ABC misses Pentagon meeting on Iran attack before copping Antoinette Lattouf judgement - despite employing 30 legal staff

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2 days ago

At 10 pm (AEST) on Thursday 26 June, the United States Department of Defense held a press briefing at the Pentagon. It was addressed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine. Both men spoke and took questions. The briefing, on the US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, took around 40 minutes.
How does Media Watch Dog know this? – avid readers might ask. Well, it was shown live on Fox News in the US (which is available in Australia on Foxtel). And the Fox coverage was shown live on Sky News (available on Foxtel as well as Sky News Regional).
And what about the ABC? – MWD hears avid readers cry. Well, zilch is the answer. ABC TV continued with its usual (boring) late night programming. And the ABC TV News Channel did not bother to cover the Pentagon gig – and was as dull as usual.
Agree with President Donald J. Trump's decision to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities or not – this was riveting television. Hegseth (a one-time Fox News presenter) criticised sections of the media for their dismissive coverage of the attack. And Caine gave a fascinating account of how the air raid was conducted – covering events of up to 15 years ago.
Retired General Jack Keane described the occasion as one of the most instructive Department of Defense briefings he had ever witnessed. But you would not know this if you watched the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster After Dark (as the saying goes) on 26 June. EDITORIAL YET ANOTHER ABC LEGAL HOWLER
Media Watch Dog was not surprised by Federal Court Justice Darryl Rangiah's decision in Antoinette Lattouf v Australian Broadcasting Corporation which was handed down on 25 June. The judge found that the ABC had contravened the Fair Work Act 2009 by terminating Ms Lattouf's employment in late December 2023.
MWD had this to say on 28 February 2025:
As MWD has maintained from day one on this matter, the ABC should not have employed leftist activist journalist Antoinette Lattouf for five days as a fill-in presenter on ABC Radio Sydney's Mornings program. And it was most unwise for the ABC to terminate her employment after three days of a five-day contract. Both were instances of poor management.
The process went through six lines of management and involved ABC managing director David Anderson and (former) ABC Chair Ita Buttrose – who are currently in disagreement about facts in the case.
Mr Anderson and Ms Buttrose have since left the taxpayer funded public broadcaster as has the ABC's Christopher Oliver-Taylor who was involved in the decision making. Meanwhile the ABC – which has a legal staff of around 30 – has ended up paying more than $1 million dollars in compensation and costs.
Meanwhile Ms Lattouf remains an activist journalist – saying this after Justice Rangiah's judgment was delivered: 'I was punished for my political opinion. I won't be taking any questions. I'll have more to say in due time. Thank you.'
That's all well and good. Ms Antoinette Lattouf was not employed for her political opinions. However, she was treated much more harshly than some high-profile ABC journalists who proclaim their political opinions. CAN YOU BEAR IT?
You've heard about the ABC – as in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But what about the ABC – as in the Always Bryant & Curran?
As avid Media Watch Dog readers will recall, as recently as 14 June, Ellie's (male) co-owner drew attention to the political love-in between ABC presenter and former BBC journo Nick Bryant and the Professor of Modern History at Sydney University, James Curran. The reference was to a discussion on ABC Radio National's Saturday Extra about your man Curran's book The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire – which is the outpouring of an alienated member of the leftist intelligentsia concerning Australia's (alleged) faults.
It was one of those familiar events on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster where the left-of-centre Bryant agreed with the left-of-centre Curran and, in time, the learned professor – well, you get the picture.
On Saturday 21 June, Saturday Extra ran a segment titled 'Influence and Ignorance: A Short history of snubbed Aussie PMs'. The guest was James Curran and presenter Nick Bryant.
It would seem that this ABC duo believes that the Australia-United States alliance can be judged with respect to the personal relationships between Australian prime ministers and the US presidents.
In any event, this is how Comrade Bryant kicked off the discussion. Or bounced-the-ball as they would say in Australian Football League language:
Nick Bryant: Now this weekend, the analysis pages of the newspapers should have been full of commentary on Anthony Albanese's first sit-down meeting with Donald Trump. But it didn't happen, of course. Because the US president left the G7 summit in Canada early to deal with the escalating war between Israel and Iran. Instead, there have been a rash of headlines about the Australian prime minister being snubbed. It's not the first time the press have seized upon the perceived slighting of an Aussie PM. Jimmy Carter called Malcolm Fraser, 'John'. Richard Nixon reportedly had to ask William McMahon how to pronounce his surname. And when he announced the AUKUS Defence Pact, Joe Biden seemed initially to struggle to recall Scott Morrison's name.
Joe Biden: I want to thank – uh – that fella down under. Thank you very much, pal. Appreciate it Mr Prime Minister.
Nick Bryant: But does all this get a little bit overblown?
Well yes, it does. But this did not stop the Bryant/Curran discussion from extending for a further 15 minutes and 30 seconds.
Soon after, Bryant acknowledged that the formal name of Australia's 22nd prime minister was John Malcolm Fraser. He already had conceded that President Biden, who was cognitively challenged at the time, remembered Scott Morrison's name after a ten-second, er, senior moment.
As to whether President Nixon asked William McMahon how to pronounce his name – who knows? In any event, the US president might have been distracted by Sonia McMahon's dress – which was described by the Powerhouse Collection – 'Straight bodied, full-length evening gown…. Long slit sleeves decorated with a ladder-effect of rhinestones. The dress is slit from the underarm to the hem with an infill of flesh-coloured nylon fabric with bands of rhinestones extending from the underarm to the hip.' MWD avid readers might like to know this – it is certainly more interesting than yet another Bryant/Curran discussion.
Then the learned professor (who is also the Australian Financial Review's 'international affairs expert') spoke about how Prime Minister John Gorton was denied 'a private sandwich with the president' which Prime Minister Harold Holt had previously experienced. Yawn. But it went on and on. Including this piece of trivia:
Nick Bryant: And George Herbert Walker Bush actually tells the story of being reduced to tears when he delivered an address in the parliament in Canberra and saw his old friend Bob Hawke not sat in the Prime Minister's chair but on the back benches. [Interesting – I thought G.W.H Bush died in 2018. Maybe he was communicating from the other side via the psychic John Edward – MWD Editor.]
James Curran: Yeah. Well, that's right. I think, as I said, the expectation was that he and Hawke would continue the chemistry. But as I said, he [Bush] got [Paul] Keating [who had replaced Hawke as prime minister] and then [Bush] went up and vomited in the lap of the Japanese prime minister.
Nick Bryant: The famous moment which may even have cost George Herbert Walker Bush the presidency. [He] went on to lose that election in 1992, of course….
Go on. And they did. Comrade Curran went on to state and re-state his familiar critique of the Australian-American Alliance. Along the way, he had this to say about how/when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should/could meet President Donald J. Trump. Let's go to the transcript:
James Curran: …it's almost as if the nation's prestige and honour has been affronted. But you know, I mean, if you look back in history, it often has taken a good six months, sometimes longer for an Australian prime minister to secure a meeting, an initial meeting, with an American president. So, the kind of, the kind of hair pulling and hand wringing that's going on now, I think frankly, it's a little bit immature. I think it's a sign of a kind of almost a dedicated provincialism to the place sometimes. We just can't seem to rise above it. We panic. And the alarm bells go off.
Which raises the question. How much hyperbole can an AFR international affairs expert drop into a couple of sentences? However, it continued with the learned professor telling listeners – if listeners there were – Australia 'can't keep sort of getting its knickers in a twist'. At this time, it being around 8.30 am (aka Hangover Time on a Saturday) MWD threw the switch to Zzzzzzz. He woke up asking: Can You Bear It?
Media Watch Dog just loves it when ABC journalists interview ABC journalists on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster. And so Ellie's (male) co-owner was thrilled – absolutely thrilled – when he found out that the ABC's Patricia Karvelas was to interview the ABC's Raf Epstein on the ABC's Politics Now podcast. It's the sort of thing that gives (political) incest a bad name – but it's great for Ellie's (male) co-owner.
Now Comrade Epstein also stars in this issue's hugely popular 'A Moment' segment – in this instance, 'A Raf Epstein Moment' (re which see below).
No surprise then that the Raf/PK exchange went to air on Monday – the day after Comrade Epstein appeared on Insiders . He seems to be in demand by ABC types to talk about Iran and Israel.
It turned out that he repeated on Monday much of what he said on Insiders on Sunday. Including the point that Trump had once misspelled the nuclear facility of Fordow as Forgo on a Truth Social post. Yawn. And he criticised Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu but not Iran's Sayyid Ali Khamenei. And he quoted from Tucker Carlson. Yawn again. Here we go:
Raf Epstein: And if I can end on a final point, Tucker Carlson got a brief mention over the weekend, and we glossed over him on Insiders. We're in a bad place if someone like that, who I don't actually regard as a good-faith actor in the American media landscape, if he's the only one saying to a proponent of war, "do you actually understand the country you seek to topple?" That's really important. I can't name every ethnic group in Iran –
Patricia Karvelas: No, but I've got to say on that, that clip between, that went viral, between Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz, what alarmed me is that I definitely could answer more of the questions than Ted Cruz. Wasn't that alarming, though? This is a lawmaker.
Raf Epstein: In some ways it comes as a lawmaker because I would always expect you to answer more questions than a Senator from Texas.
It's not accurate to describe Senator Cruz as a 'proponent of war'. After all, he merely supported a military air strike on Iran's nuclear capacity. The Trump administration has no intention of going to war with Iran. Moreover, Iran would be a nuclear threat whether it had a population of 10 million or 100 million. Cruz did not know the answer to Carlson's question about Iran's population but this was a mere 'media gotcha' moment.
As to Comrade Epstein's put-down of Texas senators – this raises the question. Is Epstein a snob who is contemptuous of the American South? And here's another question: Can You Bear It?
As avid MWD readers well know, Hendo loves ABC programs with a left-wing tendency and a lack of viewpoint diversity. Why? Because they provide lotsa copy for Ellie's (male) co-owner.
Consequently, ABC Radio National's Late Night Live is a MWD fave because it's invariably 'Late Night Left'. Unfortunately, Laura ('the Morrison government was into ideological bastardry') Tingle has changed roles and exited LNL. She is now the ABC's Global Affairs Editor and – as such – intent on explaining Australia to the world, as she put it. A big task, to be sure. But, as the saying goes (or went), someone's gotta do it.
MWD expects that the Conservative Free Zone will select another left-of-centre type to do the Australian national politics slot on Mondays. This leaves the Tuesday American politics slot to the left-of-centre Bruce Shapiro and the Wednesday British politics slot to the left-of-centre Ian Dunt.
But, MWD digresses – not for the first time.
On Tuesday 24 June, Late Night Live presenter David Marr interviewed an ex-ABC journalist, the left-of-centre Andrew Fowler. Discussion turned on the new edition of Comrade Fowler's book on Julian Assange titled The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and his secret White House deal for freedom.
Andrew Fowler is a member of the Julian Assange Fan Club. While on Ellie's Late Night Walk, Hendo tuned into the Marr/Fowler exchange which was described by the ABC as follows:
A year ago this week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released from prison after a 14-year fight for freedom. Assange accepted a guilty plea of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. documents in exchange for being returned home to Australia. But how did this deal come about and what happened in the lead-up to his return home? Journalist Andrew Fowler shares the inner-dealings and joins the dots on the backstory of the negotiations to release Assange.
On the way home, Ellie's (male) co-owner noticed that Comrade Fowler had not made any reference to Comrade Assange's woman problem. However, towards the end of the interview, the issue was raised by David Marr. Let's go to the transcript:
David Marr: Do the Swedish charges that were eventually abandoned, the accusations of sexual misconduct. Do those still hang over his reputation?
Andrew Fowler: They do hang over his reputation, yeah, and they shouldn't.
David Marr: What are his plans now? What's he going to do?
Andrew Fowler: By the way, [the UN] Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer actually nailed that whole story of the, of the women and Assange in Sweden and what happened. And it's a long and complicated read. But his view, his view, was that this should not be proceeded with any further and he was quite strong in his condemnation of the way the whole process operated….
David Marr: Fair enough.
Is it? The fact is that Assange's long incarceration in Britain's Belmarsh Prison was primarily due to the Swedish charges (as David Marr described them). By the way, MWD takes no position on the allegations against Assange – only that they were made and affected his long incarceration.
In Human Rights Watch on 16 April 2019, Heather Barr (the associate director of the HRW's Women's Rights Division) described the situation as follows – note that HRW was broadly supportive of Assange.
When WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange was arrested in London last week so he could face charges in the US, it raised deep concerns around media freedom. Amid these concerns, however, let's remember that Assange is also accused of rape. Assange fled to London's Ecuador embassy seven years ago to escape pending extradition proceedings that would have seen him returned to Sweden to face charges of unlawful coercion, sexual molestation, and rape, based on allegations by two women. He stayed in the embassy since then, he says, because Sweden would not guarantee against his onward extradition to the US, should the US wish to prosecute him for leaking diplomatic cables.
As Assange sheltered in the embassy, beyond the reach of law enforcement, the statute of limitations expired on the charges of unlawful coercion and sexual molestation, meaning that they can no longer be prosecuted because so much time has passed. The rape charge was shelved, but can be restored until its statute of limitations expires in August 2020. It is the Swedish prosecutor's job to determine whether to seek Assange's extradition to Sweden under a European Arrest Warrant (EAW).
In short, Assange ended up in Belmarsh Prison because he skipped bail. This is a serious offence under English law. He remained in prison while extradition proceedings were underway.
As former British prime minister Lord Cameron (aka David Cameron) put it on ABC TV's Insiders on 21 March 2024 when interviewed by Sarah Ferguson:
Sarah Ferguson : You don't want to see him extradited to the US?
David Cameron: I think there are legal processes that need to be gone through. I think, you know, part of this [delay] is because Assange himself decided to camp in the Ecuadorian embassy for years on end. That was unnecessary. He should have faced his accusers earlier, in my view.
This point is frequently overlooked by members of the Julian Assange Fan Club. In 2010 Sweden sought Assange's extradition to face sexual assault charges with respect to two women. Assange, who was living in Britain, was arrested but bailed. Assange skipped bail and obtained entry into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2012. Andrew Fowler did not mention Assange breaking bail in his LNL interview. Can You Bear It?
Here's how the Sydney Morning Herald's headings covered the US attack on Iran nuclear facilities between Monday 23 June and Thursday 26 June.
This gives a pretty clear idea of where the powers-that-be at Nine's SMH stand on this issue. Can You Bear It? A RAF EPSTEIN MOMENT IN WHICH ABC PRESENTER RAF EPSTEIN RANTS AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP
Did anyone see Raf Epstein in rant mode on ABC TV Insiders last Sunday? Comrade Epstein was on-the-couch with Phil Coorey ( Australian Financial Review ) and the zany Samantha Maiden ( news.com.au ). David ('Please call me Speersy') Speers was the presenter. Coorey and Maiden made sensible and considered comments about the Israel/Iran War. Not so much with the others. Let's go to the transcript early in the program:
David Speers: So, Raf, the pressure is building on Iran. But the pressure is also building on Donald Trump who has to make what's a difficult decision.
Raf Epstein: It's pretty scary to be honest, seeing him say, "I don't care what the intelligence community thinks". I don't know any intelligence, I don't know of any American intelligence assessment that says what he says, what Bibi Netanyahu says…
David Speers: Ann Coulter's quote about Donald Trump – that he's like a sofa, he bears the impression of the person who last sat on him. You just hope that it's not Netanyahu that he was listening to. The Israelis can make a case, and you can make a case for why something should happen. But the very first basic steps of, what does the intelligence actually say? I mean, that's that does seem to be something that's absent from the conversation.
What a load of absolute tosh. As to Ann Coulter's comment about President Donald J. Trump 'resembling a sofa in that he hears the impression of the person who last sat on him', it is not only as old as Methuselah. It's also inaccurate. Trump does not act in accordance with the view of the last person to whom he talked. [I remember that DLP Senator Vince Gair used the sofa/impression put-down against Liberal Party leader Billy Snedden half a century ago. And it wasn't new even then. – MWD Editor.] Also, the message from the Second Gulf War of recent memory is that United States intelligence agencies make errors.
The discussion continued:
Phil Coorey: Well, they [Israel] don't want a country [Iran] sworn to their destruction having nuclear weapons. And they don't want them to have the wherewithal to build those weapons.
Raf Epstein: And they [Israel] can make that argument. That's fine if they want to make that argument… But what is completely absent from the discussion, and as much as I love my colleagues, and you know, I'm talking about my friends as well as my colleagues, there has been not a single question about whether or not what Israel is doing is illegal. I have not seen Penny Wong or Anthony Albanese – no one asked that question.
Comrade Epstein is an example of a taxpayer-funded journalist at the Conservative Free Zone that is the ABC criticising a Labor government – from the left.
By this time your man Epstein was somewhat garrulous – and engaged in vigorous arm movements to give emphasis to what became an anti-Israel rant:
Raf Epstein: The issue is, how does the world deal with the problem? And Israel's great at escalating conflicts….
Your man Epstein continued:
Raf Epstein: The concern is also, and, I mean, it's a bit embarrassing as well. It takes Tucker Carlson, who's a charlatan in many respects, but it takes someone like him to expose –
Samantha Maiden: You're on the Tucker bandwagon again are you?
Raf Epstein: Well, you know how much I love him. But he's someone who's exposing that how weak and pale and shallow the American understanding is of Iran….
How about that? Raf Epstein favourably quoted Tucker Carlson's (alleged) knowledge of Iran. This is the same Tucker Carlson who exhibited woeful ignorance about the late Soviet Union and contemporary Russia in his fawning interview with Vladimir Putin in February 2024. David Speers made this point at the end of Epstein's comment re Carlson.
Soon after, Comrade Epstein channelled Carlson – who had asked Senator Ted Cruz about the population of Iran – with this question:
Raf Epstein: …Here's a pop quiz. Are Persians, a majority ethnic group or a minority ethnic group in Iran?
Phil Coorey: Wouldn't have a clue.
Raf Epstein: Right. Exactly. We're all talking about the fate of that country. Can I, I had to look up another ethnic group - I know there's Arabs and Kurds and Turkmen and Assyrians, but I have to look that up on Google .
It is widely known that Iran is a majority Persian nation with very few Arab residents. But what matters in this context is not the size or composition of Iran's population – but rather whether the theocracy controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has the capacity to produce nuclear weapons.
Then, near the end of Insiders , Speersy read out the breaking news that the US had attacked the Iranian nuclear family at Fordow. At this time, Epstein became a military expert:
[Speers reads out Trump's Truth Social post about bombing Iran]
David Speers: Well, that is some big, big news.
Raf Epstein: That's a full plane load? Because there's two bombs per B2.
Phil Coorey: Whatever.
Raf Epstein: Well, no, it's important –
David Speers: A full payload of bombs was dropped on the primary site Fordow.
Raf Epstein: Because the speculation was that you need more than one plane because you need to drop a series of those bombs so that they get down and actually successfully destroy Fordow.
David Speers: Well, we'll see how successful it was. That is a big, big development right at the end of our show. Let's get some quick Final Observations…
This is how your man Epstein commenced his final observation:
Raf Epstein: He [Trump] misspelt Fordow on his social media site as "Forgo" – which personally I find a little bit terrifying, but interesting breaking news….
It turned out that the US had sent seven B-2 Bombers to Iran which dropped a total of 14 bombs – not one as implied by Epstein.
So, there you have it. The presenter of Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne was terrified that President Trump had once made a typo by spelling Fordow as 'Forgo'. Really. [Come to think of it, your man Epstein's 'terrifying' moment may have been due to an autocorrect function. – MWD Editor.]
Verily – A Raf Epstein Moment. AN ABC UPDATE
On ABC Radio National Breakfast in 2025, ABC management has decided it is a good idea to get Melissa ('Please call me Mel') Clarke to comment on political interviews after they concluded – so much so that RN Breakfast has almost become the Mel Clarke Show. This is what she had to say, after New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters was interviewed on Wednesday 25 June, concerning his view of the US bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities.
Melissa Clarke: I did find it interesting that he [Peters] said that, you know, where he does have these concerns about the legality, that it's something that he would relay in private. It kind of put off a little bing inside my head, because it's only in the last couple of hours that we've seen Donald Trump publish a text message from Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO. And Mark Rutte had sent a very, I think it's fair to describe it as a pretty obsequious text message to Donald Trump…and Donald Trump just posts it on Truth Social. So even if Winston Peters and others do want to raise their concerns in private with Donald Trump, sometimes you just never know where your communications might end up.
Sally Sara: Yeah….
Clarke's analysis was highly opinionated – with reference to the bing within her head and the reference to Rutte's (allegedly) 'pretty obsequious text' to President Trump. It would appear that the powers-that-be at RN believe that listeners are so ill-informed that they need to have interviews conducted by Sally Sara explained to them by Melissa Clarke.
On Radio National Breakfast on Thursday 26 June, Sally Sara interviewed Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley followed by Labor's Minister for Finance Senator Katy Gallagher. Sussan Ley was challenged by Sara. But Katy Gallagher was given soft questions – including an opportunity to criticise Ley:
Sally Sara: Finally, the Opposition leader, Sussan Ley, gave her first major speech at the Press Club yesterday after the federal election – and is talking about having a fresh approach and doing things differently. Have you noticed a shift in the Opposition's approach since the election?
Katy Gallagher: Well, time will tell, I guess. I think it's an important speech she gave yesterday. I think when I looked at the comments that she made about women, I think it is important that these matters are dealt with by the Opposition. I don't think problem identification is the issue, though. I think there's been many a time where problems have been identified about their policy offering, the number of women, how their organisation works. It's actually the next step that matters, which is what are you going to do about it? And I think we'll just have to wait and see whether the rhetoric actually is matched by action.
Sussan Ley was not asked her opinion about Labor's Senator Gallagher. THE FLANN O'BRIEN GONG FOR LITERARY VERBAL SLUDGE
As avid Media Watch Dog readers are aware, this occasional segment is inspired by the Irish humourist Brian O'Nolan (1911-1966) – nom de plume Flann O'Brien – and, in particular, his critique of the sometimes incoherent poet Ezra Pound. By the way, your man O'Brien also had the good sense not to take seriously Eamon de Valera (1882-1975), the Fianna Fail politician and dreadful bore who was prime minister and later president of Ireland for far too long.
The Flann O'Brien Gong for Literary or Verbal Sludge is devoted to outing bad writing or incomprehensible prose or incoherent oral expression or the use of pretentious words – or a combination of all of the above. CHRIS WARREN SCORES FOR A REFERENCE TO HAMMERS, NAILS AND SO ON
Lotsa thanks for the avid West Australian reader who drew MWD's attention to an article in Crikey on 25 June. It was written by Christopher Warren and titled 'The category error behind the ABC's latest 'Back to the Future' reset'. Comrade Warren is a former federal secretary of the Journos' Union – aka the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance.
Essentially your man Warren called for new ABC managing director Hugh Marks to be sacked. Already. It seems that he wants a return of Q+A which was junked under the ABC's new management.
Comrade Warren blamed News Corp, yes News Corp, for the current state of the ABC. Quelle Surprise! But he then threw the switch to written sludge. Here we go:
There's a good rule of thumb at the ABC: if News Corp likes what you're doing, it's probably the wrong thing. The strategy is, in philosophical terms, a category error — the sort you get when the national broadcaster puts a commercial hammer in charge of the delicate knowledge-making network that is the ABC. All of a sudden, diffuse cultural creativity becomes just so many nails to be hammered into the planks of a mass medium.
Clever, eh? But what does it all mean? Well done Comrade Warren – you won the Flann O'Brien award.
Literary Criticism
By Flann O'Brien
of Ezra Pound
My grasp of what he wrote and meant
Was only five or six %
The rest was only words and sound —
My reference is to Ezra £
* * * * *
Literary Criticism
By Ellie
of Chris Warren
My grasp of what he wrote or meant
Was only four or five per cent
Maybe he just took the p***
The reference is to Comrade Chris
****
Until Next Time
****