
Nineteen journalists from the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are currently held under administrative detention, accounting for 51 percent of all detained journalists, it added.

The group also highlighted the case of journalist Bushra al-Tawil, 33, who was transferred from Damon Prison in northern Israel to solitary confinement at Ramla Prison in central Israel.

It accused Israeli authorities of intensifying isolation and other restrictive measures against female Palestinian prisoners, alongside food deprivation, denial of medical treatment and poor sanitation conditions.

The society said detained journalists faced the same conditions as other Palestinian prisoners, including hunger, medical neglect, torture, abuse, solitary confinement and denial of basic rights.

Journalists are also targeted through killings, enforced disappearances and direct attacks while carrying out their work, it added, describing this as part of a systematic policy aimed at restricting Palestinian reporting and documentation of Israeli crimes and violations.

The occupied West Bank has seen daily Israeli army raids and escalating attacks by occupiers since the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023.

The attacks have included killings, arrests, demolitions, attacks on homes, vehicles and mosques, destruction of agricultural land, restrictions on farmers, displacement of Palestinians and expansion of illegal settlements.

​​​​​​​On Thursday, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said Israeli forces detained more than 100 Palestinians across the West Bank over the previous week, bringing the number of West Bank detainees since October 2023 to more than 25,000, in addition to thousands detained from Gaza.

Republished from Anadolu Ajansi.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese stated in an interview with The Guardian last week that the 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion renders Israel’s presence in the occupied territories unlawful in its entirety.

She noted that  “because the 2024 ICJ advisory opinion declares the entire Israeli presence in the occupied territories as unlawful, third states’ obligations ‘not to render aid or assistance’ extends to everything that sustains that unlawful presence as a whole.”

Albanese also called on the UK government to join South Africa before the ICJ, and also support Nicaragua when the ICJ last week heard preliminary oral objections from Germany over claims filed by the Central American country that Berlin’s continued arms sales to Israel made it complicit in genocide.

• READ MORE: UN expert Francesca Albanese calls for ‘true paradigm shift’ as Miliband resets policy on Israel

She said: “Britain is not a party to that case. It can still choose which side of the argument it stands on: whether it treats participation in international accountability mechanisms as a threat to an alliance, or recognises that an alliance built on anything other than principle and the rule of law is not an alliance at all.

“It is an arrangement of convenience, honoured only until convenience changes.”

Finally she urged the UK to issue guidance to UK-based firms not to overcomply with sanctions imposed by the US on the international criminal court prosecutor, the deputy prosecutors, eight judges and an increasing number of others, including herself and Palestinian human rights groups that have cooperated with the court.

“This has frozen bank accounts, everywhere, for people doing nothing other than their judicial function or providing evidence lawfully requested by an international court,” she said.

• Malcolm Evans website

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

The section 18C case Zionist Federation of Australia’s CEO Alon Cassuto brought against high profile Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis in the Federal Court has been discontinued with no order over costs.

There is no finding that Kostakidis breached Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act. No apology has been ordered. No corrective notice will be published.

There was no judgment. What Mary Kostakidis got instead was a short consent order noting that the man who sued her had decided not to go on.

• READ MORE: Australian Zionists drop case against ‘truth’ journalist Mary Kostakidis
• Other Mary Kostakidis reports

The ZFA calls the matter “resolved”. Cassuto filed the case. Kostakidis spent two years preparing to fight it. Then Cassuto dropped it. The person who walked out of the courtroom was the one who chose to walk into it.

The complaint concerned two posts in which Kostakidis shared and commented on a speech by the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Cassuto said the material was “racially offensive”.

Mary denied endorsing anything and argued that a journalist has to be able to report what the people fighting a war are saying.

She is a former prime time weeknight SBS World News Australia presenter and was the face of SBS over two decades. Her journalism spans geopolitical issues, democracy and press freedom.

Kostakidis told Michael West Media, “This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression.”

Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly damaging trial.

Lawfare
Cassuto says he got what he wanted because Mary Kostakidis had already issued a qualified apology. He leaves out the timing. She made that apology before he went to the Federal Court.

He called it insincere and sued anyway. Two years on, he points to the same apology as his reason for stopping. That is a man looking for the exit.

Call it what it was. This was “lawfare”. The court process was the weapon, and the target was wider than one journalist.

Every editor and journalist with something to say about Israel was meant to be watching.

From the outside, each move looks separate. A complaint here. A referral there. A story in a friendly newspaper, then a writ. Put them side by side, and you see a structure built to make criticism of Israel expensive enough that most people decide it is not worth the trouble.

The letters are polite. The threat underneath is not. Legal bills keep arriving, and behind them the possibility of losing everything.

A case like this does not need to succeed to do its job. Once defending your own words puts your house at risk, the process is the punishment.

Defence won
Kostakidis’s defence put it plainly: the case was designed to discredit her and to frighten others into shutting up. “I have spent two years doing nothing but preparing my defence in a case aimed at silencing me,” she wrote.

For an ordinary Australian, she said, that could have meant losing their home.

Each new demand ate into her time and her savings. She could have gone quiet. Instead, she kept publishing and

kept her eyes on Gaza while most of the Australian media looked away.

Ordinary people chipped in to fund her defence. Her lawyers and her husband stayed beside her. But the name on the writ was hers, and so was the house. She did not fold.

The ZFA’s parting statement threw in fresh accusations and described her commentary as repugnant. None of it was ever tested. It reads less like the words of a winner than a door slammed on the way out.

The brutality and effectiveness of the Zionist cancelation of people’s livelihoods and opportunities for criticising the conduct of the State they worship. Their own conduct is responsible for their reputation. The response to the reputation: ‘Antisemitic tope!!!’ “Blood… https://t.co/u68vBi4Y9G

— Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis) September 11, 2026

The moral high ground is Mary Kostakidis’s
There is a deeper problem for the lobby, and no writ will fix it. It is impossible to stand on a hill of infant bones and claim the moral high ground. The army of pedants and lawyers trying to trauma-clean the crime scene is doomed to fail. Resentment rises with every scrub.

Will the Zionist lobby ever learn?

Legal attack dogs bark loudly, and often that is all it takes. Then someone stands still and says, fine, put your evidence in front of a judge. The barking stops.

“The purpose of journalism is to get to the truth, fearlessly, and to hold power to account,” Mary Kostakidis wrote, calling the outcome “a win for press freedom, which has prevailed”.

She also thanked Jewish and Israeli people who have opposed the destruction of Gaza, saying:

Our common humanity trumps any form of tribalism.

The determination to erase Palestinian voices.
‘We Never Paid Him a Dime’: Palestine Chronicle Editor, Lawyer Respond to Lawsuit over Slain Gaza Journalist – Palestine Chronicle https://t.co/DQs3sUGaYN

— Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis) September 12, 2026

Standing with Jewish Australians
Mary Kostakidis did not beat Jewish Australians. She beat an organised lobby whose power rests on making criticism of Israel personally costly. A great many Jewish Australians stand with Palestinians and refuse to have their identity yoked to the conduct of a foreign government.

Small wins matter because of what they do to the next person. A journalist sees that someone survived and files the story. An activist feels less alone. Fear moves through a community quickly. So does nerve.

None of this makes Mary Kostakidis infallible. Heroism has never required that. It requires knowing the cost and standing there anyway.

Lawfare is a muzzle made of good manners. Mary Kostakidis has torn a hole in it.

Martin Luther King Jr once famously quoted 19th-century abolitionist minister Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice.”

It does not bend on its own. It bends because people like Mary Kostakidis lean their whole weight on it.

Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and a Palestine peace activist. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished by Asia Pacific Report and Pacific Media Watch with permission.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/09/12/australian-zionists-drop-case-against-truth-journalist-kostakidis/ Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:33:57 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=133434 The Zionist Federation of Australia has withdrawn its case of “racial hatred” against Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis, who called it a victory for free speech, reports Consortium News.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Lauria

After a two-year legal battle to punish a prominent Australian journalist for her public criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) has withdrawn its case.

“This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression,” Kostakidis said on X. “Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly damaging trial.

“The purpose of journalism is to get to the truth — fearlessly — and to hold power to account. This is a win for press freedom, which has prevailed.“

Kostakidis, who anchored the SBS national news for nearly 20 years, was a high-profile target for the Zionist Federation in its quest to silence outrage over Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Alon Cassuto, the ZFA chief executive who brought the case against Kostakidis, claimed on X that he withdrew it on Thursday to deprive her of a platform. He wrote:

“I do not intend to spend another year taking Ms Kostakidis’ repugnant commentary from the dark corners of the internet and giving it a Federal Court platform in her pursuit of martyrdom. My job here is done.”

The majority of his statement was a continued attack on the journalist. He claimed that the action he brought against Kostakidis was satisfied by an apology she had issued. But that was two years ago and he pursued his case against her nonetheless.

What he did not mention is a recent series of court decisions in Australia by judges who upheld the right to criticise Zionism, which appears to have weakened his chances of winning.

Kostakidis had also won approval for full discovery of ZFA communications.

In claiming victory, Kostakidis wrote:

“Watching a people live stream their own genocide while the international community responsible for creating this mess offers the victims sympathy and the perpetrators bombs, diplomatic cover and impunity, has been disgusting.

“Thank you to the Jewish and Israeli people all over the world raging against this in recognition our common humanity trumps any form of tribalism.

“Australia must stop disregarding the Orders of the International Court of Justice which were clear: we are obliged under international law to take meaningful action to prevent genocide in Palestine and to do all in our power to bring about an end to apartheid.

“Hypocrisy, double standards and a lack of courage are aiding the destruction of a framework intended to protect against the worst excesses of state power.”

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN 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.

Breaking: Zionists legal proceedings against me have been withdrawn after a 2 year battle.

This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression. Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly…

— Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis) September 10, 2026

In citizen responses to this article published by Consortium News:

Anthony Kevin (September 11, 2026):

Whatever Cassuto’s rationalisations for their withdrawal, the Australian Zionist cause is bound to suffer big reputational damage over this. I am sure Joe Lauria is right that they ended the case because after the recent decision by NSW Supreme Judge Fagan, they were going to find it a hard case to sustain.

Especially as Zionist Israel keeps on humiliating and exploiting Australian governments and elites.

Mary was looking more and more like Joan of Arc. And the Zionists more and more like Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition.

Graeme D (September 11, 2026):
Mary stood where no Australian legacy MSM dared stand. Sycophants one and all, so ready to bend.

She showed courage and a dedication to telling the truth about a genocide when Australian legacy outlets banned journalists from using that word, even after the ICC unequivocally declared that a “plausible genocide” was being perpetrated.

Mary stood where most MPs feared to stand.

As Hunter S. Thompson — another fearless journalist — wrote, “anyone who goes to caught takes a wolf by the ears.”

Mary did this, and is one of the few to “win” at probably a heavy personal cost.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/09/10/australia-snubs-torres-strait-in-melanesian-spearhead-group-bid/ Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:56:01 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=133368 By Stefan Armbruster and Jennifer Enosa for the Torres News

Australia is seeking observer status at the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) but has not committed to giving a role to Torres Strait Islanders, its own Melanesian population.

Responding to questions from the Torres News at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIFLM) in Palau last week, Minister for Pacific Island Affairs Pat Conroy confirmed the federal government was applying.

“We’re obviously keen to make that happen, because we see value in having the people of Australia as an observer through the Australian government at the Melanesian Spearhead Group,” Conroy told a press conference in Palau.

• READ MORE: Pacific Islands Forum: Is Australia out of touch with the Pacific and climate?
• West Papua: The Pacific’s new test of Indonesia’s sovereignty narrative
  
• The Pacific’s cocaine highway: will Australia’s $600m deal really help?
• Other Pacific Islands Forum reports

The MSG was founded in 1986 with the primary purpose of supporting decolonisation and self-determination for Melanesian people.

Its current membership includes the governments of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), representing the Kanak independence movement of the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.

The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), which is seeking independence from Indonesia, holds observer status but has previously sought full membership.

On the sidelines of the PIF leaders meeting, newly appointed MSG Director-General Dr Anna Naupa told the Torres News the Pacific sub-regional group was preparing for a mid-term review of its 25-year 2038 Prosperity for All strategy.

Engaging with ‘Melanesian brothers and sisters’
“All our Indigenous people, wherever we are within our vast Melanesian communities, should certainly be part of conversations about anything to do with our Melanesia and this is something that we hope to pursue when we come to review the plan,” Dr Naupa said.

Asked if the Torres Strait could apply for observer status, she responded that it could be considered.

“The MSG in its structure is around states and the FLNKS, the movement, and recognition of different types of observers and associate members, but that does not preclude us from engaging with our Melanesian brothers and sisters more broadly,” she said.

Since the 1936 Maritime Strike, Torres Strait Islanders have sought various forms of self-governance and autonomy, including calls in the 1980s to cede from Australia due to “neglect” of their people and region.

Australia has engaged with the MSG in recent years but not with or through its Torres Strait Islander citizens.

“I can’t comment about the past but what I can say is that because of our attention to our Indigenous Melanesian peoples, that is the preference,” she said.

In 2025, Conroy was a guest at the 23rd MSG Leaders’ Summit held in Fiji, the first time an Australian minister has attended their meeting.

Non-commital on ‘greater voice’
He would not say if he supported Torres Strait Islanders having a greater voice in the Pacific or a seat at the MSG table.

“Obviously, there’s a process that is going through where the Melanesian Spearhead Group considers whether Australia would be an observer at the MSG,” he said.

MSG has flagged that it will also review Indonesia’s associate membership in 2027 if it does not enable a visit by the UN Human Rights Commissioner to investigate abuses in its Papuan provinces.

Australia has in recent years faced criticism from UN human rights bodies for some states blocking visits to prisons to investigate conditions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees.

Stefan Armbruster is also the news development lead of Pasifika TV. Jennifer Enosa is a reporter for Radio 4WM and TIMA (Torres Strait Media Association). This article is republished from Torres News with permission.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/09/10/maori-delegations-israel-trip-under-scrutiny-over-funding-and-itinerary/ Thu, 10 Sep 2026 02:19:14 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=133351 Te Ao Māori News

A delegation of Māori leaders visiting Israel under the banner of “business and innovation” faces public criticism over its timing and purpose, while questions remain about how the trip was organised and the full extent of its funding, itinerary and engagement with Palestinian organisations.

The visit comes as New Zealand criticises the Israeli government’s actions in the occupied West Bank but stops short of joining international moves to ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements.

Northland Regional Council chair Pita Tipene is among those who have visited Israel in recent days. The trip is taking place against the backdrop of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, escalating Israeli settlement activity and settler violence in the West Bank.

• READ MORE:  Labour would prioritise recognition of Palestine, sanctions on Israel
• Peters’ ‘hot air’ over Israeli settlement trade ban rules out of step with world
• Palestine Forum condemns NZ for talk, no ‘meaningful action’ over illegal Israeli settlements
• Indigenizing Zionism: Narrative claims deployed by the Indigenous Coalition for Israel to evade settler-colonial characterization — Arama Rata
• Other Gaza reports

In September 2025, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has rejected that finding.

Former delegate says Israeli ministry funded the visit
Te Ao Māori News understands prospective delegation members were told the visit would focus on “business and innovation”.

Riki Manarangi, who travelled to Israel as part of a Māori delegation in November 2025, said he heard “through the grapevine” that another delegation was planned for 2026 and volunteered to recommend potential participants.

“I wasn’t formally approached or asked to organise anything,” he said.

“I reached out to a few people I thought would be a good fit and asked if they’d be keen to be considered. Some went, and some declined.”

Manarangi said he approached several people he believed would suit the delegation’s business and innovation focus but was not responsible for deciding who would participate.

He said Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs organised and funded the visit.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs over there are the ones who organise and fund it,” he said. “They cover basics … transport, accommodation, and kai.”

Asked who helped coordinate the current visit, Manarangi described Yifat Goddard as “like the programme lead” and said she was unpaid.

Goddard, an Israeli-New Zealander, also proposed the November 2025 Māori delegation that Manarangi joined, according to an account published by the “Indigenous Embassy” Jerusalem. Te Ao Māori News has asked Goddard for comment and has not yet received a response.

The Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem said it had no involvement in the current delegation and had not been approached to help organise, recruit for, fund or facilitate it. It said it learned of the visit second-hand and through social media.

MFAT notified after delegation was underway
New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it had no involvement in the visit.

“The Israeli government advised MFAT it was hosting the group once the visit was underway,” a spokesperson said.

MFAT did not say which arm of the Israeli government contacted it, what “hosting” involved or whether it was given information about the delegation’s funding.

Te Ao Māori News has requested further information under the Official Information Act, including correspondence about the visit and details of when and how MFAT was notified.

The Israeli Embassy’s initial response did not confirm who initiated or funded the delegation, what costs the Israeli government covered or how participants were selected.

It also did not identify which Israeli government officials or organisations the group was meeting or say whether the itinerary included engagement with Palestinians or Palestinian organisations.

Instead, the Embassy said it was pleased delegates had been able to visit Israel and “see the country for themselves, rather than relying solely on the picture presented through the media”.

It said delegations travelled throughout Israel, met Jewish, Arab, Druze and Bedouin Israelis, and were free to hear a range of views.

“Israel is a democratic country. Visitors are free to ask the questions they wish, to say whatever they want, and to make up their own minds,” it said.

Te Ao Māori News has since asked the Embassy to confirm Manarangi’s account, including Goddard’s role, whether international flights were covered and which Israeli government body administered the funding. It has not yet responded to that follow-up.

The New Zealand Israel Innovation Hub declined to confirm whether it was involved in the current visit.

It described the delegation as a “tremendous success”, saying that the assessment was based on social media posts and second-hand feedback. The hub said the visit had inspired plans for three Māori Innovation and Technology Delegations in 2027.

The first would focus on Northland Māori communities and educational outcomes. The hub also invited a representative from Whakaata Māori to consider joining one of its future delegations.

Pita Tipene says he will respond after returning to Aotearoa
Tipene declined an interview while overseas, saying he had received requests from several media organisations.

“I’ve responded by saying that I’ll speak my truth when I set foot home,” he told Te Ao Māori News.

Tipene has, however, responded publicly to criticism of his presence in Israel.

“It’s horrible and gut-wrenching, and it must stop!” he wrote.

“I am not pro-Israel — I am pro-peace and humanity, as the killing and destruction is happening across national boundaries here in Gaza and in other nations.

“I’m not here to judge, but I’m not immune to the gravity of what’s happening here either.”

Northland Regional Council said it had no involvement in the visit.

Chief executive Jonathan Gibbard said Tipene was travelling in a personal, non-council capacity and the council had not funded, organised or endorsed the trip.

Gibbard said the travel was not related to council business.

Other current delegates approached by Te Ao Māori News have not responded to requests for comment.

An invitation some Māori leaders declined
Some invited Māori leaders declined to participate. Te Ao Māori News understands concerns were raised during planning about the trip’s funding, its political context and whether delegates would have opportunities to hear directly from Palestinian communities.

Manarangi said prospective delegates who raised concerns were offered meetings with representatives of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and encouraged to participate. He said nobody was excluded because of concerns about Israel or Palestine, and those who did not travel had chosen to withdraw.

“There are plenty of people over there who are openly critical of the Israeli government, no different to here in Aotearoa; that’s just what living in a democracy looks like,” Manarangi said.

Te Ao Māori News continues to seek responses from others involved in facilitating the visit.

NZ condemns settlement expansion but does not join import-ban push

Questions about the delegation come as the United Kingdom, France and Canada move to ban imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The three countries were among 12 that issued a joint statement warning that unprecedented settlement expansion and settler violence were rapidly undermining the possibility of a Palestinian state.

Israel responded with retaliatory measures against the UK, including ordering the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem, which serves Palestinians.

New Zealand did not sign the statement and said it was not in a position to introduce an import ban before the election.

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters issued a “standalone” statement on Wednesday saying New Zealand was “deeply concerned by the deteriorating situation in the West Bank”.

“There has been a marked escalation in Israel’s actions, jeopardising the prospect of a durable peace,” Peters said.

“Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are a violation of international law. Expanding settlements undermines prospects for a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict.”

“New Zealand strongly opposes actions that advance annexation or threaten the forcible displacement of Palestinians,” he said.

“Such measures are incompatible with international law and risk perpetuating the cycle of violence and insecurity.”

A spokesperson for Peters said New Zealand had not traditionally used trade measures to address foreign-policy issues. Introducing an import ban would require a full policy process that could not be completed before the election.

New Zealand had previously imposed travel bans on 38 people over extremist settlement activity, including two Israeli ministers, with the latest three bans announced in June.

New Zealand had earlier joined an international statement specifically opposing the Israeli Government’s E1 settlement plan, warning it would divide the West Bank and further undermine the possibility of a two-state solution.

Israel faces international legal scrutiny over Gaza conduct
Israel’s conduct in Gaza is also under scrutiny before two international courts.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

The ICC found reasonable grounds to believe they bore criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.

The warrants are not findings of guilt, and neither man has been tried or convicted by the ICC. Israel has rejected the court’s jurisdiction and denies the allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant.

Separately, South Africa’s genocide case against Israel remains before the International Court of Justice. The court has not issued a final judgment determining whether Israel committed genocide.

The full funding arrangements, selection process and itinerary for the current delegation remain unconfirmed. It is also unclear how the proposed 2027 delegations would be funded, structured or opened to participants.

Republished from Te Ao Māori News by Pacific Media Watch.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/09/10/rabuka-calls-on-fijians-to-use-freedom-of-expression-responsibly/ Wed, 09 Sep 2026 21:29:13 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=133329 By Rashika Kumar in Suva

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is calling on Fijians to use their freedom of expression responsibly, stressing that people can disagree strongly and hold each other to account without bullying, humiliating, or deliberately hurting one another.

In a statement, Rabuka said Fijians no longer needed to fear speaking their minds.

He said people were free to express their views, debate the issues that mattered to them, and say what they believed without looking over their shoulder, adding that this was democracy.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji media freedom reports

Rabuka said when his coalition government repealed the Media Industry Development Act (MIDA) in 2023, fulfilling a commitment they had made to the people of Fiji, this was the kind of country they wanted to restore, where people could speak freely and journalists could report without the threat of MIDA hanging over them.

He said there was a time when many people did not feel that freedom.

The Prime Minister said he had lived through different chapters of our country’s history, and he had also had to reflect on his own part in that history.

As a former Fiji military lieutenant-colonel, he led Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 and he co-authored the book Rabuka: No Other Way with Eddie Dean and Stan Ritova.

Rabuka said with the passing of the years, he had come to understand more deeply that democracy was not simply about winning an election but it was also about accepting criticism when in power and protecting the right of people to disagree.

He added that when his coalition came into government, they could have kept MIDA — and politically, perhaps that might have made life easier for them — but it would not have been right for Fiji or the legacy they wanted to leave behind.

Republished from Fijivillage News with permission.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/09/09/rsf-slams-outrageous-failure-to-bring-justice-9-years-after-killing-of-maltese-journalist-daphne-caruana-galizia/ Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:51:35 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=133282 Pacific Media Watch

Angered by the lack of full justice nearly a decade after the assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has demanded the government take measures to protect journalists and media freedom.

On 2 September 2026, the Criminal Court in Valletta found Yorgen Fenech, the Maltese businessman linked to both the mafia and politicians, not guilty of “complicity” and “criminal association” in the killing of Galizia.

Almost nine years after the crime — Galizia was killed by a bomb planted in her car — after two months of trial and eight hours of deliberation, the jury at Valletta’s Criminal Court Fenech not guilty of the two charges he was facing: complicity and criminal association in the assassination of the investigative journalist.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Watch reports

Eight out of nine jurors voted not guilty on both accounts; at least six votes were needed to convict him. The trial, which RSF attended, started on July 1.

“We are beyond outraged. The verdict means that almost nine years since the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese authorities have failed to identify and convict the mastermind,” said Pavol Szalai, director, of the RSF Prague Bureau, in a statement.

“We stand in solidarity with the journalist’s family, which first suffered from Daphne’s loss and then painfully fought for justice only to learn that the man charged with ordering the assassination has been judged not guilty.

“Full justice must be served and Maltese authorities must implement the long overdue measures protecting journalists and media freedom — the absence of these measures contributed to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, as concluded by the public inquiry into the crime five years ago.”

Investigation into corruption
The journalist was murdered on 16 October 2017 when her car exploded near her home in the town of Bidnija.

According to court testimony by her son, journalist Matthew Caruana Galizia, Daphne Caruana Galizia’s last days were dedicated to their joint investigation into alleged corruption in the Electrogas project, the construction of a power plant fuelled by natural gas.

Prosecutors accused Yorgen Fenech, one of Electrogas’ key shareholders and a businessman linked to both mafia and politicians, of ordering Daphne Caruana Galizia’s killing based on evidence and testimony by Melvin Theuma, who confessed to being a middleman in the murder.

Five men were convicted after Theuma received a pardon in 2019 in exchange for information about the killing.

In 2022, Malta’s Criminal Court found brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio guilty of installing and detonating the bomb in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s vehicle. The third perpetrator, Vincent Muscat, negotiated a reduced sentence in 2021 in exchange for his testimony, which contributed to the 2025 conviction of Robert Agius and Jamie Vella for supplying the explosives.

The public inquiry into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, which featured RSF’s testimony, said in its 2021 report that the state must “shoulder responsibility” for the crime.

The Maltese authorities have, however, systematically failed to enact most of the report’s recommendations.

Malta ranks 67th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, the fifth worst among the 27 European Union member states.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/09/07/student-newspaper-wins-lawsuit-against-trumps-crackdown-on-pro-palestine-speech/ Sun, 06 Sep 2026 23:30:39 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=133164 Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: A federal judge has ruled the Trump administration has violated the constitutional rights of international students in seeking to deport them for their pro-Palestinian activism and criticism of Israel.

In her ruling, US District Judge Noël Wise wrote, “In the United States, free speech, including the freedom to criticise the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength. That strength is diminished when members of our society — citizens and noncitizens alike — must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation.”

The lawsuit was filed by The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which claimed some of its writers on student visas declined to cover pro-Palestinian protests or report on topics related to Israel, fearing deportation.

Student journalists also requested their published articles on such topics be removed from the paper’s website.

The case raises broader questions about the climate of fear and political repression facing international students during the Trump administration. One of the most striking examples is Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University.

Last year, masked plainclothes immigration agents snatched Öztürk off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. A year earlier, she had co-written an opinion piece for the Tufts student newspaper, The Tufts Daily, critical of the university’s response to campus protests over Gaza and the school’s failure to uphold student Senate resolutions on Palestine.

Tufts University later stated the op-ed did not violate university policy, that no complaints had been filed about it, and that Rümeysa Öztürk had been in good academic and immigration standing.

Nonetheless, her student visa was canceled, and she spent more than six weeks in an ICE jail in Louisiana. An immigration court eventually ruled in Rümeysa’s favor, saying the government failed to meet its burden of proof to deport her.

However, the message from the Trump administration to international students across the nation remained clear: Their ordinarily protected free political expression could now potentially cost them their immigration status and their freedom.

Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests who successfully challenged the Trump administration in court. Here in New York City, George Porteous is with us, editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily. And in Moorestown, New Jersey, Will Creeley, legal director of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represented The Stanford Daily in court.

George and Will, we welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with you, George Porteous. You are a rising senior —

GEORGE PORTEOUS: Senior, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — at Stanford. You’re the editor-in-chief of the paper. Talk about why you brought this suit. What were the student reporters saying to you, the international students?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: Thank you for having me.

And what we were hearing from the noncitizens in our newsroom and from noncitizens across campus — current students, former students, alumni — was that they were genuinely frightened because of what they saw in the headlines, what they saw happen to Rümeysa Öztürk.

They were understandably frightened that if they reported the news, even if they weren’t writing an op-ed, even if they were just covering a protest or a vigil, if they put their name on a byline, they were frightened that they were going to lose their visa.

And so, what we said is, we can’t function as a newspaper if we don’t have these voices included in our newspaper. So, we filed suit, and last week the judge gave us a favorable ruling.

Stanford Daily student press wins free speech lawsuit.    Video: Democracy Now!

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, George, what was the initial response of the Stanford administration to your lawsuit? Did they — did they support your efforts?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: You know, the administration has remained relatively silent about this suit. We still haven’t heard any response from them since this decision. And we’re an independent organisation, so this was a suit filed by The Stanford Daily on our own, independently. And that’s really why we were in this case, not really because of the university.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what has this all taught you in terms of the ability of folks to stand up and defend the First Amendment?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: Well, I think what it’s shown me is that it really has to begin locally, because we were dealing with a problem inside of our newsroom with our peers, and this was about solidarity, and also just the practical need to continue doing our jobs and to continue reporting the news.

So, it’s shown me that it really does begin with everyday people. It begins with students, too. Students, I think, have enormous power to stand up to what this administration has done in terms of civil liberties and constitutional rights. And we have real power, is what this ruling has shown us.

AMY GOODMAN: And are other students who have previously said they’re not going to cover a protest — are they willing to now? Has this made a difference, changed the climate in your newsroom?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: You know, it’s still, I think, too early to see. But I’m hopeful that this ruling, because it’s a very strong legal precedent, will carve out more room for noncitizens to feel that they can participate in democracy on campus.

AMY GOODMAN: Will Creeley, you are legal director at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Talk about why you approached The Stanford Daily, why this is such a significant decision.

WILL CREELEY: Well, it’s an honour to be here, Amy and Juan.

And I’m so proud listening to George now expound upon the importance of folks like George and his predecessor, Greta, standing up for First Amendment rights. It’s extremely important. When you see Rümeysa Öztürk in prison orange from a detention center in Louisiana for co-authoring an op-ed, you know something has gone terribly wrong.

With this administration, again and again, the chill is the point. These actions that they’re taking, these wanton violations of the First Amendment, are designed to get folks like George and his colleagues at The Stanford Daily to feel scared, to think twice, to ask that their names not appear on news reporting or opinion pieces.

That’s flatly un-American.

So, it was extremely important to us to fight back. And we’re so grateful for the bravery of The Stanford Daily folks and our Jane Doe colleague — Jane Doe plaintiff, who was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and was no longer going to protest or flying a Palestinian flag or wearing shirts that expressed her political opinions.

She self-censored because of what the administration was doing. That’s a First Amendment violation every day of the week. It’s flatly un-American. And that’s why we’re very proud of last week’s victory.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Will, some members of the Trump administration responded. Stephen Miller posted on X, “A district court judge says America must admit and keep foreigners who hate America and hate Americans. Court-ordered civilisational suicide. It will not stand.”

Your response? And also the issue that you —

WILL CREELEY: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: If you could talk a little bit about the due process question you raised?

WILL CREELEY: Stephen Miller has got it exactly backwards. In the year 1800, Thomas Jefferson, in his inaugural address, made clear that in this country we protect the First Amendment rights of even those who call for the dissolution of this country, responding to the Alien and Sedition Acts.

We have a long history in this country of protecting that speech. That’s what makes this country special. We have to live those values. It’s Stephen Miller who’s un-American here, not folks who are expressing their political opinions.

The United States is supposed to be where folks from around the world, folks like Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Mahmoud Khalil, can come and learn about what it means to be able to speak out without fear of a midnight knock on the door or being whisked away by masked federal agents.

We’re going to continue fighting for those fundamental American rights, no matter who’s in office.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to be talking about people being whisked away by federal agents in a moment when we go to Danbury, Connecticut. I want to thank you both for being with us, and just ask you, as you go into your senior year, George: What are you majoring in?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: I’m a history major.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what have you learned?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: Well, history repeats itself. And I think what we’ve seen is this administration has a clear agenda. They’re trying to instill fear on campuses. And they’ve done lasting damage. I mean, this lawsuit is a victory, but a lot of damage has already been done.

So, I think what I’ve learned is that we have a responsibility, especially as students. We have an opportunity to continue standing up for our peers, because when the most vulnerable among us is afraid to speak, we should all be deeply concerned.

AMY GOODMAN: George Porteous, editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily. Will Creeley, legal director at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/09/07/social-media-misinformation-biggest-hurdle-for-journalists-says-mcpngs-belinda-kora/ Sun, 06 Sep 2026 19:30:11 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=133185 By Lomanai Kenny in Port Moresby

Misinformation on social media is the biggest challenge for journalists, says Belinda Kora, secretary of the Media Council of Papua New Guinea (MCPNG) and founder of Women in Media (WIM).

She gave her address at the closing ceremony of an Election Integrity Workshop for media last week.

The week-long programme was hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the European Union (EU) and MCPNG on August 31-September 4.

• READ MORE: Other PNG media reports

She cautioned that Facebook posts were often unreliable and urged reporters to verify content before publication.

“Always make sure that whatever you have, go back to your newsroom and share it with your colleagues before publishing,” Kora said.

To illustrate, she pointed to a viral post about a giant cabbage being sold for more that 100 kina (NZ$38) at Eliseo Shopping Centre. Many online users dismissed it as artificial intelligence (AI), but she confirmed its authenticity after checking.

“Get used to verifying and then put it in your [social media] account and say, ‘I verified this’. Doing this will help because there is a lot of misinformation,” she told journalists at the workshop.

Importance of networking
Kora also stressed the importance of networking, highlighting the women-in-media WhatsApp group that has more than 300 members nationwide.

“It’s a good place to share experiences, or if you need contacts for news stories across the country, you can always ask in the group and they will be happy to help,” she advised.

The Media Council of Papua New Guinea, established more than 20 years ago, does not interfere with editorial decisions but provides guidance, training, and support to journalists.

The workshop was designed to strengthen ethical and objective reporting ahead of the 2027 elections.

At its conclusion, 10 media representatives received certificates of participation, equipping them to share the knowledge with colleagues and uphold ethical standards in their reporting during the election period.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/09/04/nepali-times-not-if-but-when-next/ Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:31:10 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=133040 EDITORIAL: Nepali Times

No one could have predicted this disaster would happen when it did, but we all knew it would happen one day.

As this paper went to press last Thursday afternoon, the unimaginable scale of the Central Nepal flood catastrophe was becoming apparent. With every notice about a bank branch that lost all its staff, a police station without a single survivor, buses full of Janai Purnima pilgrims swept away, and phone calls to this office from Indian families asking to locate their loved ones — we have had to come to terms with the tragically high cost in human lives.

Not since the 2015 earthquake has Nepal seen a disaster of this magnitude. In terms of economic damage to infrastructure and property, it is the worst in this country’s history. Remote sensing has enabled us to pinpoint the location of the avalanche on the north face of Langtang in Nepal that blocked the Lhende Khola which flows into the Trisuli in Nepal and which burst last Wednesday morning just before 9 am.

• READ MORE: Rescue efforts continue as Nepal-China flood death toll surpasses 1270
• Temporary burial for flood victims in Nepal
• Nepal-Tibet floods: What happened, what caused them and who is missing?
• Other Nepal-China flood reports

The debris flow at Timure on the border was nearly 80m high, and as the flood raced downstream it swept everything in its path. It spared nothing.

No one could have predicted this disaster would happen when it did. But anyone could have said it was bound to happen one day. In this newspaper, we ourselves have frequently reminded policy makers about the need to prepare for floods unleashed by extreme weather, glacial lake outburst floods, and transboundary climate calamities.

We said that after the Barun Khola flood of 2017, after the Melamchi disaster of 2021, and after the Teesta flood in Sikkim that swept away a $1 billion dam, we wrote in this space about lessons for Nepal’s own hydroelectric plants on the Arun, Marsyangdi and Trisuli. And the Bhote Kosi flood on July 8 last year was another alarm bell.

Strategy for survival
Arguing that this is not a problem we created, that we need to be compensated for historical carbon emissions, is for speeches at UN climate summits. There is no money coming for Loss and Damage. We are in this on our own, we have to craft our own strategy for survival.

This was not a “natural” disaster. Nothing about it was natural — not the glacier melting due to greenhouse gas buildup due to fossil fuel burning, not the location of expensive hydropower plants on trans-Himalayan rivers, not designing highways to follow rivers, not the settlements that have grown around them, not the corruption and greed, not the poor governance.

Our ancestors knew not to live next to Himalayan rivers. Nepal’s townships used to be located along high ridgelines, and floodplains were only used to grow food or grind grain. Bridges were temporary, and designed to be rebuilt after monsoon floods washed them away.

Economic desperation, outmigration from rural areas and proximity to roads have pushed people to settle along river banks — despite full knowledge of the risks. Hazard mapping of settlements along river banks enforced by local governments could have saved many lives last week.

Early warning will be of no help if homes are located right next to rivers flowing down from the world’s youngest and most seismically-active mountain range, now feeling the full impact of the climate crisis.

We have repeated this ad nauseum after every disaster: let us not put all our eggs in one basket. Instead of taking huge loans to invest in cascades of expensive hydroelectric plants on trans-Himalayan rivers, Nepal should opt for smaller projects across the country and spread the risk.

In one fell swoop on Wednesday morning, Nepal lost 440MW from 12 hydroelectric plants — 10 percent of the country’s total generation capacity. Transmission lines and substations located along the river corridor were destroyed.

A culture of fatalism can explain the lack of interest in preparedness for disaster that we know will happen, and with greater frequency in future. But that is no excuse. Even if previous governments ignored this, Nepal’s new administration with its technocrats and PhDs must take measures to address seismic and climate co-hazards.

Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” This disaster also offers the chance for Prime Minister Balendra Shah and his government to demonstrate a proactive approach in search, rescue, rehabilitation and a preparedness strategy for the future.

We should not need a disaster to remind us to be prepared. By then it is too late for many people, as it tragically was this week. We failed to learn our lessons once again. This period of national mourning calls for Nepalis to be united, to show the same spirit of compassion and generosity that we saw in 2015.

Sonia Awale, editor of the Nepali Times. First published on 27 August 2026 and republished under Creative Commons.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/29/palestine-action-activists-face-terror-charges-over-trump-golf-resort-spray-painting/ Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:19:01 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132749 Pacific Media Watch

Palestine Action activists accused of vandalising a Scottish golf course owned by United States President Donald Trump have been accused of “terrorism” offences, reports Al Jazeera.

The potential use of “terror-scale” sentencing was reported by The Guardian and The New York Times on Friday.

The seven activists, who spray-painted messages in support of Gaza and dug up turf at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Ayrshire last year, have been charged with malicious damage “having a terrorist connection,” the newspapers reported.

• READ MORE: Palestine Action activists will not be sentenced as terrorists, judge rules
• Other Palestine Action reports

An initial hearing on the cases is due to open at the High Court in Glasgow on Monday.

The charges stem from a March 8, 2025, protest targeting the resort over Trump’s stance on Gaza. Activists from the British group sprayed red paint across the clubhouse, damaged turf and sprinklers, applied weedkiller to the greens, and painted “Gaza is not 4 sale” across the property.

All seven defendants were charged under ordinary criminal law for malicious property damage. However, the prosecution’s 16-page indictment asserts the acts were “aggravated by reason of having a terrorist connection”.

Palestine Action has been locked in a legal battle with the United Kingdom since the British government proscribed it as a “terrorist” group last year.

‘Protests to save lives’
Cofounder Huda Ammori said that the charges against those involved in the protest at Turnberry made it clear that prosecutors were trying to appease Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We used direct action protests to save lives — the opposite of terrorism — by disrupting the flow of arms being used to murder Palestinians,” she said in a statement.

“By hitting the profits of arms companies and by daring to spray paint on the golf course owned by the demagogue who has enabled Netanyahu’s crimes, we made powerful enemies. The British government chose to appease them by criminalising us as ‘terrorists’,” she added.

Earlier this week, the United States imposed sanctions on Palestine Action and the pro-Palestine international movement Masar Badil, as the administration of President Donald Trump intensifies a global crackdown on critics of Israel.

The US Department of the Treasury also imposed financial penalties on Wednesday against Autistici Inventati, an Italian group that provides digital services to left-wing organisations, including pro-Palestine groups.

John McDonnell, a Labour member of the British parliament and former shadow chancellor of the exchequer, criticised the potential “terror” link in the charges.

“The news that the protesters who allegedly sprayed red paint on Trump’s golf course could face terrorist sentencing, coupled with Trump himself now announcing that he is following Britain’s lead by proscribing Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ group, is profoundly embarrassing for Britain,” he said.

“Andy Burnham has inherited this mess from the previous government.

“This must be the wake-up call to drop this absurdly authoritarian ban, before Starmer’s blueprint is adopted by repressive governments around the world to criminalise protest and suppress political dissent.”

According to the rights group Defend our Juries, more than 3500 people — many over the age of 60 — have been arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action after it was proscribed by politicians in July 2025, placing it on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

The far-left clampdown Rubio announced in Washington last month is manifesting as an anti-Palestine solidarity witch hunt hiding behind the language of counter-terrorism.

— CAGE International (@CAGEintl) August 28, 2026

US ‘anti-Palestine witch hunt’, says rights group
Meanwhile, the human rights organisation Cage International has condemned the US move to designate Palestine Action as a “terror” group, saying Washington is using the “language of counter-terrorism” as a cover to go after people using “lawful direct action” to protest against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“Palestine Action has now been proscribed as a terrorist organisation on both sides of the Atlantic — first by Britain in 2025, now by Washington,” said Cage International in a statement.

“What unites them is the shared logic that disrupting the supply chain of arms for a genocide passes the ever expanding threshold for terrorism.”

The campaign leaves “no legitimate channel through which Palestinians or their allies are permitted to act”, added the statement.

Anas Mustapha, head of advocacy at Cage, said the US and UK sanctions were part of a “full-spectrum crackdown on Palestine solidarity globally”.

“The UK and US are upending centuries of hard won rights to protect a genocidal state they’re both complicit with,” said Mustapha.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/26/adam-johnson-coverage-of-my-media-book-being-banned-proves-the-thesis/ Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:30:37 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132630 Waverley Council in Sydney has removed a book strongly critical of Israel from its library shelves for review after a survivor of the Bondi Beach massacre condemned its prominent display as “deeply insensitive”. The book’s author has defended his publication, saying the episode is a good lesson in how the smearing of Palestine and its defenders operates in mainstream Anglosphere media.

ANALYSIS: By Adam Johnson

Last week, JWire reported that my book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, had been “removed” from the Waverley public library in Sydney, Australia.

In covering the ban, some Australian media allowed pro-Israel propagandists to casually libel me as antisemitic, a false charge that is completely divorced from the content of the book, which is nuanced and fair and takes on universal themes of human dignity and opposition to colonialism and racism.

My first instinct was to merely post on social media about the banning, noting how absurd and racist the book ban defenders’ logic was, and move on with my life.

• READ MORE: How to Sell a Genocide has been removed from a library near Bondi – but libraries represent freedom of thought
• Waverley Council removes controversial Gaza book after Bondi survivor speaks out
• Other Israeli censorship reports

After all, my book is not the story — nor, if it were, would this be a particular interesting one. On the list of free speech suppressions and libel in the past three years over Palestine, this wouldn’t crack the top 10,000.

But news of the ban was subsequently picked up by The Guardian Australia, The Independent in the UK and the largest newspaper in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald. And given how poor the coverage of the banning has been, namely by the latter two outlets, I thought this episode could be a good object lesson in how the smearing of Palestine and its defenders operates in mainstream Anglosphere media.

The fact that you can sling around libel without evidence in the largest newspapers in Australia gives us a window into how discussion of basic Palestinian rights is shut down using the most sectarian framing possible.

Let’s break down three tropes featured in the coverage of my book banning that I also detail in the book itself. Forgive me if this is meta — and a touch self-indulgent — but there’s a reason there are striking similarities, and it’s because the Israel lobby and its aggressive PR apparatus more or less use the same script for every act of smearing, censoring, and intimidation.

So they’re worth taking this opportunity to unpack.

1. Feigned credulity: Taking pro-Israel crybully organisations at their word, rounding up to the most sectarian framing possible, and flattening Jewish identity and Zionist ideological activity.

The Independent and Sydney Morning Herald largely embrace the pro-Israel lobby’s framing that the removal of my book was prompted entirely by, or at least largely by, a “complaint from a Bondi attack survivor”. The Independent’s Stuti Mishra would adopt this framing in its headline: “Australian library pulls book on Gaza from shelves after complaint from Bondi attack survivor,” the article announces.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Melanie Kembrey would also accept this framing at face value in her reporting, writing that, “the move follows a report by Jewish news service JWire last week that a survivor of the Bondi Beach massacre had posted on Facebook that she was distressed to see the book displayed on the new-release ‘What’s Hot’ shelf of Waverley Library.”

What’s important to emphasise here is: we have no way of knowing that this is what caused, or even sparked, the removal of the book. This is just an assertion made by those seeking to ban it.

JWire reported, citing an alleged Facebook comment by the survivor in question, that her complaint is what prompted the book’s removal. But The Guardian reports that they were “unable to locate the Facebook post” in question.

More importantly, both Sydney Morning Herald and The Independent seemingly contradict, or at least undermine, this simplistic narrative, by mentioning elsewhere in their articles that, as The Independent noted, the library council “has received multiple complaints about [the book]”.

So was the book banned because a Bondi attack survivor complained, or was it due to the “multiple complaints”? Or was it both? If it was both, do we know which came first: the Bondi survivor complaint or the “multiple” other complaints from, presumably, unrelated parties?

The timeline is important because it suggests a fairly bog standard pro-Israel propaganda technique of front-loading censorship — and other oppressive and illiberal actions — in the most sympathetic and humane language possible. Obviously, “Pro-Israel Organisations Successfully Ban Book on Gaza” hits differently than “Library pulls book on Gaza from shelves after complaint from Bondi attack survivor.”

After all, what kind of heartless monster would want to upset a Bondi attack survivor?

Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive officer of the pro-Israel lobbying organisation ECAJ, was eager to praise my book’s removal from the library, telling The Sydney Morning Herald, “A book of this sort has no place on the shelves of a library, especially one within minutes of where Australians were slaughtered in large part due to the dehumanisation of Jews precisely through this sort of libel.

“I commend the individual who spotted the book, herself a survivor of the massacre, and acted to have it removed.”

Was Ryvchin one of the other “multiple” parties that demanded my book be removed? If so, was it prior to the aforementioned Bondi survivor’s complaint? Did The Herald inquire about his involvement in the campaign to remove the book? Did The Herald ask him to specify examples or provide any evidence of me “dehumanising” Jewish people, a false and libelous accusation?

They did not. He is simply presented as a neutral observer with no involvement in the censorship campaign.

I sent a request for comment to the Waverley library last week, to try and pin down the timeline of the “complaints”. They replied this morning but ignored the question, instead objecting to my use of the word “ban” but not denying it was, indeed, banned.

“Contrary to some media reporting,” the library’s manager informed me via email, “the council has not ‘banned’ the book. It remains a part of our collection; however, it is currently unable to be borrowed pending completion of a review.”

Ah, ok, it wasn’t banned, it’s just “currently unavailable to be borrowed”. Well never mind then. Hopefully this “review” goes my way! A group of organisers in Australia have started a petition calling on the library to restore the book and “protect the public’s right to read”.

But, again, it’s important to make clear that my book being “removed” from one public library isn’t the story. The story is that this is only one part of a broader censorship and bully regime that is rapidly escalating in the West.

This story comes in the context of a massive crackdown on Free Speech in Australia, in particular, which is overwhelmingly targeting pro-Palestine speech and being done in the name of “combating antisemitism”. As Jacob Mchangama and Samantha Barbas noted for MSNOW in January, “what began as a moment of national mourning [in the wake of the Bondi attack] has rapidly turned into one of the most sweeping expansions of hate speech laws and protest restriction powers in the country’s modern history.

Intended as an urgent response to antisemitism, new federal and state measures threaten to reach far beyond violence or direct incitement — reshaping how speech, protest and political dissent are regulated in the wake of terrorism.”

As I detail in said book, namely Chapter 8, “‘Antisemitism’ show trials and the smearing of campus protests,” framing suppression of Israel-critical speech in terms of sensitivity, anti-racism, and “fighting hate” is a textbook pro-Israel bully tactic.

Using liberalism against itself is a consistent and well-documented strategy from Zionist organisations to delegitimise, stigmatise, and brand as hateful those who are meaningfully critical of Israel and its regime of violence against Palestinians.

It’s useful here to distinguish The Guardian’s coverage from that of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Independent. The Guardian’s framing was mostly sceptical and fair. They sought comment from me, my publisher, and other critics of the book ban, and did not overly indulge the “Bondi survivor”.

I should also note that Sydney Morning Herald’s Kembrey did reach out to me for comment, but did so at 12:41 am central time and published her article a couple hours later. So alas, not being awake in the middle of the night costs me an original comment in The Herald. Though I doubt it would have mattered much in the overall credulous and uncritical orientation of the article.

The framing of the ban on my book as the ah shucks, entirely organic result of a “Bondi survivor,” without any interrogation of the source of these “multiple” other complaints, is doing 90 percent of the heavy lifting for the Zionist censorship lobby that was eager to not only praise the decision in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, but frame it in purely sectarian terms. That Sydney Morning Herald and The Independent ran with the simplistic and manipulative “Bondi survivor complained” framing, without an ounce of scepticism, shows how these Israel advocacy organisations score major PR victories before the text of the article or any reporting is even done.

2. Reducing claims of genocide in Gaza to a fringe, subjective opinion by a “self-described radical publisher” while omitting it is the overwhelming consensus of human rights and humanitarian organizations, as well as genocide scholars.

The reduction of mainstream opposition to Israel as an unserious or fringe position — while ignoring how widespread and obvious it is outside the corridors of beltway elite circles — is a trope I detailed in Chapter 9 of my book specially under the section, “The Atlantic And The Importance Of Policing Seriousness.”

All three articles framed the fact that Israel committed genocide in Gaza as a mere opinion of mine, without noting it is the broad consensus in the humanitarian and human rights world, as well as that of scholars tasked with studying and determining such matters.

While all three quoted me making this point, they did not report on the fact of this consensus. This isn’t just a vague feeling from a partisan leftwing media critic — it’s the majority academic assessment. They ought to have noted, as I detailed in my unpublished full comment to The Guardian, that genocide in Gaza is the determination of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, as well as Omer Bartov, Israeli-American professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University; Amos Goldberg, Israeli professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Raz Segal, Israeli historian and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University, among dozens of other prominent Israeli and American scholars.

Instead of mentioning any of these liberal validators, that would have shown how fringe the book ban advocates’ position is and how mainstream my headline was, it is presented as a mere claim by the book’s author and we are then served up pat denials from Israel.

“Israel has repeatedly denied committing genocide in Gaza,” notes The Independent (though it does link to an article detailing UN’s claims of genocide). The Guardian writes that “Israel has repeatedly denied that it has committed genocide in Gaza” without highlighting the major humanitarian and human rights groups arguing otherwise.

The fact of Israel committing genocide in Gaza is overwhelming consensus among those tasked with documenting and determining such matters. Presenting this objective reality as my opinion, without citing the underlying evidence supporting it, is playing into the idea the “genocide” label is a fringe or emotionally charged label when it is anything but.

3. Casually conflating Palestine solidarity with antisemitism and ISIS-inspired violence.

The whole point of focusing on the Bondi survivor complainant is, of course, to conflate solidarity with Palestine with the Bondi attack, which was an ISIS-inspired massacre last December that killed 15 Australians (14 of whom were Jewish) and had absolutely zero to do with Palestine, Palestinians, or Gaza.

Indeed, the only major player in Palestine with significant links to ISIS is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Israeli outlet Haaretz reported last year has been arming ISIS-linked gangs in Gaza to undermine Hamas and steal aid, a fact publicly confirmed by Netanyahu’s former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Despite it having no factual basis, conflation of Palestinian militants, civil society and advocacy with “ISIS,” as I note in Chapter 1 of my book, “‘40 beheaded babies,’ the ISIS-ification of Hamas, and how to prime the American public for revenge,” was crucial to propagandising Western audiences and using the blunt instrument of Islamophobia to build sympathy for the cause of open-ended Israeli violence.

None of the above outlets felt it necessary to note that there has been no proven link between the Bondi Attack and Palestine solidarity. The Australian government has spent millions attempting to find such a connection, but alas has come up empty.

Why should pro-Israel advocates be permitted to casually make such a conflation without any reporters noting these two things are wholly unrelated? Why is this conflation of ISIS and Palestine solidarity permitted to be repeated without any attempt to correct this misconception? Perceptions on the part of a handful of motivated actors is not sufficient reason to indulge their delusions.

Nevertheless, racist conspiracy theories conflating Gaza advocacy with violence inspired by a movement and cause that has zero to do with Palestinians, and is largely backed by Israel’s regional allies, is permitted without any pushback because these two things, in the Western, orientalist mind, feel vaguely related.

These are subtle interventions by the above outlets and, as I mention, far from the biggest crimes in Western media related to Palestine. I am not a free speech martyr, as some have alleged, nor do I seek to be. But I think it is useful to note how, when reporting on the banning of a book about media propaganda, we saw at least three of the very tropes detailed in the book being banned.

These subtle framings, while seemingly minor in isolation, add up. They go, before one even notices, from lazy tropes, credulous reporting, and racist assumptions to a narrative, a story. Just like that, the banning of a perfectly sober, rigorous, and nuanced book is framed as a small act of kindness for a terrorism victim.

And the author, who went out of his way to be nonsectarian, to examine universal humanitarian themes, and to highlight Jewish anti-Zionist activism, is accused of horrific dehumanisation in Sydney’s largest newspaper without any pushback or deeper reporting.

The overt suppression of free speech in Australia is another major escalation, and embracing this grimy, misleading, and libelous framing without much thought or scepticism — as The Independent and Sydney Morning Herald did — is yet another example of Western media’s role in selling genocide.

Adam Johnson is a media analyst and co-host of the podcast Citations Needed. His writing has been featured in The Nation, In These Times, The Intercept, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. Republished from the substack The Column under Creative Commons.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/26/rnz-tops-trust-survey-lifts-radio-and-digital-audiences/ Tue, 25 Aug 2026 23:17:34 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132599 RNZ

Larger audiences across radio and digital platforms have combined with stronger trust in RNZ than other outlets, new data suggest.

RNZ’s results in the closely watched GfK radio survey were released on Tuesday morning.

After a fall in the first survey of the year, RNZ National bounced back up to 509,200 listeners. Commercial talk station Newstalk ZB dropped fractionally to 656,900 in the same survey. Music stations The Breeze (597,100), and More FM (521,900) both had higher audiences than RNZ National.

• READ MORE: Other RNZ media reports

RNZ Morning Report still trails Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking Breakfast in the hotly contested weekday morning slot, but the gap between the two shows closed in the latest survey. While Hosking shed 14,000 listeners, Morning Report gained 6300, leaving it still 101,700 adrift.

At the other end of the weekday schedule, both RNZ’s 4pm-6pm Checkpoint (down 3000 to 226,400) and ZB’s 4pm-7pm Heather du Plessis Allan Drive were marginally down (down 1700 to 272,500).

RNZ Concert was slightly up to 163,800. Commercial radio as a whole was down 65,000 to 3.43m on the same survey.

Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith has demanded an improvement in RNZ’s radio audiences. RNZ’s newly-appointed board chair Brent Impey has also stated the public broadcaster is “coming after” Newstalk ZB, in a much more aggressive stance than his predecessor Jim Mather.

Results slow to move
GfK results are, by their methodology, relatively slow to move. RNZ’s improvement against the industry trend in this survey mirrors results from the same time last year, which preceded a fall back again in the first survey of this year. A long-term trend of sustained audience growth for RNZ is not yet evident. Total commercial radio audiences have also not consistently grown in recent GfK surveys.

RNZ’s website, however, has had much stronger and more consistent audience growth. After a redesign of its homepage, the audience in July according to Nielsen was 1.78 million, up 8.3 percent on June and the highest ever recorded for rnz.co.nz.

The result put it 69,000 unique users shy of nzherald.co.nz, which trailed Stuff (up 3 percent to 2.2 million).

RNZ’s website audience has more than doubled in three years from 880,000 in July 2023 to the record 1.78m result last month. Growth on social platforms has been strong too, with over 1.1 million followers across RNZ’s main accounts engaging heavily in a mix of investigations, daily news, current affairs, culture and sport.

The audience growth has come at the same time as RNZ consolidates its position as the most-trusted news source for New Zealanders.

A survey by Verian for RNZ asked people if how strongly they agreed they could trust different media brands.

• 57 percent agreed they could trust RNZ
• 53 percent agreed they could trust TVNZ
• 48 percent agreed they could trust NZ Herald

Following brands
Stuff (45 percent), Whakaata Māori (39 percent) and Sky TV (36 percent) followed. All brands scored higher for trust than in most previous surveys dating back to 2020.

RNZ chief news officer Mark Stevens said the results confirmed RNZ’s approach to delivering quality, original and relevant news, information and entertainment across platforms was working.

“The news media is under regular attack from politicians and commentators trying to undermine the public’s trust in what we deliver every day,” Stevens said.

“But at RNZ, we’re focused on our core job of delivering the kind of public interest journalism our audiences value.

“We know we have to work hard to earn and keep the trust of our audiences and we have more to do. But it’s very pleasing to see RNZ continuing to set the standard for trust.”

This story was first published on

 

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/24/china-daily-collaborations-media-education-and-pacific-outreach/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 11:54:36 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132556 COMMENTARY: By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report

Some years ago when I headed the Pacific Media Centre that I founded at Auckland University of Technology, we ran a postgraduate internship programme at the China Daily in Beijing.

It was part of a professional development exposure platform that also included Jakarta in Indonesia and the Manila in the Philippines, along with several media and university journalism campus outlets in the Pacific, including the University of the South Pacific.

There was nothing else comparable at other journalism programmes in New Zealand, and now there are no opportunities of this kind after the closure of the PMC in 2021.

• READ MORE: China’s growing grip on the Solomon Islands’ fragile media sector
• New Zealanders’ Perceptions of Asia 2026
• Other reports on China and media in the Pacific

But there was some eyebrow raising about our collaboration over China Daily’s soft diplomacy role at the heart of Chinese media as part of its growing outreach into the Pacific along with the global Belt and Road development policy.

Linked to our Asia Pacific journalism studies course with support by the Asia NZ Foundation, these three-month internships provided a good insight into how Chinese media operated for New Zealand journalists graduating with an eye on an Asia-Pacific media future.

“Advanced studies in comparative journalism and media globalisation” and the “political economy” of the countries studied were important parts of our course.

A glimpse of how some media operate outside of the Western bubble.

‘Polishers’ of reports
The journalistic role that the students faced while they were at the China Daily were initially of a subeditorial or copy-editing nature — they were called “polishers” of English-language reports. But as time when on, the opportunities grew, including reporting assignments, feature writing, and broadcasting.

On exchange, we also hosted professional journalists from the China Daily on our journalism papers. Overall the collaborative experience was positive. But the stakes are much higher now.

The China Daily was founded as an English daily in 1981 and although it is owned and published by the Chinese Communist Party’s Publicity Department — the “Propaganda Department” — it is not an “official mouthpiece” of the CCP establishment.

In 2011, it celebrated 30 years of publishing during our collaboration.

China Daily has usually enjoyed a more “liberal” face than most other Chinese state media.

For example, coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was generally sympathetic to the student protests and at least one account claims that some of its journalists joined in the demonstrations. Also, the paper’s coverage of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2002-2004 was more fact-driven and balanced than the “official” state media.

China Daily has also published sponsored inserts in such global newspapers as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the US and Le Figaro in France.

Massive operation
Published out of a large headquarters in Chaoyang district, it is a massive operation by New Zealand standards, publishing the best part of a million copies daily, two-thirds of the copies via special editions reaching at least 150 countries.

But the most visible face of the newspaper in New Zealand and the Pacific these days is online at the China Daily website.

China Daily has often framed its Pacific outreach through official editorials, youth forums and diplomatic rebuttals. It publicises green energy ties, criticises “foreign alarmism regarding regional expansion”, and argues that organisations such as the Pacific Islands Forum must back the one-China policy.

As the Chinese media outreach into the Pacific has been growing in recent years, the rivalry between Beijing, Washington and Canberra has been ratcheted up with accusations of “editorial interference and influence” in some countries, such as Kiribati and Solomon Islands, at least until the change of government in Honiara in May when Matthew Wale ousted the pro-China leadership in a general election.

In an in-depth report just two months before the election, the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders warned that since Honiara had established diplomatic relations with China in 2019 the Pacific country had become a “strategic arena for Beijing’s influence”.

“By capitalising on the economic fragility of the local media sector, China has stepped up conditional funding, editorial partnerships and influence programmes to disseminate its narratives,” RSF said, calling on the Solomon Islands’ government to make the viability and independence of the media sector a priority.

Outreach invitation
The China Daily has stepped up its outreach initiatives in the Pacific lately as evidenced by an email to me four days ago inviting me to write an op-ed for the publication’s Opinion section. And the deadline is tomorrow.

Signed by an editor of the newspaper’s Opinion Department, the invitation said: “In early September, a high-level forum on media cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region will be held, bringing together senior media professionals and experts to discuss how the region’s media can better foster dialogue, trust and mutual understanding.

“We would be honoured to invite you to contribute an opinion article of around 800 words for publication in China Daily.”

The invitation continued:

“As a reference, we have outlined several possible directions:
1. In the age of AI, how can Asia-Pacific media rebuild public trust?
2. From ‘reporting Asia’ to ‘telling Asia’s stories’: Can Asia-Pacific media move beyond Western narrative frameworks?
3. From “information competition” to media cooperation: How can Asia-Pacific media promote greater mutual understanding across the region?

These topics are only suggestions. We would be delighted if you chose to write on another angle that better reflects your current research or interests.

“Rather than opening with abstract concepts or institutional frameworks, we encourage authors to begin with something timely and tangible: a recent news event, a real-world development, or an everyday experience that readers immediately recognise.

‘Drawing in’ readers
“Once readers are drawn in, the article can naturally expand to explain the broader policy, economic, technological or geopolitical forces behind it. In our experience, this narrative structure makes complex issues far more engaging for a broad international audience.

“The strongest pieces usually build around one central argument, moving from the concrete to the conceptual, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, and from today’s headline to its longer-term implications.

“We particularly value articles that combine the immediacy of current events with original analysis, clear storytelling and practical insights, rather than offering a comprehensive survey of every aspect of the topic.

“In addition to the written article, we would also be delighted if you could record a short video commentary of around one minute.

“A simple self-recorded video using a mobile phone would be perfectly fine. A vertical format with a clean and quiet background would be ideal; there is no need for professional filming or editing, as our team will handle the post-production.”

The invitation continued in the same vein.

Concluding, the email said: “As our production schedule is quite tight, we would greatly appreciate it if you could send us both the article and the video by August 25, 2026.”

My reply? You are reading it right here on Asia Pacific Report.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/24/west-bank-rsf-condemns-israeli-army-over-escalating-violence-against-palestinian-journalists/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:08 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132524 Pacific Media Watch

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned and highlighted recent attacks and obstructions committed by the Israeli military against Palestinian journalists reporting from the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, RSF says this targeted violence is aimed at preventing media professionals from doing their jobs.

It also condemned the documented violence by extremist Jewish settlers against the Palestinian population.

• READ MORE:  The Gaza doctrine – Israeli ‘journacide’ and the muted NZ media response
• Other Palestinian journalist reports

“RSF condemns the Israeli army’s attacks on journalists and calls on Israel’s allied governments to pressure the country’s authorities to put an end to these actions,” said Martin Roux, head of RSF’s Crisis Desk.

“Amidst documented violence by extremist Jewish settlers against the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers are targeting journalists, thereby preventing information from emerging from this territory, which is increasingly cut off from the rest of the world.

Against the backdrop of intensified repression of Palestinian journalists since 7 October 2023, RSF has documented key incidents over the past three months:

11 May: Violence at Qalandiya camp
Israeli armed forces targeted a group of journalists with tear gas and stun grenades while they were covering a raid on the Qalandiya camp, located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, both territories under Israeli occupation. The attack specifically targeted a crew from the Qatari channel Al Araby.

16 May: Access to Jenin camp barred
Israeli armed forces barred journalists from entering the Jenin camp in the northern occupied West Bank while military and demolition operations were underway. According to reporters on the scene, Israeli soldiers had sealed off the area.

27 May: Journalist prevented from visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound
Saif Al-Qawasmi, a 25-year-old freelance journalist who works for the Qatari news channel Al Jazeera Mubasher, among others, was detained by police while heading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem on assignment. He was subsequently questioned about his work by law enforcement and Israeli intelligence for several hours. He was banned from accessing the site (initially for one week, and later for six months) on arbitrary grounds. This punitive access ban is frequently used by Israeli authorities against Palestinian journalists, a practice that predates the crackdown following 7 October 2023.

7 June: Live fire in Balata camp
A group of journalists went to the Balata camp, east of Nablus, to cover a large-scale raid by the Israeli army. Among them were Majdi Mohammed Shteih, a photographer for the US news agency Associated Press, and freelance journalist Sidqi Ayoub Rayyan, who works for the news site Noon Post. According to their accounts to RSF, the Israeli army fired stun grenades in their direction and then opened fire while they were attempting to cover the military operation.

16 June: Targeted attacks in Nablus and Deir Abu Mashaal
In the early hours of the night, while protecting a convoy of extremist Jewish settlers (not necessarily Israeli citizens) who had illegally entered Palestinian territory en route to Joseph’s Tomb, east of Nablus, the Israeli army forced out about 10 journalists reporting in the area (including crews from the Qatari channel Al Jazeera and the Jordanian channel Roya News) using stun grenades, thereby preventing media coverage of the event.

That same day, Motassem Saqf Al-Hayt, a correspondent for the independent news site Quds News Network, was injured after the Israeli army fired tear gas grenades while he was reporting from Deir Abu Mashaal, a village west of Ramallah where other settlers were attempting to establish an outpost.

22 July: Haaretz team obstructed south of Nablus
The Israeli army blocked a vehicle belonging to a team from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz south of Nablus. Soldiers claimed that the move was intended to prevent clashes with settlers established in the area.

On 10 August, the same Haaretz team was blocked and attacked by other settlers near a neighbouring village. This time, Israeli soldiers present at the scene refused to intervene and to protect the journalists, according to accounts.

19 journalists detained
Alongside these attacks against Palestinian journalists covering events, the number of journalist arrests in the occupied West Bank has surged since 7 October 2023. Of the 19 Palestinian journalists from the West Bank detained by Israeli authorities, 15 were arrested after that date.

Most recently, on the morning of 12 August 2026, Israeli armed forces arrested freelance journalist Mohammed Awad, who has notably contributed video work to Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, at his home in the village of Beitunia, west of Ramallah, on charges of “terrorism”. When contacted by RSF, the army had not, as of this writing, provided information to substantiate this accusation.

Foreign journalists also targeted
This crackdown on local journalists is compounded by obstacles facing international press correspondents. French journalist Alice Froussard, a contributor to Radio France Internationale (RFI), was deported upon her arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on June 10. This followed entry bans issued against journalists Queralt Castillo, Khadija Toufik, and Alessandro Stefanelli.

RSF, with the support of its Palestinian partner Watan Academy, continues its commitment to journalist safety. In August, the organisation conducted Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT), tailored to the local context, for 20 Palestinian journalists.

• Read the full report at Reporters Without Borders.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/21/australia-dont-be-surprised-israel-does-this-to-palestinians-all-the-time/ Thu, 20 Aug 2026 23:48:09 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132439 COMMENTARY: By Adla Alnazer

The IDF’s decision not to open a criminal investigation into the deaths of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, including an Australian citizen, drew strong condemnation.

But for Palestinians, this has simply become the norm.

Four years ago, when I arrived from Palestine to study for my Master’s degree in Melbourne, Australia, I had a hard time finalising some paperwork related to government services, simply because I could not create an account. The problem was that my country, at the time, wasn’t listed within the governmental system.

• READ MORE: Palestinian theologian warns against trusting Israel over Hind, medics killings probe
• What did Al Jazeera’s investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza reveal?
• Who was Hind Rajab and why is Israel investigating her killing?
• Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of 5-year-old and paramedics
• Other Gaza genocide reports

There was no “Palestine” or “West Bank” and not even a slot for “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. At another interaction with local bureaucracy, the worker who received my passport commented that it was the first time he had seen a Palestinian one.

“I am sorry,” he said politely, “but I can’t even see it on the map.”

By the time we left Melbourne in 2024 and returned to our home in Ramallah, a lot had changed. For many months, hundreds of thousands of people gathered every Sunday in the city centre, raising Palestinian flags and calling to end Israel’s war in Gaza.

Watching these protests develop and gather steam, I came to realise that they were taking place not because Australia had become as “pro-Palestinian” as some of the media coverage had suggested, but rather because Israel’s image had badly deteriorated.

Australian opinion shifted
In September of 2025, the shifts in Australian public opinion regarding Israel and the occupation found their way into the country’s official policies, when the government in Canberra recognised Palestine. Australia was one of several influential countries to do so in recent years.

One of the most influential turning points in Australian public views of Israel came in April 2024 when an Israeli airstrike on Deir al-Balah killed seven aid workers from the humanitarian organisation World Central Kitchen, among them Zomi Frankcom, a 43-year-old woman from Melbourne.

For many Australians watching the horrors in Gaza from afar, that was the moment the war became personal.

This week, an internal inquiry by the Israeli military determined there was no criminal wrongdoing by any of the officers or soldiers involved in the fatal incident. Two years after the aid workers had been killed, Israel made clear it had no intention to punish anyone for their deaths, or even allow a proper independent investigation.

In Australia, this decision has been received with a mixture of anger and disappointment. The Australian Foreign Minister summoned the Israeli ambassador in protest.

I was following the headlines in Australia’s leading news websites from my home in Ramallah and realised how different my expectations as a Palestinian are from Israel, compared to those of many Australians. For me, there was nothing surprising about the Israeli military shielding soldiers from accountability.

Adla Alnazer is a public policy consultant and former adviser to the Palestinian government. This article was first published by Haaretz.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/17/why-cant-israel-be-held-accountable-for-its-genocide-in-gaza-its-the-media/ Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:47 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132238 ANALYSIS: By Robin Andersen

In a Double Down News (DDN) video report, British filmmaker Richard Sanders begins a summary of a “horrific new [United Nations] report” with a listing of three atrocities committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian children.

Sanders tells of an infant who was shot in the head while breastfeeding in his mother’s arms, a 16-year-old boy whose body was mutilated by an Israeli tank, and teenage boys deliberately shot by Israeli soldiers in a game of “target practice”.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry released the report on June 23.

• READ MORE: Western media coverage of Gaza erases Palestinians from the story
• How Netanyahu govt media reforms risk deepening Israeli press bias
• Other Gaza media reports

Titled “The Essence of Childhood Has Been Destroyed,” it was the first to focus on crimes and violations against Palestinian children in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Vijay Prashad at CounterPunch called it an “accusation of extraordinary gravity.” In 100-pages, the investigation documents Israeli security forces’ direct killing, degrading, and inhumane treatment of Palestinian children, including sexual and gender-based violence and torture.

The report also documents the destruction of schools and civilian infrastructure and amounts to a gruesome compendium of how Israel is destroying Palestinian childhood and denying the Palestinian people a future and self-determination.

As the human rights lawyer Srinivasan Muralidhar, who chaired the UN commission and led the press conference that announced its findings, bluntly summarised, “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist.” This is genocide.

Trump’s Board of Peace claims contradicted
The UN report flatly contradicted the claims made by President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace that conditions in Gaza were improving.

The UN report stated that the amount of available aid is woefully inadequate to meet the needs of hungry, wounded people, living in appalling conditions, who are being squeezed into 30 percent of what was once the Gaza Strip.

The UN report further noted the admission of one Israeli soldier: “It feels like a game. You can sit in some basement of a house, safe, with your helmet off, scratching your balls, half-dressed, and kill Palestinians.”

The new report sits atop an ever-expanding mass of documentation of Israeli war crimes committed since October 7, 2023. This trove consists of journalistic documentation, investigations compiled by the UN and other aid agencies, and by human rights lawyers who have corroborated the testimonies of victims of sexual torture with forensic evidence of their broken bodies.

It includes damning evidence from Israeli soldiers themselves, who have recorded their crimes as they committed them and subsequently posted those recordings online. The combined record of evidence includes visuals of massacres, satellite footage, and audio recordings of specific events such as the January 2024 killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, as documented by Forensic Architecture.

Journalists bear witness, with corroborating evidence, to seeing their colleagues killed by targeted Israeli strikes. Compilations of detailed refutations of falsified Israeli “pseudo-evidence” produced to deny its crimes must also be considered a significant part of this trove. In short, as many have observed, the genocide in Gaza is the most well-documented in history.

The most well-documented but contested genocide in history
And yet, in the face of all the evidence, Israel’s genocide remains the most contested in history. Israel simply denies what it’s doing.

As Ramzy Baroud wrote, Israel’s enemy is not merely its armed adversaries; “it is the judge, the independent human rights observer, and the UN investigator whose sole mandate is to document violations of international law.”

Israel relentlessly claims that all these agencies are lying to make Israel look bad, and that all criticism of the state of Israel is based on antisemitism.

A look at The New York Times coverage of the UN’s June 23 report illustrates how the media amplify Israeli denials by dutifully replicating them. Amid details of the carefully documented horrors that lie within the report, The New York Times announced that Israel’s UN mission in Geneva dismissed it as a “libelous sham” and condemned the UN commission as a “fundamentally flawed mechanism whose very purpose is to single out and vilify Israel”.

Another quote from the Israeli Foreign Ministry sandwiched in the article claimed that the UN report “completely erases Israeli children who were brutally murdered, kidnapped, and targeted by Hamas, while ignoring Hamas’ cynical use of Palestinian children as human shields and pawns of war.”

The Times let this statement stand without qualification, even though most of it is false.

The UN report does include incidents of Hamas killing Israeli children during and since the October 7 attacks — which it also noted were the focus of two prior reports, made to the Human Rights Council in June 2024 and the General Assembly in October 2024 — though they pale by comparison to Israel’s subsequent atrocities.

Israel has killed 20,000+ children
Hamas killed one infant on October 7, 2023. In the two years since then, Israel has killed more than 20,000 children, including 440 newborn babies.

But US media have never fully covered what actually happened on October 7. Israeli civilians and children were killed that day by Israeli security forces who were ordered to fire on everyone, employing the Hannibal Directive, to prevent hostages from being taken.

Additionally, the claim that Hamas used “human shields” during the genocide was always a fabrication. In a May 2025 article titled “One Side Routinely Uses Human Shields in Gaza — But Not the Side That’s Usually Blamed,” FAIR’s Gregory Shupak wrote that Israel and its backers “have completely distorted this concept, in an apparent attempt to give their massacres in Gaza a veneer of legality.”

Scholars Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon are cited to explain how the human shield discourse has been misapplied in Gaza: “Israel has cited Hamas’s underground tunnel system to cast every square inch of Gaza as a human shield.”

This misdirection “has functioned to erase the possibility of Palestinian civilianness altogether.” Shupak added that the “corruption of the meaning of ‘human shields’ has distorted much of the corporate media coverage of the Gaza genocide”.

Another example from the commission’s report describes BBC reporting of a CCTV videotape of soldiers shooting a boy, then standing around for 45 minutes watching him bleed to death. They shot at his mother to stop her from coming to his aid. They also blocked two Palestinian ambulances from reaching him, and they were seen planting a rock next to him as “evidence” that Israeli security forces had acted in “self-defence”.

Although Israel has provided no evidence to contest the videotape, corporate news outlets, such as The New York Times, have given the Israeli military opportunities to claim the boy was “a terrorist” who “attempted to attack soldiers”.

Not a shred of evidence
Without the Israeli government having produced a shred of evidence to support its accusations, the establishment press has allowed Israeli officials to cast doubt on a well-documented case of murder. For almost three years, this cycle of denial has dominated corporate coverage, making this the most contested genocide in history, despite the troves of evidence to the contrary.

This is ironic given that, even as Israeli officials deny these claims when talking to news media, statements admitting and celebrating their crimes circulate widely on internet platforms. In the DDN video, Richard Sanders shows footage of the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Nissim Vaturi, saying, “Erase Gaza … do not leave a child there. Expel all the remaining ones at the end so that they will not have a resurrection … Every child born there is already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth.”

This announcement of intent to continue a genocide to its conclusion could not be made clearer. Indeed, though there are long lists of statements by Israeli officials that constitute incitement to genocide, they are ignored by corporate media frames of denial. Israelis are demanding the right to commit genocide, even as they deny they are doing so.

The UN commission recognised and condemned Israel’s ongoing determination to expand territorially, saying that such long-term goals violate international law.

Spending millions on public relations and failing
The UN’s latest report comes at a time of crisis for the Israeli state, as global citizens are registering their revulsion at Israel’s seemingly endless violence. Israel’s approval ratings are plummeting in the United States and globally.

As of May 2026, only 16 percent of Americans support unconditional aid to Israel, and in June 2026, historic progress was made in the House of Representatives, with seventy-three cosponsors for the Block the Bombs bill to impose a partial embargo against sending any more US weapons to Israel.

Global outrage, anti-genocide disgust, and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle have shifted the global paradigm and dramatically changed the political landscape. Reporting on the Second Anti-Zionist Jewish Congress held in Dublin, Ireland, Ramzy Baroud argued that the shift in global perceptions over the past two years has been driven by independent journalism and Palestinians themselves reclaiming their own narrative.

In response, Israel is investing millions of dollars to revive its image. In one initiative, Israeli propagandists have abandoned calling ethnic cleansing “voluntary migration,” a term repeated frequently in establishment media. A new initiative will refer to it as “a plan of free movement.”

As Caitlin Johnstone writes, “They never say ‘It’s time to stop doing the things that cause people to hate us,’ they just say ‘It’s time for a rebrand.’” Despite millions of dollars spent on hasbara, Israel’s PR campaigns are failing. Dr Baroud argues that “the damage Israel has done to itself through its barbaric practices in occupied Palestine is simply impossible to overcome.”

As Dr Baroud has aptly noted, “Corporate media exist to serve corporate interests.”

Government and corporate elites and states can continue to support Israel militarily and economically only as long as establishment media continue to rehearse the lies, falsifications, and denials of its genocide in Gaza. Through propaganda and strategic alliances, Israel seeks to evade any accountability for genocide. That evasion would be impossible without the complicity of the corporate media.

Palestinian storytellers fundamentally reshaping the global conversation
Western newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post have not changed their editorial approach throughout this genocide, but Omar Zahzah, author of Terms of Servitude, argues that independent media, social media platforms, and Palestinian storytellers are not only fundamentally reshaping the global conversation but are also being censored for it. And that is true.

Sadly, however, the establishment press steadfastly continues to provide the Israeli state the cover it needs to deny its crimes against humanity and bury its genocide. It’s long past time for legacy media to stop allowing Israel to hide behind its own journalistic malpractice.

The fact that newsrooms still allow a foreign military — one that is openly censoring Western media and content posted to Big Tech platforms, committing genocide, and murdering journalists — to dominate the language of US journalism must come to an end. It has become far too obvious to the rest of the world.

This was first published by Project Censored and is republished from CounterPunch under Creative Commons.

Dr Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University. She is an award-winning author of a dozen single and co-authored books. Her most recent book is The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Andersen’s work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/17/fiji-high-court-orders-release-of-seven-devices-seized-from-journalist-charlie-charters/ Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:46:30 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132226 By Andrew Naidu in Suva

Fiji’s High Court has granted an application seeking the release of seven electronic devices seized by police from British-Fiji journalist and sports marketing official Charlie Charters.

The application was heard before Justice Pita Bulamainaivalu after preliminary issues were raised concerning the proper parties to the proceedings and the transfer of the matter between the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC), the Fiji Police Force and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Acting DPP Nancy Tikoisuva, appearing as a interested party, told the court that, following the stay of proceedings, the matter should have come to an end and the devices and other property belonging to Charters should have been released.

• READ MORE: Fiji judge orders motion seeking return of journalists’ e-devices seized by police
• Other Charlie Charters reports

Tikoisuva said the office had discussed the matter with police and agreed with the application seeking the release of the devices.

She also acknowledged that the continued retention of the devices should not have occurred after the stay was granted.

She further submitted that any consequential orders following the stay should have included the release of the exhibits and property belonging to Charters.

Lawyer Juleen Fatiaki for Charters welcomed the DPP’s position and thanked the office for its assistance to the court.

The court subsequently granted the application and ordered the release of Charter’s seven electronic devices.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/14/fiji-judge-orders-motion-seeking-return-of-journalists-devices-seized-by-police/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:13:57 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=132054 By Rashika Kumar in Suva

Counsel for Fiji-British journalist Charlie Charters has been ordered by High Court judge Justice Pita Bulamainaivalu to serve a motion seeking the return of the 7 electronic devices seized by police on the police chief today.

The motion was filed after police re-seized the devices last Friday under a fresh search warrant, despite an earlier Magistrates Court order for the devices to be returned to Charters’ solicitor, Seforan Fatiaki, by 1pm.

Charters’ counsel, Juleen Fatiaki, told the High Court that Seforan Fatiaki had called to the police CID about 1pm last Friday, when the fresh search warrant was issued.

• READ MORE: Charters’ lawyers cite constitutional protection for journalistic sources
• Other Fiji media freedom reports

She said when Fatiaki was served with the warrant, they put police on notice that they were invoking Section 1(3) of the Criminal Procedure Act, stating that information on the devices was confidential and privileged.

Justice Bulamainaivalu, who joined the proceedings online from Labasa, questioned whether the magistrate who signed the warrant was aware of the High Court’s stay order on the FICAC proceedings.

Juleen Fatiaki said she was not aware and confirmed that Magistrate Sufia Hamza signed the warrant.

She also said that they had only been able to serve the motion to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions after receiving the files back from court this morning and had not been able to serve it on the Police Commissioner.

A hearing on the return of the devices will be held on Monday.

Meanwhile, DPP counsel Alisha Lal told the court they were appearing only as a friend of the court.

Earlier, Fiji Times journalist Anish Chand reported that Charters’ lawyers would tell the High Court that the confidentiality of journalistic sources was protected by Fiji’s Constitution and common law in their challenge over the re-seizure of his electronic devices.

Charters said the devices contained confidential journalistic material, information capable of identifying sources and communications with his legal advisers.

Central to the application was the protection afforded to journalists and their sources.

“The confidentiality of journalistic sources is protected by sections 17 and 24 of the Constitution and at common law,” the application states.

Counsel for Fijian-British national journalist Charlie Charters, Seforan and Juleen Fatiaki, and ODPP lawyer Alisha Lal in court.  Video: FijiVillage

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/13/free-speech-union-board-member-revealed-in-daily-blog-editor-martyn-bradburys-gagging-case/ Thu, 13 Aug 2026 02:43:18 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=131986 Pacific Media Watch

A court struggle featuring Daily Blog editor and media freedom defender Martyn Bradbury has taken a surprise turn, with Free Speech Union (FSU) board member and political commentator Ani O’Brien being revealed as the complainant behind “secret” proceedings, reports Radia Waatea.

Bradbury, who is a regular commentator on Radio Waatea covering politics and current affairs, is defending proceedings brought under the Harmful Digital Communications Act over four items published by The Daily Blog, New Zealand’s largest independent leftwing media website.

O’Brien asked the Auckland District Court today to lift the order preventing her being identified to end public “speculation”.

• READ MORE: ‘I am now legally censored from even talking about being censored’ – Martyn ‘Bomber’ Bradbury
• Other Martyn Bradbury reports

However, The Post reports the FSU has condemned the actions of O’Brien, saying it did not support her case against Bradbury and was unaware of it until the media reported it last week.

Radio Waatea reports that the case has “become a significant debate about where freedom of political expression ends and harmful online communication begins”.

This was “made more unusual by O’Brien’s role with an organisation established to advocate for free speech”.

O’Brien had previously been protected by a court-ordered suppression order last month while pursuing the case, which was first heard in open court last week.

The Post had applied to the court to remove reporting restrictions on the proceedings.

‘Crippling’ unreformed law
FSU chair Stephen Franks said the case showed how “crippling” it could be for freedom of speech, and for the public right to know, when an unreformed law gagged “everyone but insiders from even knowing about a case”, reports The New Zealand Herald.

According to Radio Waatea and also The Daily Blog, the proceedings concerned four posts published by the website which O’Brien had alleged “contained personal attacks, ridicule and abuse”.

She had initially complained to Netsafe before taking the matter to the court under the Harmful Digital Communications Act.

An interim court decision last month found O’Brien had established breaches of two communication principles under the Act, relating to “indecent or obscene” communications and the use of digital communications to “harass” an individual.

Bradbury was ordered on an interim basis to remove the disputed posts, although the judge declined to order him to apologise.

“The dispute has since developed into a wider argument about the boundaries of free speech and the powers available under legislation intended to protect people from serious online harm,” Radio Waatea said.

Bradbury has opposed the proceedings and has argued that his political commentary should be protected by the “right to freedom of expression”.

Seeking legal advice
He also declared earlier on The Daily Blog he was prepared to go to jail to defend the principle.

Last week, Judge David Sharp ordered Bradbury to remove commentary about the case on the website and to seek legal advice.

Today, the judge ruled that other information about the case would remain suppressed on an interim basis, including the nature of the alleged harmful communication.

He set the next court hearing for December 9.

Besides editing The Daily Blog, Bradbury presents a weekly television political panel, The Bradbury Group, and is a regular commentator for Radio Waatea on political and government issues affecting Indigenous Māori.

In an editorial, Radio Waatea manager Matthew Tukaki wrote: “There is something deeply ironic about a high-profile member of the Free Speech Union turning to the courts seeking restrictions on speech she finds offensive.

“That is now the uncomfortable backdrop to the legal battle involving Waatea political commentator and The Daily Blog editor Martyn Bradbury and Free Speech Union board member Ani O’Brien.

“And the irony is difficult to ignore.

“The Free Speech Union has built its public reputation championing the proposition that freedom of expression must protect speech that is uncomfortable, unpopular and offensive. That principle matters precisely because free speech becomes meaningless if it extends only to opinions we approve of.”

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/10/pesta-babi-documentary-wins-both-udin-and-tasrif-awards-for-injustice-storytelling/ Mon, 10 Aug 2026 10:20:15 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=131861 Jubi News

The environmental and human rights documentary Pesta Babi (Pig Feast): Colonialism in Our Time has been awarded both the 2026 Udin and Tasrif Awards from Indonesia’s Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) during the organisation’s 32nd anniversary celebration at the Press Council Hall in Jakarta.

The Udin Award was presented to director Dandhy Dwi Laksono and the production
team behind Pesta Babi — which premiered in New Zealand in March — while the Tasrif Award went to the documentary’s production team.

Producer Victor C. Mambor, publisher of Jubi Media, who accepted the awards on behalf of the team, said they were dedicated to Papuans who had experienced discrimination and been denied their rights.

• READ MORE: West Papuan doco Pig Feast exposes oligarchs, food security crisis and ecocide under noses of military
• Read other Pesta Babi documentary reports

“These awards are also for the journalists, particularly the Pig Feast team, for their
consistency in producing this film,” he said.

“The team faced many challenges during production, and some of those problems continue today. But we’re happy because being an AJI member has always meant being no stranger to problems.”

He said journalists must continue to speak out about issues that needed to be brought
to public attention and stand alongside people experiencing oppression.

Anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Cypri Jehan Paju Dale, who accepted the Tasrif Award on behalf of the team, said receiving the two awards was an honour and an opportunity to affirm shared values.

‘Destruction of ecosystems’
“A major injustice is still taking place in Papua. Land appropriation, the destruction of
ecosystems and military operations have continued for more than 60 years and are
now occurring on a scale we have not seen before,” Paju Dale said.

He said Papua was experiencing extractive mining, while thousands of people had been displaced from their villages by military operations and mining concessions.

Paju Dale said the film’s screenings had helped encourage communities to speak out and that the awards should be understood as recognition of Papuan communities and their right to resist.

“Resistance by Papuan Indigenous communities is legitimate,” he said.

He cited the opening paragraph of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, which states that independence is the right of all nations and that colonialism must be abolished because it is inconsistent with humanity and justice.

“We also dedicate this award to AJI. Journalists are on the front lines of exposing practices of ecocide and genocide in Papua, while reminding us that the Constitution states that colonialism must be abolished,” he said.

AJI Indonesia secretary-general Bayu Wardhana said the decision to award Pesta Babi was made independently by the respective juries and was not subject to intervention from AJI.

‘The right choice’
“We believe the juries made the right choice. It reflects Indonesia’s current situation, and the position journalism must take: standing with those who cannot speak for themselves—the voiceless,” Bayu told ABC Indonesia.

The Udin Award itself is one of AJI’s highest recognitions for individuals or groups
that contribute to the struggle for press freedom, civil liberties, democratic development and human values.

The award is named after Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin, known as Udin, a journalist
with the Bernas daily in Yogyakarta who was killed on 16 August 1996 after reporting
on corruption in Bantul.

Udin became a symbol of the fight against corruption and journalists’ resilience in the
face of threats and attacks from those accused of crimes against humanity.

The Tasrif Award is named after Suardi Tasrif, a prominent Indonesian journalist regarded as the “Father of Indonesia’s Journalistic Code of Ethics”.

During his lifetime, Tasrif was a prominent advocate for press freedom and freedom
of expression, which he regarded as fundamental human rights.

AJI Indonesia first presented the award in 1998 to Munir, then coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS). It has since been awarded regularly to individuals and groups that consistently defend freedom of expression and press freedom.

The 2026 Udin Award jury comprised Arif Maulana, deputy chair of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI); Almas Sjafrina of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW);
and Masduki, an AJI official and representative of PR2Media.

The Tasrif Award jury consisted of Gema Gita Persada of the Legal Aid Institute for
the Press (LBH Pers), Daniel Awigra of the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG),
and Ignatius Haryanto of Multimedia Nusantara University (UMN).

Republished from Jubi News/West Papua Daily in collaboration.

]]> https://asiapacificreport.nz/2026/08/09/the-abcs-intellectual-and-moral-decline-comes-at-the-worst-possible-time/ Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:02:38 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=131771 COMMENTARY: By Joel Jenkins

Of late, Australia’s public broadcaster ABC has been altering the way it sees the world around it. Bound by a national charter, but modified from within after years of ideological, technical, and operational transfer, the organisation is failing in its duty to inform Australians.

This is occurring at a time of great uncertainty, when it is needed to function healthily, truthfully, the most.

The ABC’s subjective and selective journalism jolts through a country in flux, emblematic of a broader act of censorship that goes on to form the body of a foreign influenced effort to moderate the country’s resting state to entertain the previously unthinkable.

• READ MORE: Other media credibility reports

In a world at boiling point, in a nation being led down the garden path by powerful small interests working in concert to shape public perception and limit the range of acceptable debate, the decline of the ABC has been felt by many Australians.

With pandemics, bushfires, floods, wars and a live streamed genocide still unravelling unabated, the elite power structures that have controlled our country’s destiny have revealed themselves to be nothing short of diabolical — propped up by a corporate media apparatus that works directly in lockstep with the interests of the billionaires and powermongers of Australia’s shallow rooted elite.

In this time of power and consolidation, the ABC has been commandeered and realigned through a concerted effort carried out by a network of former commercial media executives and political appointees who have steadily replaced the organisation’s independent traditions with a more compliant, establishment-friendly outlook.

Ten years under the Coalition, squeezed from above, the ABC has been augmented from root to branch in a process of attrition. A decade of siloing and compartmentalising the old guard, replacing board members with former corporate media hatchetmen, and replacing outgoing ABC stalwarts and custodians with new-wave stenographers who kicked off their trade weaving in the dark arts of Murdoch, has left the ABC almost unrecognisable.

Sinophobic news specials
Barrie Cassidy got replaced by David Speers, ABC people get replaced by non-ABC people — and sooner rather than later we have Sinophobic news specials with moody music, too much airtime wasted on Hughsey, Sandilands and Stefanovic, and a repellent tabloid MSG-like shimmer can be seen on the once mighty public broadcaster.

The ABC once had a star factory within the organisation, with an organic workplace ethos, that produced inhouse some of the better journalists in the world. People like Mark Colvin, Caroline Jones and Kerry O’Brien defined the standard at the ABC by living it and bleeding it into the fabric of the organisation.

Now, as the old guard are washed out, they are replaced by former Murdoch heavies and corporate news executives.

These days, David Speers (News Corp), Patricia Karvelas (News Corp) and Clare Armstrong (News Corp), partner with CEO Kim Williams (News Corp, Foxtel) and a constellation of former corporate suits. A new ethos seeps into the organisation.

People like former Nine CEO Hugh Marks (current ABC managing director), see fit to continue the cultural transfer, employing former News Corp finance reporter Alex Turner-Cohen, and hiring London-based writer-at-large for The Nightly Latika Bourke.

Bourke is one of the most hawkish journalists in the country, enjoying her plum job co-presenting the ABC’s Global Roaming programme on Radio National while continuing to write articles for Kerry Stokes that look like they’re proofread by the military industrial complex.

The Shot’s editor Dave Milner recently covered a Pine Gap landback demonstration in the Northern Territory, where a powerful gathering of local Arrernte Indigenous families laid down four demands for land back, closure of the base, reparations, and compensation for the families in Gaza impacted by the base’s opaque operations.

The ABC told what resembled a story, waltzing around the glaring demands reflecting a national groundswell, and reducing the story to an ambiguous, if not futile, demonstration on an empty red desert highway.

Proof the ABC erased Gaza from its Pine Gap coverage         Video: The Sunday Shot

Israeli govt talking points
On the ABC, this is the way things are done now. And it looks like Patricia Karvelas positing Israeli government talking points almost three years into a UN-declared genocide in the name of balance, or a vibe coded report on the virtues of the Ukraine war with a comic book analysis from Matt Bevan, or it’s a rude and misguided gotcha themed interview from Sara Ferguson.

And just as seen outside Pine Gap, the national broadcaster is gaslighting the shit out of us on a raft of crucial issues. So where is the public interest at the ABC?

Is it in the public interest to frame Iran as some form of equal aggressor in the Netanyahu-Trump led conflict in West Asia? Is the community better off entertaining future wars with China with ideologically conflicted journalists who have no idea? Is it objective to run positive narratives on the inevitability of AUKUS, or speak for the Ukrainian and Russian people on their appetite for war, or omit the clear demands of the Arrernte people for the immediate closure of Pine Gap?

Is it in the public interest to move heaven and earth to engineer a curated and macabre middle ground on an open-cut UN declared genocide, in the name of “balance”?

The new ABC hosts private weapons industry investor and former-general Mick Ryan flogging off his drones in one hand while gesticulating towards the need for more endless drone wars with the other. It gives regular airtime to daggy-dad militarist Dr Malcolm Davis spinning his love for movies like Red Dawn into real life fantasies that involve unrealistic military scenarios that have terrible human consequences.

And it provides a runway to Epstein friend and former Israeli PM Ehud Barak to put a spin on his country’s genocide as the Epstein files loom with his name all over them.

Encroaching authoritarianism, sovereign transfer, foreign interference; these are all things good journalists should be working towards unpacking. But not in Australia, where a convergence between the media, business and political classes has morphed our press into subjective stenographers rather than objective truth tellers.

Joining the national decline
It’s devastating to see the national broadcaster, stacked with its corporate media heavies, joining in the national decline, rather than tirelessly working to uncover it and prevent it.

At a time of crisis and uncertainty, with clear power differentials impacting the sovereign independent trajectory of the country, the absence of quality ABC analysis, with conscious critical thinking applied, has hyperaccelerated the demise of the reasonable in the country — giving up sacred ground in the Australian discourse and ceding it to the foreign influenced dark forces that conjure a new image of what this country should look like.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 states within it that it is the responsibility of the ABC to provide innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard within Australia.

Within the ABC Code of Practice, accuracy, impartiality, and fair and honest dealing are listed as key principles. But in 2026, with the country in the state that it is, Australians feel that they are missing an independent national broadcaster to balance the droning hum of misinformation and political dishonesty.

Bringing back the old theme song and changing the blue tint and the classic ABC font won’t cut it. Latika Bourke isn’t George Negus. David Speers’ Sky News prestige doesn’t cut through to the high brow hard politics junkies in Australians who mourn for the lost tones of Barrie Cassidy and Kerry O’Brien and gravitate like husks in the places their voices used to be.

This is why the ABC is failing. It’s been run into the ground by the very people who longed for its demise, the same people who pipe a new paradigm on reluctant ABC consumers and loyal ABC staff that wonder what is going on, and stick around out of habit hoping the revisionists will go away one day.

By accepting orthodoxies from Washington, Tel Aviv, and people linked to the arms trade, we now have the ABC promoting war in Europe, entertaining tensions with China, and accepting the morbid orthodoxies that see military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel in its horrific genocidal sojourns throughout West Asia.

Journalists sacked, staff cautioned
Journalists that highlight that fact are sacked, staff that seek to expand those details are cautioned, exhausted into leaving, or guided into paddocks until they retire and their role can be handed to another wolf in sheep’s clothing from the corporate kennel.

In the process of remodelling the national broadcaster, those responsible have flogged the essence of the ABC. They now flog partial stories Australians need to hear in full, and flog the narratives of the elite and the dangerous at the expense of the truth. Whether it is a gotcha interview on 7.30, the omission of vital public interest information, or a corporate decree that silences staff inside the building itself, the ABC has fallen dramatically and may never get up again.

The abdication of the ABC away from the people and into the arms of the narratives of power is a tragedy for Australia during such consequential times.

For decades the ABC acted as a guardrail, ignored the haters, and fearlessly drove the standard of journalism in Australia. Now, it contributes to the mess, sitting in the pig-sty with the commercial media, so much so it’s hard to tell which is which, such is the stench.

Republished by Pacific Media Watch from The Shot under Creative Commons.

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