The federal court is presently hearing a case to determine whether Antoinette Lattouf was dismissed unfairly three days into her five day contract, or whether, as the ABC maintains, she was not dismissed because she was paid for the full five days of her contract.
The court will hear final arguments in the case at the end of February and, until that decision is brought down, it is premature to attempt a definitive response. But we can already draw some lessons from what we’ve heard about a case that has damaged a talented journalist’s career and harmed the ABC’s reputation.
External organisations, politicians and powerful individuals will always seek to influence the ABC. The lobbying effort to remove Lattouf from her position is the most recent public example of attempted interference, but it's not the only one. In his book, Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment* journalist John Lyons describes the pressure that was applied to his 2014 Four Corners report, Stone Cold Justice – attacks that began before the story was broadcast and continued for three months afterwards (all complaints were dismissed).
The ABC has a good record of pushing back when politicians try to browbeat it. Ita Buttrose robustly defended the ABC’s independence on many occasions during her tenure as ABC Chair. For example, when the Australian Federal Police raided the ABC’s headquarters in Sydney she attacked the police raid as an attempt to intimidate journalists. And in 2020 when the communications minister, Paul Fletcher, demanded she respond to 15 detailed questions about the Four Corners program Inside the Canberra Bubble she staunchly defended the program and its journalists.
That makes it all the more disappointing that Buttrose didn’t resist a concerted email campaign to remove Lattouf. Despite Ita’s protestations, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that she pressured management in order to placate a powerful lobby group. That’s unacceptable.
In any company good governance requires that the Chair act at arms length from management decision-making. This is even more important at the ABC, where responsibility for editorial matters rests with the Editor-in-Chief (who is also the Managing Director).
Like a split screen, the incident has also portrayed the best of the ABC. What other network would have the fortitude to broadcast the criticism that Linton Besser dispensed on Media Watch? Besser didn’t pull any punches when he said that the ABC hung Lattouf out to dry, concluding that:
“The ABC may yet win the case, but if so, it will be a hollow victory. So far it seems clear to us that all it took for the organisation to abandon its most basic obligations to one of its on-air presenters was a three-day email campaign and a single inquiry from The Australian.
You’d forgive the thousands of other ABC staffers across the country for looking over their shoulder from here on in.”
Whenever the ABC yields to external pressure, it risks breaking trust with its staff and its loyal audience.
Trust is the ABC’s currency and once broken it is hard to regain.
When the case has concluded, we encourage the ABC to issue a public affirmation that it will defend its independence, unwaveringly. We need a stern warning that all attempts to interfere in editorial matters by external groups will be ignored and a reminder that complaints should be submitted via the ABC’s standard procedures.
And crucially, as Denis Muller wrote in The Conversation, the most senior levels of ABC editorial leadership should guarantee that they will abide by an editor’s first responsibility “to provide a safe environment within which staff can do good journalism”.
* Lyons, John (2021-10-12T23:58:59.000). Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment (In The National Interest). Monash University Publishing.
Cassandra Parkinson