Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) unlawfully dismissed a radio journalist over a social media post related to Israel’s war on Gaza, a court has said.
The ABC fired radio host Antoinette Lattouf in December 2023 for expressing views supporting Palestine and calling for Israel to end its bombardment of Gaza. The sacking came shortly after she posted on social media a Human Rights Watch report alleging that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
Lattouf took legal action after being dismissed three days into a five-day casual contract with the ABC.
The broadcaster broke employment law by terminating her “for reasons including that she held political opinions opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza”, Federal Court Justice Darryl Rangiah said in his ruling on Wednesday.
ABC senior management’s consternation over the post (by HRW on Instagram) turned into a “state of panic”, the judge said, and a decision was made to take her off the air “within the hour”.
The broadcaster has apologised after being ordered to pay Antoinette Lattouf $70,000 Australian dollars ($45,000) in compensation, with a further financial penalty yet to be decided.
“We regret how the decision to remove Ms Lattouf from air was handled and the distress occasioned her,” ABC managing director Hugh Marks said.
“It’s clear the matter was not handled in line with our values and expectations,” he added in a statement.
“We also let down our staff and audiences, and this failure has caused understandable concern among the public and inside the organisation,” he added.
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, journalists across the globe have been fired for expressing solidarity towards Palestinians.
Jackson Frank, a sports reporter in Philadelphia, was fired by PhillyVoice.com because of his tweets supporting the Palestinian cause.
Zahraa al-Akhrass was dismissed by her employer, Canada’s Global News, due to her social media posts drawing attention to the suffering of the Palestinians.
Kasem Raad was fired from his job at Welt TV, a subsidiary of German media company Axel Springer, for questioning internal pro-Israel policies.
Big Tech companies including Google and Microsoft have also fired employees who have called on the companies to withdraw their support of Israel.
Last April, Google fired 28 employees following a sit-down protest over the tech giant’s contract to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government.
Microsoft also fired two employees for organising a pro-Palestine vigil last year.
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