Will Segal’s antisemitism plan affect News Corp, Seven and co?

News Corp, the Seven Network and The Spectator all face the possibility of censorship and content control under antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s extraordinary proposal to personally regulate Australian media.

Segal, an Israel apologist who oversaw systemic misconduct by NAB while a director of that bank from 2004-16, yesterday issued a report urging the government to give her unprecedented powers. These include drafting legislation; “guiding” police, prosecutors, the judiciary and regulatory authorities; dictating school curricula; promoting “trusted voices” on social media; assessing and cutting funding from tertiary institutions and individual academics; cracking down on online speech; and creating mechanisms to cut funding from the ABC, SBS and cultural institutions.

But Segal has also demanded that she be given the power to intervene in the operations of media outlets. She recommends:

The envoy will monitor media organisations to encourage accurate, fair and responsible reporting and assist them to meet their editorial standards and commitment to impartiality and balance and to avoid accepting false or distorted narratives.

“Monitoring” is straightforward, but exactly how Segal proposes to deliver such “assistance” to media companies is not explained in the report.

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Under Australia’s media regulatory framework, broadcasters operate under a licence-based “co-regulatory” scheme based on registered industry codes of practice and a hierarchical complaints system that can refer complainants to the media regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority. However, there is no such regime for non-broadcast media, which is not licensed. Print media has a self-regulatory scheme of dubious credibility, but there is no clear power for the federal government to impose any “assistance” on newspapers and magazines.

While Sky News is revelling in the prospect of Segal abolishing the ABC — a longstanding far-right fantasy — in fact it is News Corp, the Seven Network and other right-wing media that face the most immediate threat from Segal’s proposed power to “assist” media to “avoid accepting false or distorted narratives”.

While Sky News after dark may be nothing but false or distorted narratives, the immediate problem is that the outlet has platformed neo-Nazis. Sky is notorious for giving airtime to neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, who according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has said “there should be a portrait of Hitler on display in every classroom and that Hitler’s rantings in Mein Kampf should be presented to every student”.

Australia’s other right-wing television network, the Seven Network, also gave Cottrell a platform for his hateful views.

Sky News after dark also had a long association with far-right blogger Lauren Southern, who later became a regular contributor to Sky. Southern, in 2017, promoted the so-called “Great Replacement Theory”, denounced as antisemitic by the world’s highest-profile opponent of antisemitism, the US Anti-Defamation League.

It’s not merely far-right broadcasters. The Australian edition of The Spectator, a low-rent local version of the respected British publication, has an even worse record than Sky or Seven. In 2023, Crikey revealed The Spectator was publishing writers with a history of supportive interactions with neo-Nazis, or writers who have actively promoted antisemitism online, praised Hitler and said there was “nothing wrong” with the Holocaust.