Australia/Israel Review

ABC Managing Director Hugh Marks’ inaugural National Press Club address (November 19) outlined his benchmarks for quality news and current affairs.

Marks said a journalist’s “task and skill is to select the stories that matter and present the facts and relevant perspectives that equip people to make up their own minds.”

Given the seriousness of the accusation that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza – and the ABC’s influence on public opinion – it is worth considering whether recent coverage meets Marks’ test.

On Oct. 30, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s “Late Night Live” to discuss her latest report, “Gaza Genocide – a Collective Crime.” Host David Marr largely deferred to Albanese as she made a series of sweeping statements.

“I think at the people’s level, yes, never had there been a hiatus so profound between the governments and the people… no one today understands Israel as other than an apartheid state, than a criminal enterprise toward the Palestinians,” she claimed, implying everyone wants Israel punished, but governments are refusing to agree.

However, regular polling on behalf of Nine Newspapers shows that Australians overwhelmingly believe Hamas was responsible for the war and continues to pose a threat. In August 2025, 44% opposed the Federal Government’s proposal to recognise a Palestinian state, while a further 32% agreed, “Australia should wait until Hamas is replaced and/or when Palestine considers recognising Israel’s right to exist first.”

Albanese said she hoped voters would hold Australian politicians accountable for supporting Israel’s “settler colonial apartheid that in the last two years has turned genocidal.”

Marr might reasonably have noted that the Greens were heavily punished at the May 2025 federal election for their extreme, anti-Israel positions. 

Instead, he concurred when Albanese claimed, “Israel has deliberately targeted journalists, doctors, erasing all churches… destroying aid.” Her insistence that “this genocide… has transformed me” and that she had “never been an activist” is contradicted by her long track record of outspoken anti-Israel activism and past employment of antisemitic tropes. But Marr didn’t push back.

The ABC Ombudsman received nine complaints about this interview but rejected all of them. 

One major justification offered was that Marr’s Nov. 2024 interview with Albanese had “canvassed with [her] many of the [complainants’] issues” and remained accessible on the ABC website. 

Another justification was that Marr had interviewed a guest in September 2025 who rejected the genocide accusation. But listening to the relevant portion of that discussion, it’s fleeting and focused on whether the genocide accusation was antisemitic – not on whether it was factually or legally valid. Treating this as adequate balance is a huge stretch.

On Dec. 3, Marr interviewed veteran human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson about his new book World of War Crimes – Eyeless in Gaza and Beyond.

Robertson outlined why he thinks Israel and Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu were guilty of war crimes, including genocide, but then disingenuously urged that Netanyahu had “an arguable defence and he should make it.” 

Robertson did correctly note that one of the central legal challenges with “genocide is that you’ve got to prove a genocidal intent, and you’ve got to prove it very strictly… You’ve got to infer a genocidal purpose from the statements made by leaders.”

He cited as an example of this the case South Africa brought to the International Court of Justice in January 2024, which relied on quotes from Israeli leaders to demonstrate intent. “They led off with quotes from the President and from other commanders about likening the Palestinians to animals who had for that reason to be put down,” Robertson said.

To correct his dismissive attitude, one can read this February 2024 Times of Israel article where the quotes in question are examined. It shows they refer to Hamas fighters as animals – not Palestinian civilians. 

Robertson continued flippantly, “What Israel says is, ‘Oh, we didn’t commit genocide because we were really only concerned to kill Hamas people.’ Politicide, rather than genocide.”

On the final episode of “Late Night Live” for 2025 (Dec. 4), Marr was joined by ABC Global Affairs Editor Laura Tingle, ABC Radio Sydney host Craig Reucassel and independent journalist Hannah Ferguson, who has written many overtly anti-Israel articles. No one contradicted Ferguson when she referred to the “genocide happening against Palestinians.” Instead, the panel praised ABC correspondents – many of whom frequently appear in AIR for their lapses in journalistic standards – for their 2025 war coverage.

Another example of the ABC failing to meet Marks’ benchmark was the Dec. 1 interview with sanctioned ICC Judge Kimberly Prost on “The Radio National Hour.” Prost defended the Court by explaining that the ICC operates according to the principle of complementarity and “can only intervene and will only intervene where there is no state willing and able to do the investigations… But if there’s a valid investigation by a state, the court has no jurisdiction. So, there is no overreach.”

The program did not inform listeners that Israel, like other Western democracies, has a robust legal system, including a powerful and activist Supreme Court and the Military Advocate General (MAG) Corps, which is investigating hundreds of alleged incidents from the current war. Nor did it mention that the Trump Administration sanctioned the Court precisely because it bypassed this complementarity principle in issuing arrest warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant rather than waiting for Israel’s own processes.

There are many more examples, including one-sided interviews broadcast on the ABC with extremist writer Omar El Akkad (see Biblio File). 

The pattern, however, is consistent: sweeping allegations are platformed uncritically, relevant counter-evidence is not raised and guests who assert genocide are almost always given complete deference, without pushback. 

Can Hugh Marks seriously argue this satisfies his criteria for objective journalism?

If the answer is in the affirmative, are we then to presume that what he really means is that audiences should defer to ABC employees who will determine for us exactly what “facts and relevant perspectives” are deemed acceptable?