This is a transcript of a speech I gave at the ‘Stop Work to Stop The War’ protest in Naarm / Melbourne on 4 October 2024. The protest was organised by Unionists for Palestine and Free Palestine Coalition Naarm.
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Thank you!
I’ll start by also acknowledging the owners of the lands on which we’re gathered – the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to Elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty of this land has never been ceded. This always has been and always will be Aboriginal land.
I’m speaking on behalf of MEAA Members for Palestine, a rank and file group of union members in the creative industries which includes journalists. As stated, I’m a freelance photographer and photojournalist. Many of you have no doubt seen me around at these protests over the last year, or otherwise know me from my coverage of these actions.
I’ve been asked to speak about journalists and censorship. The silencing and intimidation of journalists on this continent who have been speaking out publicly against the genocide of Palestinians over this last year has been outrageous.
Senior editorial staff and management of the mainstream media outlets have a lot to answer for as they jump over themselves to use the platforms they manage to justify what’s been happening in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon over the last year as somehow ‘just’ and ‘moral’, without question, while threatening journalists with the loss of their jobs if they dare to speak the truth of what’s happening in Palestine.
Journalists are being pressured and threatened into silence for simply doing their jobs. Something is seriously wrong when journalists have their livelihoods threatened by power holders when they dare to do their jobs, ask the hard questions and hold those power holders to account.
What’s also outrageous is the almost complete silence of the mainstream media on this continent as their colleagues in Gaza are killed in the course of doing their jobs.
Journalists have been deliberately targeted by the Israeli military – a war crime it must be said, just to add to the litany of war crimes being committed against Palestinians – and the media remains silent.
When Roshdi Sarraj, a journalist who had previously worked for the ABC, was murdered by the IOF, the ABC couldn’t muster anything more than a short vague sentence, without elaborating how he was killed, as though he was nothing more than a a mere afterthought. Shame.
Unfortunately none of this is at all surprising when senior staff and editors for the mainstream media outlets have gone on junkets and “paid study tours” to Israel, on the dime of pro Israel and Zionist groups.
How can we trust the media to effectively do its job of informing the public and holding power holders to account, to tell the truth, to call what’s happening in Palestine what it is – a genocide – when the editors and senior staff are effectively compromised?
As one example of lacking journalistic integrity: the Chief Crime Reporter for 7 News Melbourne, who, along with her employer, had been going out of her way to defame anti war protesters as violent – complained on social media about verbal abuse that she had received covering the Disrupt Land Forces protests.
Now I acknowledge that verbal abuse isn’t pleasant – however it takes some incredible middle class privilege and a severe lack of perspective to single out a bit of verbal abuse in isolation, while refusing to acknowledge the plight of your colleagues who are being targeted and killed in Gaza.
Fancy making yourself the main character while your colleagues are being brutalised at home and killed abroad in the course of doing their jobs.
In talking about journalists being brutalised at home, the bit of verbal abuse that the 7 News reporter endured pales in comparison to even the instances of police brutality suffered by numerous journalists on the ground covering the Disrupt Land Forces protests. Here’s but a few examples. During that week:
A photographer sprained their ankle when attempting to escape a police charge and required treatment on the scene from medics.
Another photographer was targeted and shot by police with rubber bullets, losing part of their ear and requiring urgent hospital treatment.
Yet another photographer was deliberately and directly targeted, and hit, with capsicum spray.
Radio broadcasters were impeded from doing their jobs and subjected to repeated random searches by police despite visibly wearing their media credentials.
There are many more examples of this sort of intimidation and brutalisation of journalists.
The likes of Channel 7, 9, 10, the ABC and the Murdoch press can continue to pull the wool over our eyes – however we won’t stand idly by while you continue to lie, purposefully misrepresent this movement and sweep the truth under the rug while silencing those who speak out.
Tell the truth. Say it with me:
Tell the truth! [chant]
Thank you.
Photo: Emma Hartley
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