Press Council slaps Daily Telegraph for misleading Hamas headline
A headline published by The Daily Telegraph in early December that claimed the Australian Labor party “backs Hamas” has breached the Press Council’s standards of practice.
On December 4, the paper printed an article under the headline: “To keep peace at home, Labor backs Hamas”.
The article reported that foreign affairs minister Penny Wong “is set to strengthen Australia’s support for a two-state-solution in the Middle East by backing a United Nations vote calling for an ‘irreversible pathway’ to the measure after abstaining in recent years, in a move the Coalition claims will further open a rift with Israel”.
The article quoted Israel Senator Dave Sharma as saying the “Albanese government voting for the measure in the UN after abstaining previously was a play for domestic votes” and said the vote was “against our national interests” and “will do nothing to advance the cause of peace in the Middle East.”
The Daily Telegraph rogues’ gallery
The article published further quotes from Sharma which claims this vote will “reward Hamas for its terrorist acts. And they further damage Australia’s relations with an important partner in the Middle East, Israel. Labor is seeking to placate domestic constituencies, rather than putting Australia’s national interests first.”
The Press Council took aim at “the absence of inverted commas to signify a paraphrase or a quote” in the headline, saying it is therefore “presented as statement of fact with the clear implication being that the Labor government is ‘backing’ Hamas.”
The ruling continued: “The Council considers that the headline goes beyond what was said by Senator Sharma in his criticisms of the government support for a two-state-solution in the Middle East. Accordingly, the Council concludes the publication failed to take reasonable steps to ensure factual material is accurate and not misleading.”
The headline was found to have breached the Press Council’s Standards of Practice, “which require publications to take reasonable steps to ensure that factual material is accurate and not misleading.”
In its ruling, the Press Council acknowledged “the limitations of headlines to reasonably reflect the tenor of an article” while noting “publications need to take great care in order to satisfy the reasonable steps standard in the context of heightened community sensitivities around the Israel/Palestine conflict and on matters of significant public interest.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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