Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

asked the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, upon notice, on 8 April 2011:

Given that:

(a) an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) report on a European Union (EU) declaration inserted inverted commas around the word 'terrorist', whereas the inverted commas were not present in the EU declaration;

(b) the ABC explained that, as was the case with the three other instances in the report, inverted commas had been added to indicate that it was a direct quote from the report and not to indicate non-acceptance of the usage of the term;

(c) however, for the cited instance the inverted commas surrounded the word 'terrorist' and only the word 'terrorist' (notwithstanding that there were also other words extracted from the very same section of the EU declaration) whereas in the three other instances, the inverted commas surrounded a significant amount of contiguous text from the EU declaration;

(d) additionally, there are other ABC reports that have also placed terms such as 'terrorist' or 'terrorism' within inverted commas in circumstances where the possibility of a direct quote does not arise (for example, the report headed 'Top cleric urges "blind, deaf, dumb" Mubarak to go', 30 January 2011); and

(e) in contrast to its practice when the victims or intended victims are Israeli, the ABC routinely uses the term 'terrorist' and similar where the civilian victims are not Israeli:

(1) Can an explanation be provided by the ABC justifying its evident non-acceptance of the term 'terrorist' and similar terms, and its acceptance of the term 'resistance fighter' (response to question on notice no. 41) in circumstances where the actual or intended victims are Israeli civilians.

(2) Can an explanation be provided by the ABC justifying its discriminatory practices regarding the use of such terms.