After being taken off air by the ABC over a social media post, Antoinette Lattouf was phoned by an anonymous man who threatened “I will find you and end you and shut your antisemitic mouth once and for all”, the federal court has been told.
In an affidavit released by the court on Wednesday, Lattouf detailed dozens of death threats and abusive and threatening messages she had received since December 2023 when she hosted ABC radio’s Sydney Mornings program.
“On two occasions … I received threatening phone calls from private numbers,” she told the court.
“A male said words to the effect: ‘I will find you and end you and shut your antisemitic mouth once and for all.’ In late May, a woman called screaming at me saying phrases that included ‘Go back to Gaza’ and ‘I wish you and your kids were in that tent in Rafah’ and to ‘watch your back’.”
On Wednesday in the federal court, the third day of her unlawful termination claim, counsel for the ABC, Ian Neil SC, outlined the chronology of its case.
Neil said Lattouf’s account of December 2023 had “jumbled the chronology of events and omitted salient events”. He said senior ABC managers were concerned to observe the ABC’s requirements for impartiality.
Lattouf presented her first show on Monday 18 December and within 90 minutes after coming off air, the ABC began receiving emails complaining about her, Neil said.
The ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, forwarded some of those complaints to the chief content officer, Chris Oliver-Taylor, and the acting editorial director, Simon Melkman, with the request to investigate the matter and provide advice.
The court was told Anderson wrote in an email: “Can we ensure that Antoinette is not and has not been posting anything that would suggest she is not impartial.
“I am concerned her public views may mean that she is in conflict with our own editorial policies.”
Anderson also asked why Lattouf had been selected as fill-in host.
The then manager of ABC Radio Sydney, Steve Ahern, who hired Lattouf for the casual shifts, wrote to Anderson that Lattouf had been identified as a potential future presenter for ABC radio.
“Her background is Lebanese-Christian. She grew up in western Sydney, the child of Lebanese immigrants,” he wrote.
“She’d been selected in part having regard to the ABC’s diversity policy.”
Anderson, the ABC’s outgoing managing director, is expected to be called as the next witness.
Lattouf’s affidavit states other ABC staff were incensed by her sudden removal. On the afternoon of Wednesday 20 December, Lattouf and the program team had been planning the next day’s episode when she was called into a meeting for a “quick chat” – but then told she would not be presenting the next day. She was told, she says, “you can return to your desk, get your bag, and leave”.
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As Lattouf packed her desk to leave the building, she said one colleague told her “I am so sorry, you have done nothing wrong. This is bullshit.”
Another said: “We back you. This is wrong. The ABC is lucky to have you.”
Lattouf said in her affidavit she admired the ABC as a vital journalistic institution.
“I believe, deeply, that the ABC has a vital role to play in ensuring the independence and integrity of journalism in Australia. It has been a highlight of my career to have worked for the ABC.”
Lattouf was hired in December 2023 as a fill-in host for one week on the ABC’s Sydney Mornings radio program.
However, she was abruptly taken off air on 20 December – three days into her five-day contract – after she posted on social media about the Israel-Gaza war, which the ABC said was a failure to follow a direction from a manager not to post.
Lattouf’s post was a repost of a Human Rights Watch report on Instagram detailing HRW’s finding that the Israeli military was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. Lattouf added the words on her post: “HRW reporting starvation as a tool of war.” The ABC had covered the Human Rights Watch report as a news story online.
At issue in the case before the federal court is whether Lattouf had been instructed not to post on social media by an ABC manager, or whether it had merely been suggested she stick to posting “factual information from reputable sources”, as she has said occurred in her affidavit.
The Fair Work Commission found she was sacked from her casual presenting role on the ABC, paving the way for her to pursue an unlawful termination case.
The ABC argued at the commission that Lattouf was not sacked because she was paid for the full five days of her contract.
Mediation between the parties failed.