Gawenda’s call for censorship of activists is alarming, incoherent and betrays journalism

In Michael Gawenda’s attack last week on “activist” journalists and media employees for signing an open letter expressing solidarity with Palestine, it’s hard to know what offends him more — the content of the letter, or the fact that the signatories refer to themselves as “media workers” rather than “journalists”. In the end, however, the much-awarded journalist, editor and founding director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism suggests they’re “social-justice warriors, anti-racism warriors, anti-colonialist warriors” rather than journalists. He wants them banned by their outlets from covering Middle Eastern issues, and he wants media outlets to ban staff from signing “letters and petitions”, or from being “promoters of any cause”.

Gawenda, however, has only been moved to this position by an open letter critical of Israel — he also cites a similar 2021 open letter critical of coverage of Israel and Palestine, signed by journalists, including myself and other Crikey staff members.

No other open letters seem to have drawn any comment from him. Not the open letter signed by some of Australia’s most prominent journalists a couple of months ago condemning the government’s treatment of whistleblowers. Nor the one two years ago calling for the Chinese regime to release Australian journalist Cheng Lei. Nor one in 2019 in the wake of police raids on Annika Smethurst and the ABC. Nor one signed by an array of journalists against the Turnbull government’s consideration of privatising the ASIC company database. Nor, for that matter, one that I and Lizzie O’Shea coordinated about Julian Assange in 2011, which was signed by several prominent broadcasters and journalists.

Are some open letters by journalists OK, then? Are open letters about the conduct of journalism itself OK? Or is any promotion of any cause, to use Gawenda’s words, unacceptable? What about the section of the offending MEAA Members for Palestine letter that deplores the killing of dozens of journalists in IDF attacks in Gaza? Is that bit OK, but the rest not?

For Gawenda, “being a journalist implies an adherence to certain values and ethical principles. Like fairness, like factual accuracy, like making sure you are not — and could not be seen to be — pushing an agenda, being an activist for a cause.” In contrast, he derides the 2021 open letter, which called for the media to “no-longer prioritise the same discredited spokespeople and tired narratives” and — Gawenda’s phrasing now — “instead make space for the Palestinians who are the victims in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. I assume that included making space for Hamas?”

It’s a strange, snide comment from the man The Age asked to review its Indigenous coverage over the decades and who rightly concluded: “the absence of Indigenous voices skewed the telling of the stories about the lives of Aboriginal people, of what happened to them and their communities”. That sounds a lot like something you’d read in an open letter, from an activist. Should we make space for Indigenous voices, but not for Palestinian voices?

And what about the fact that Australian commercial media has almost completely ignored the dramatic escalation in Israeli colonists’ attacks on West Bank Palestinians this year, and especially since October 7? On Saturday — reflecting the reality that Israeli terrorism intended to drive Palestinians out of their homeland has emerged as a major point of difference between the Biden administration and Israel — President Biden said the US would impose sanctions on settlers involved in violence. Yet anyone reading the publications Gawenda used to write for and edit would be virtually clueless that there was even any increase in violence in the West Bank, let alone the US reaction.

Once you start touting fairness and accuracy as what separates you from the “social-justice warriors, anti-racism warriors, anti-colonialist warriors”, you’re on dangerous ground. Is News Corp fair and accurate? Do the people who write for News Corp qualify as journalists when they follow the editorial line to propagandise against Labor, pursue vendettas against progressives, and generally punch downward? That’s not pushing an agenda or promoting a cause?

Or what about the publication Gawenda chose for his op-ed, the Financial Review? That outlet is a vehicle for unashamed attacks on Australian workers and trade unions, and a propaganda outlet for Australian business to peddle the same snake-oil “economic reform” it’s been pushing for generations. Still, better a shill for big business than “social-justice warriors”, it seems.

The mainstream media’s biases are never stated in an open letter or declared at the bottom of an article. They masquerade as “fair” and “accurate”, misleading their readers and audiences. At least those who put their name to an open letter have indicated, permanently, what their views are to audiences.

The issue that Gawenda doesn’t grapple with is that, as surely he knows, journalism is about power, both in the way it is performed and in what it covers. Journalists in Australia are likely to work for either a public broadcaster or a handful of large media companies in our highly concentrated media market. Those companies wield significant power and are unafraid to use it in their own interests, including via their journalism. Journalism itself is a position of relative power — journalists have access, they have influence, and their voices are amplified by the media.

What journalism covers is, or should be, all about power. If it is anything beyond flat reportage, it must interrogate power, it must seek to expose it, and it must be relentlessly sceptical of the claims of those with power. Journalists must be activists in holding power to account, otherwise they are simply props for the status quo, in constant danger of misleading their audiences by failing to expose the agendas of those in power.

It’s thus curious that Gawenda rails at “anti-racism warriors, anti-colonialist warriors”, and what he terms “the crude jargon of anti-colonialism” (why didn’t you just say “woke”, Michael?). Is the “fair” and “accurate” stance of the journalist to be neutral about racism and colonialism? What about misogyny or homophobia? Climate denialism? Does the true journalist purport to float above them all with a position of perfect neutrality?

That’s impossible, of course. Individuals, the companies they work for and the institutions within which they operate are shaped by social, cultural and political systems. There were no more neutral journalists in some golden age of pre-internet 20th-century media than there are now. The Australian media and its journalist class were infested with misogyny, racism and homophobia, yet its members would have insisted they were adherents of a code of ethics and commitment to fairness.

It’s easy to mock the often risible descent into identity politics and self-obsession that mark some progressive journalism now. But in a country like Australia — of all places — how can journalists not seriously scrutinise power in the context of racism and colonialism? Just months after the defeat of the Voice to Parliament referendum, are we to not question the extent and nature of racism and the legacy of colonialism? Or is that “promoting a cause”?

For one of Australia’s most esteemed journalists and editors, as well as a former leader of a high-profile journalism institution, Michael Gawenda appears curiously unreflective about his profession and craft. The result is a piece equal parts “get off my lawn” and demand for censorship, along with the advocacy of a style of journalism more likely to prop up power than challenge it.