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Submission FPM-TAU written by Lorel Thomas, with Free Palestine Melbourne, in response to the UN Special Rapporteur OPT’s call for input on the role of media in the context of Israel’s policies and practices toward the Palestinian people, especially after 7 October 2023.

Introduction

This submission addresses the role of The Australian — Australia’s only national daily broadsheet newspaper and flagship of News Corp Australia — in shaping public understanding of the genocide in Gaza and the broader Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 7 October 2023.

According to a GetUp survey, News Corporation (News Corp) — controlled by Rupert Murdoch — owns a 59% share of Australian metropolitan and national print media markets by readership. The Australian alone had an audience of 5 million people in September 2025.

Four of Australia’s eight capital cities — Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin — have no competition in their print news; the only available paper in those markets is owned by News Corp.

When one proprietor’s personal and financial commitments to one conflict party (in this case Israel) are as extensively documented as those of Rupert Murdoch, the question of institutional editorial line is not merely plausible: it is directly evidenced.

In September 2023, Rupert Murdoch announced his step-down from News Corp and Fox Corporation; his son Lachlan succeeded him and has developed his own close ties to Israel.

Free Palestine Melbourne (FPM) has conducted continuous daily monitoring of The Australian since 2021; a small team monitors mainstream Australian media for items relating to Palestine and Israel, produces a report, and calls for letters in response to specific items. We have had some considerable success in having letters published in other papers, but The Australian has been impenetrable. In addition, we have produced an annotated survey of 228 articles published in The Australian between May and August 2025, and a further, smaller structured analysis of approximately 30 articles published between January and March 2026. Across both periods, the pattern is consistent and escalating.

Additionally, The Australian is part of the Murdochs’ broader global media empire that has been integral to obscuring Israel’s genocide across the Anglophone world, and this submission should be understood as part of a larger matrix of media complicity.

The Proprietorial Foundation

Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Australian, has stated: “My ventures in media are not as important to me as spreading my personal political beliefs”. He described News Corp as “a reflection of my thinking, my character, and my values.” He has also described left-wing criticism as “the most virulent” form of antisemitism, one which “dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel.”

His financial interests have aligned with his stated views. Murdoch served on the advisory board of Genie Energy, a company granted exclusive drilling rights in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, giving him a direct financial interest in Israeli territorial control. He also purchased an equity stake in that company.

The structural consequence is that The Australian operates within a framework in which the proprietor has publicly identified support for Israel as a personal moral imperative and criticism of Israel as a form of hatred — and has described his media operations as the vehicle for his beliefs.

Insider Testimony: The Mechanism of Influence

The most detailed account of how proprietorial position translates into editorial culture comes from John Lyons, a Walkley Award-winning journalist who spent six years as The Australian’s Jerusalem correspondent. His 2021 book Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment (Monash University Publishing, 2021) documents, from direct experience, the mechanisms by which lobby influence and editorial culture combine to constrain coverage.

In 2015, The Australian hired a young Palestinian journalist and Lyons worked closely with her. Israeli diplomats lobbied the editor about her employment and she was shouted at and told that there was no such place as Palestine. Relentless pressure finally wore her down and she resigned from The Australian.

Lyons documents a 2017 incident in which the Executive Director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) emailed journalists who had attended a Netanyahu briefing on settlement expansion, instructing them the contents should remain secret and supplying an AIJAC-prepared fact sheet for their reports. No account of Netanyahu’s actual briefing was published (pp. 18-21).

Lyons reports the editorial hostility Palestinian-Australian Professor Bassam Dally faced when seeking to publish articles from a Palestinian perspective in The Australian (pp. 51-53).

Lyons states: “Having worked at News Corp for seventeen years, I know there are only three people who can tell the editors of The Australian what they can or can’t use: Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch and [AIJAC Executive Director] Colin Rubenstein. Only one of them doesn’t have Murdoch as his surname” (p. 22).

Twenty-three editors, senior journalists and reporters confirmed to Lyons, on the record, that lobby influence on Israel–Palestine coverage was a real phenomenon.

Content Analysis: Evidence of Institutional Editorial Line

The content evidence does not rest on any single incident or columnist. Across two distinct monitoring periods totalling more than 260 items, The Australian has produced coverage that is uniform in its pro-Israel framing to a degree that cannot be explained by chance, individual judgment, or the available news evidence.

Zero Counter-Framing Across Monitored Periods

In our January–March 2026 analysis of approximately 30 items, every single article and letter was pro-Israel in framing. Not one item:

1. presented Palestinian perspectives sympathetically or neutrally;
2. questioned Israeli military conduct or policy;
3. treated Palestinian civilian casualties as a primary subject; or
4. interviewed Palestinian community members in Australia.

This is not statistical noise. Across approximately ten weeks, zero counter-framing appeared. The May–August 2025 survey of 228 human-annotated articles confirms the same pattern across a longer period.

A Dominant Organising Narrative: The ‘Antisemitism Crisis’ Frame

The overwhelming majority of articles across both periods are organised around a single narrative: Australia is experiencing a surge of antisemitism, driven by pro-Palestine activism, the cultural left, and/or Islam. This frame:

1. systematically conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism — documented across pieces by Colin Rubenstein (#2), Brendan O’Neill (#2), Janet Albrechtsen (#2), Julie Szego (#2), Greg Sheridan (#2), and Nick Cater (#2), plus at least 22 editorials and opinion pieces;
2. attributes antisemitism to pro-Palestine movements without evidence or Palestinian source voices; and
3. deploys emotionally loaded language: “Jew hate”, “Hate Brigade”, wearing a keffiyah is described as “supporting terrorists”, Hamas described as “creatures of evil”; and “a group of ideological maniacs that doesn’t believe Jews have the right to exist” — with no equivalent register applied to Palestinian suffering.

The same language and the same attribution of causality appear across editorials, opinion columns, news reports and letters. This is consistent with an institutional frame, not a coincidence of individual editorial choices.

Denial of Genocide and Starvation, and Death Toll Minimisation

Several specific items demonstrate how the paper’s editorial board and opinion pages have denied documented genocide, famine, and Palestinian civilian status, across many months and authors.

On 17 May 2025, one piece deployed a common genocide-denial trope: “The term genocide is used to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza when the latter’s population has been growing faster than Israel’s”. Weeks later, as the recorded Gaza death toll rose above 54,770, the same columnist recast Israeli restraint from total annihilation as evidence of benevolence: “if Israel wanted to be rid of Gazans it could have carpet-bombed the Strip in a matter of weeks”, adding that “the only reason anyone is alive in Gaza after 20 months of war is because Israel has avoided targeting civilians”.

In June 2025, an editorial described the UN’s reporting of starvation in Gaza as evidence of “despicable bias against Israel”, while another minimised documented settler violence in the West Bank and criticised Australia’s foreign minister for condemning it. On 1 August 2025, as outrage rose over the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid “death trap”, a regular columnist inverted the documented direction of starvation: “The only people who have been systemically, deliberately starved in Gaza are the hostages.” On 22 August 2025, the IPC confirmed Famine (Phase 5) in Gaza Governorate.

The Australian actively obscured this war crime. On 20 August 2025, a piece by former US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft described the “charges that Israel is engaged in a policy of deliberate starvation in Gaza” as “utterly false”. Despite reports two weeks earlier of leaked cabinet transcripts confirming Israel chose to starve Gaza as a strategy of war (4 Aug, 5 Aug), The Australian published Craft’s denial as fact, and never retracted it.

A February 2026 Culture piece by The Australian’s national art critic acknowledges a death toll of “over 70,000” as a brief aside, then argues that protests responding to those deaths constitute evidence of eliminationist antisemitic intent. The genocide frame is not only denied — it is inverted.

The editorial line is clearly apparent over time: continued denial and minimisation, in the face of accumulating evidence of genocide, starvation, and other atrocities.

Laundering of Israeli Official Statements

News coverage in the monitored periods consistently presents Israeli government and military statements without critical framing, contextualisation, or counter-voice. A 17 June 2025 news report presents Netanyahu’s stated justifications for Israeli military action as virtually a press release, the print headline quoting him: “‘Our battle against evil is a service to humanity’”.

On 10 June 2025, the Australian government imposed Magnitsky-style sanctions on Israeli ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir for inciting violence against Palestinians. Within days, The Australian’s opinion pages rejected the sanctions as “performative paternalism” and “activist grandstanding”; two months later, the news desk flatly reported Smotrich’s suggestion that starving two million Palestinians “might be just and moral”. Once again, The Australian, by amplifying the perpetrator’s words, is complicit in the suffering of Palestinians.

The February 2026 state visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog — named by the UN Commission of Inquiry for inciting genocide — was an act of Australian complicity in normalising Israeli conduct. The Australian played a central role, cheerleading the visit and laundering Herzog’s statements; a February 2026 article presented his framing of Palestinian “brainwashing” as credible geopolitical analysis.

This pattern — Israeli officials’ statements reported as news while international criminal law context is systematically absent — extends across news, opinion and editorial formats. It is consistent across journalists and time periods, suggesting it reflects editorial policy rather than individual failure.

Letters Pages as Editorial Curation

Letters-to-the-editor are not merely readers’ opinions: editors choose which letters are published, and so manufacture the picture of public sentiment. The letters pages of The Australian over the monitored periods are therefore direct evidence of institutional editorial line.

Across our monitored period, the letters pages mirror the opinion pages. On 29 July 2025, after Albanese condemned Israel’s starvation of Gaza as a breach of international law, all five letters defended Israel and blamed Hamas. On 5 August, all five letters attacked the pro-Palestinian Sydney Harbour Bridge March for Humanity. On 9 August, all Israel–Palestine letters were pro-Israel. On 12 August, all six letters attacked Australia’s planned recognition of Palestine.

A full-text NewsBank search of The Australian’s letters pages between July and September 2025 returns 112 results mentioning Israel, Palestine, Gaza or Hamas. Of these, the headlines and preview text of approximately 105 are unambiguously pro-Israel, anti-Palestine recognition, or frame the conflict exclusively through Israeli victimhood. Zero are critical of Israel’s military conduct, mention Palestinian civilian casualties sympathetically, or reference international law findings.

Letters characterise Palestinian statehood as a “myth,” describe genocide as “demonstrably false,” deploy language including “Jew hate” and “barbarism,” and an article characterising reports of starving children in Gaza as propaganda is echoed and amplified in letters. No letter presenting a Palestinian perspective, or questioning Israeli military conduct, appears across the monitored period.

This ratio — 105 to zero across three months — is remarkably direct evidence of editorial curation: 300,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for Palestine during this period, yet not one sympathetic voice reached the letters page.

Front-Page Headlines Used to Delegitimise Public Protests and Demands

Reporting on the March for Humanity, The Australian’s main news report was front-paged with the print headline “‘Bridge to peace’ march marred by hate signs and Hamas horror” — editorialising an historic event of 300,000 people via two negatives: hate signs and traffic disruption. The same day, Sydney Morning Herald led with “Sydney says ‘enough’”; the Guardian Australia with “Sea of people march across Sydney Harbour Bridge calling for an end to killing in Gaza”.

Front-page headlines have also been used to weaponise public tragedy and smear opponents. On 14 December 2025, 15 people were killed at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration by gunmen claiming inspiration from Islamic State. Within hours, Israeli PM Netanyahu, Australia’s federal Opposition, and Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism attributed the attack to Australia’s recognition of Palestine and anti-genocide protests. On 22 December, hundreds of anti-Zionist Jewish/Israeli- Australians and allies held peaceful gatherings in Sydney and Melbourne opposing this weaponisation; The Australian reported with the front-page headline “PRO-GAZA GHOULS”. A national broadsheet attacked Jewish Australians for showing solidarity with Palestine.

The Suppression of Palestinian-Sympathetic Voices

The Australian has also engaged in multiple targeted, sustained and highly personalised smear campaigns against prominent Palestinian-Australian voices and their key allies.

Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian-Australian academic and award-winning author at Macquarie University, is the most consistent target of The Australian’s smear campaigns. A data investigation by independent outlet Ette Media found between October 2023 and April 2026, The Australian alone published 412 unique articles featuring or referencing her — more than every other News Corp outlet combined (276), and more than every other major publisher combined (399). Thirty-five ran on the front page; at least one of ten emotionally loaded keywords appears in 90% of News Corp headlines about her (Hamas, intifada, antisemitism, taxpayer, racist, hatred, chaos, horror, elite, slur). The campaign drove the federal Education Minister to direct the Australian Research Council to investigate her $870,000 fellowship grant, and contributed to Adelaide Festival cancelling her 2026 Writers’ Week appearance — a decision that collapsed the Writers’ Week altogether, with 180+ writers withdrawing, the Writers’ Week director resigning in protest, and the Adelaide Festival board chair and three board members resigning. The ARC investigation cleared her of any wrongdoing in December 2025; The Australian’s campaign continued through April 2026.

That Writers’ Week director — Louise Adler, a prominent and esteemed Jewish-Australian publisher and outspoken critic of Israel — has herself been the subject of a sustained smear campaign: FPM’s own investigation in NewsBank found that between 7 October 2023 and 2 May 2026, The Australian published 148 unique articles featuring or referencing her — of which 54 carried anti-Adler framing, 42 were op-eds or editorials with Adler as the subject of attack, and 23 were dedicated attack pieces by 17 different authors, plus three editorials; 17 of the 23 dedicated attacks ran in the fortnight bracketing her resignation as Writers’ Week director on 13 January 2026.

Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr has also been attacked for his positions on Israel. So has the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) — a non-Zionist organisation that has raised concerns about Israeli conduct — framed as a “fringe Jewish group” and itself antisemitic.

Other prominent voices subjected to the masthead’s smear campaigns include the JCA’s executive officer Sarah Schwartz, and Antoinette Lattouf, the journalist whose dismissal by the ABC over a Palestine-related social media post the Federal Court found unlawful in 2025.

Three cases share common machinery: editorial saturation in The Australian manufactures the public temperature; lobby-group complaints to employers, universities and festivals translate it into institutional consequences; captured politicians (often Labor Party) convert it into government action. The targets are not only Palestinian: Adler and Schwartz are both Jewish; their treatment shows that the line being policed is not ethnicity but political position on Israel.

This pattern is relevant not only as evidence of institutional editorial line but also as evidence of retaliatory measures. When a dominant national newspaper repeatedly targets named individuals for their advocacy on Palestinian rights, the effect on others considering similar advocacy is coercive. And this conduct is not only egregious, but intentional: part of a continuum of Israel’s apartheid that silences and segregates Palestinian voices and views, implemented outside Israel’s borders. Article II(f) of the Apartheid Convention defines as a crime of apartheid the “persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.” The Australian persecutes critics of Israel’s apartheid — Palestinian, Jewish and otherwise — on exactly those terms.

Media Concentration and Democratic Consequence

The structural argument of this submission is that The Australian’s coverage cannot be understood in isolation. It is one outlet within a network controlling more than half of Australia’s newspaper circulation, all operating within the same proprietorial framework.

In 2020, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called for a major government inquiry into News Corp’s media dominance in Australia, filing a petition calling on parliament to set up a royal commission to investigate what he called the “abuse of media monopoly in Australia”. As Rudd said: “The truth is Murdoch has become… an arrogant cancer on our democracy”. Former Coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has described News Corp as an “absolute threat to our democracy.” These assessments come from former leaders of both major political parties.

The consequences for public understanding of the genocide in Gaza are considerable. Australians reading News Corp print titles across the country encounter, by default, a media environment in which genocide is denied or minimised. Palestinian civilians are rendered absent or undifferentiated from combatants, and domestic advocates for Palestinian rights are systematically discredited. This is not the outcome of a thousand individual editorial decisions — it is the output of a system, one designed to obscure a genocide.