An Australian federal court on June 25 upheld journalist Antoinette Lattouf's claim that she was 'unlawfully' terminated in December 2023 for sharing a social media post that said 'Israel using starvation as a weapon of war against Gaza'.
The court ordered ABC to pay Lattouf $115,500 (Rs 64.5 lakh) in compensation and called it a violation of the country's labour laws.
This is not the first time that journalists at various news outlets have quit or been fired in connection with the Israel-Gaza war on clashing personal opinions.
Antoinette Lattouf vs ABC
Antoinette Lattouf, who was working on a five-day stint hosting 'Sydney Mornings' with ABC network in 2023 and her on-air shifts were cut short after three days. Lattouf sued ABC claiming that she was fired by the network expressing her political opinion over Israel's war on Gaza on social media platforms. Lattouf told the court that she was dismissed from her role without a proper explanation.
Lattouf had shared an Instagram post of a Human Rights Watch report that had accused Israel of “using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza”.
In their argument in the court, the ABC stated that the journalist 'violated' the company’s social media guidelines and pointed out that she was a freelance contractor who was working on a morning radio program and she was never terminated.
But after collecting evidence and Lattouf's arguments, the court ruled that ABC had unlawfully sacked her after an “orchestrated campaign by pro-Israel lobbyists”.
The federal court also observed that ABC had breached Australia's Fair Work Act in her termination process “for reasons including that she held a political opinion opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza”. Australia’s Fair Work Act states that an employer may not take such adverse action against an employee based on their political opinion or race.
Justice Darryl Rangiah of the Federal Court of Australia called it a violation of the country’s labour laws and upheld Lattouf's freedom to express political opinion. He also ordered the ABC to pay her a compensation of $1,15,500 (Rs 64,52,750). There are legal proceedings left in this trial which will determine additional penalties by ABC.
Lattouf spoke to reporters after the federal court judgement came out, she said, "In December 2023, I shared a Human Rights Watch post. The Human Rights Watch found that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. It is now June 2025, and Palestinian children are still being starved. We see their images every day, emaciated, skeletal, scavenging through the rubble for scraps. This unspeakable suffering is not accidental, it is engineered. Deliberately starving and killing children is a war crime. Today the court has found that punishing someone for sharing facts about these war crimes is also illegal. I was punished for my political opinion."
Journalists Quit The NY Times
Award-winning journalist Jazmine Hughes resigned from the New York Times soon after she signed an open letter that accused Israel of trying to "conduct genocide against the Palestinian people".
The media house later announced that she stepped down after 'violating newsroom policy' by signing that letter.
Many well-known figures had also signed in the concerned statement which was in 2023 by a group called Writers Against the War on Gaza. It accused Israel of targeting journalists and killing thousands of Palestinians.
Their statement read, “Israel is an apartheid state, designed to privilege Jewish citizens at the expense of Palestinians, heedless of the many Jewish people, both in Israel and across the diaspora, who oppose their own conscription in an ethno-nationalist project."
Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine in a note announced, “She and I discussed that her desire to stake out this kind of public position and join in public protests isn’t compatible with being a journalist at The Times, and we both came to the conclusion that she should resign."
At the same time, Jamie Lauren Keiles, a contributing writer at the magazine who had also signed the letter had announced on social media that he would not be associated with the publication any longer and stated, it was “a personal decision about what kind of work I want to be able to do.”
Anne Boyer, the poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine resigned from the publication in 2023 after condemning them for their 'tone' used for covering the Israel-Hamas war and the situation in the Gaza strip.
Soon, her resignation letter went viral on the internet where she had written, "Sometimes the most effective mode of protest for artists is to refuse."
The Pulitzer Prize winner further wrote, "The Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone… This is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is the ongoing devastation of the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.”
Boyer added, “won’t write about poetry amid the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering,” she said, “I refuse. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more sanitized hell-words. No more warmongering lies.”
BBC
Six reporters based in West Asia were taken off air by the BBC and an investigation was launched over the social media posts that they interacted with, supported Hamas and were anti-Israel, reported Financial Times.
BBC 카지노 사이트 Arabic reporters including those based in Egypt and Lebanon had appeared to support Palestine or criticise Israel as they liked and shared some social media posts on this topic.
The BBC issued a statement, “We are urgently investigating this matter. We take allegations of breaches of our editorial and social media guidelines with the utmost seriousness, and if and when we find breaches we will act, including taking disciplinary action.”
The Financial Times reported that all the posts were taken down and one of those reporters had like a post that called Hamas ' freedom fighters'.
MSNBC
Well-known television journalist Joy Reid claimed that she was ousted from MSNBC due to her coverage of President Donald Trump and the ongoing war on Gaza.
Reid was speaking at a radio show 'The Breakfast Club' when she was asked about her sudden ouster from the network, she said, “Nobody had called me. Nobody had said, ‘You did something wrong, you’re in trouble, you’re on probation.’ I had gotten nothing. Then I get a text message early the next morning saying, ‘Can you talk at noon?’ And I was fired immediately."
She added, "There was no warning. And I asked, ‘Well, what, you know, what’s the [issue]?’ Nothing. They were just like, ‘Oh, we just want to make some changes.’ They never said why. So I’ve had to live in the rumor mill with everybody else."
Reid was hosting the segment “ReidOut” on MSNBC at the time, she said, "there were two topics that had made MSNBC management uncomfortable."
“One of them is Trump, because Trump is suing everybody,” Reid said.
“I think the other piece is Gaza,” she continued.
Reid said, “And you just can’t get away from the fact that talking about Gaza in a way that humanizes Palestinians is not the usual way that cable news operates, or that any news in this country operates for whatever reason, that topic makes people uncomfortable."
Earlier Reid had stated, "I am not sorry I stood up for those things because those things are of God."
The Jewish Chronicle
Four columnists resigned from the Jewish Chronicle in 2024 following allegations that the London-based newspaper published fabricated articles concerning Israel and its conflict with Gaza, reported Arab 카지노 사이트.
The four journalists were Jonathan Freedland Hadley Freeman who announced their resignation on social media and they were joined by fellow columnists David Baddiel and David Aaronovitch.
Hadley in his post on X wrote, "To whoever is interested in such things, I’ve resigned as a columnist from @JewishChron. I’m immensely grateful for all the support I’ve had from the editors during my time there, and enjoyed writing for it enormously. But recent events have made it impossible for me to stay."
The Guardian
Cartoonist Steve Bell claimed that the British news outlet The Guardian did not renew his contract after he submitted a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to Bell, the cartoon showed 'Netanyahu preparing to operate on his own stomach with an outline of Gaza' and he said that it was rejected by the Guardian for reportedly evoking the 'anti-Semitic pound of flesh trope', which he said was a reference to the character Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
Bell told the BBC it “made no sense to me, as there is no reference to that play [Merchant of Venice] in my cartoon, which shows Netanyahu, poised to perform a surgical operation on himself while wearing boxing gloves, the catastrophic consequences of which are yet to be seen.”
He added that the cartoon was inspired by an old caricature of US President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War.
Other journalists who have been fired linked to the same issue include Jackson Frank, a sports reporter in Philadelphia, working at PhillyVoice.com was fired for posting tweets to support the Palestinian cause.
Canada’s Global 카지노 사이트 dismissed journalist Zahraa al-Akhrass due to her social media posts that talked about the suffering of the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Kasem Raad was fired from his job at Welt TV, a subsidiary of German media company Axel Springer, for questioning internal pro-Israel policies, reported Al Jazeera.
The global tech companies, Google and Microsoft have also reportedly fired employees who have publicly called them out for supporting Israel.
According to reports, Google fired 28 employees in 2024 after they participated in a protest alleging the company of providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government.
Microsoft had also fired two employees in 2024 for organising a pro-Palestine vigil.
