We Counted All the Errors in Jillian Segal’s Attack on the ABC and SBS

Anti-Semitism Envoy Jillian Segal came to the Royal Commission on Thursday with a series of explosive claims against Australia’s public broadcasters. But she was pretty quickly forced to concede that she was wrong, contradicted herself, or simply could not even explain almost every single one.

Segal’s goal at the hearing was to make the case that the Royal Commission should recommend that a new oversight body be created, to include members from pro-Israel sections of the Jewish community, which would vet the ABC and SBS’s coverage of the Middle East.

We’ll get to that plan and how the broadcasters defended themselves, but first let’s run through Segal’s errors and backflips. They raise serious questions about the quality of work, basic factchecking and intellectual rigour being produced by Segal’s tax-payer funded office – let alone the credibility of her plan.