Antoinette Lattouf #

Introduction #

Antoinette Lattouf is an Australian journalist, broadcaster and co-founder of the advocacy group Media Diversity Australia, a veteran of Network Ten, SBS, Triple J and Southern Cross Austereo and a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald. In December 2023 she was working as a fill-in host of ABC Radio Sydney’s Mornings program when she was removed from the air three days into a five-day stint after sharing a Human Rights Watch Instagram post about starvation being used as a weapon of war in Gaza. The removal, following a campaign of complaints by pro-Israel lobbyists, became one of Australia’s most consequential media-law cases: the Federal Court later found the ABC had unlawfully terminated her because of her political opinion, fined the broadcaster $150,000 and awarded her compensation.

Background Information #

Lattouf, the Australian-born daughter of Lebanese refugees, built a career across Australian radio and television and co-founded Media Diversity Australia in 2017 to increase cultural and linguistic diversity in the nation’s news media. She was a permanent co-host of the LiSTNR podcast The Briefing, authored research on the lack of diversity in Australian television news, published the book How to Lose Friends and Influence White People in 2022, and was listed in the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence in 2019. She has spoken publicly about the racism and bullying she experienced early in her career at SBS.

The ABC engagement was modest: one week filling in as host of Sydney Mornings for Sarah Macdonald. Soon after her first program, complaints began arriving at the broadcaster asserting she had expressed antisemitic views, lacked impartiality and was unsuitable to present any ABC program. The court later found these complaints were an orchestrated campaign by pro-Israel lobbyists to have her taken off air, with senior ABC managers’ consternation turning into what Justice Darryl Rangiah described as “a state of panic”.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

The trigger was a social media post. Hours before her removal, Lattouf shared to her personal Instagram account a Human Rights Watch post accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza — the same HRW report the ABC’s own news division had covered. She had earlier been given advice, the court found, that it would be best not to post anything controversial about the war, but this was advice rather than a direction, and it was qualified by an indication that posting fact-based material from a verified source would be fine. The ABC would later argue she had been removed for not following a “direction” not to post about the war while working for the broadcaster; the court rejected that characterization.

On December 20, 2023, the ABC terminated her, cutting her on-air shifts short three days into the five-day contract. Court evidence showed the then chief content officer, Chris Oliver-Taylor, moved quickly in an attempt to “mitigate the anticipated deluge of complaints” and to beat a story about the pro-Israel complaints that The Australian newspaper was preparing to publish. Lattouf responded that she believed the decision was unlawful and not a victory for journalism or critical, fair thinking.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

The removal ignited a fight that ran for nearly two years. Lattouf lodged an unlawful termination claim, arguing her dismissal was due to her political opinions, and after the Fair Work Commission confirmed she had been dismissed, the case reached the Federal Court, where ABC executives including former chair Ita Buttrose and managing director David Anderson testified. ABC members of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance passed a vote of no-confidence in ABC leadership over its failure to protect the broadcaster’s independence. On June 25, 2025, Justice Rangiah ruled: the ABC had contravened section 772(1) of the Fair Work Act by terminating her employment “for reasons including that she held a political opinion opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza”, deciding as it did to appease the pro-Israel lobbyists behind the campaign. The court found, however, that her dismissal was not related to her race or national origin.

“This unlawful decision goes right to the top of the ABC,” her lawyer Josh Bornstein told reporters outside court. In September 2025 the Federal Court imposed a $150,000 penalty on the ABC for the breach — bringing its total financial exposure to Lattouf to $220,000, after the earlier award of $70,000 in compensation for non-economic loss. Justice Rangiah wrote that “the ABC let down the Australian public badly when it abjectly surrendered the rights of its employee Ms Lattouf to appease a lobby group”, and warned the corporation could not treat a penalty as “an acceptable price to pay for staving off criticism”. ABC managing director Hugh Marks apologised, saying the matter was “not handled in line with our values and expectations”.

Current Status #

Lattouf’s termination was ruled unlawful, the ABC was fined and ordered to pay her a total of $220,000, and it was given 28 days to pay the fine. Her case is a notable inversion of the usual cancellation arc: the “cancellation” itself — the removal from air — was later judicially condemned as a breach of federal law protecting political opinion, and the institution that removed her was the party forced to apologize and pay. After her victory, Lattouf launched the podcast We Used to be Journos with journalist Jan Fran, covering institutional bias in media organisations. She posted that the case had never been about money but about “accountability and the integrity of the information our public broadcaster gives us”.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The removal cost Lattouf the rest of her five-day contract and, by her own testimony, far more: she described severe personal impacts including increased anxiety and depression, and the court accepted psychiatric evidence that she suffered an exacerbation of a depressive disorder from the shock and humiliation of the termination. The ABC spent well over $2 million of taxpayer money fighting her claim, by her own account, before losing. Yet the outcome restored what the removal had taken — Justice Rangiah’s finding that she was punished for her political opinion vindicated her publicly, the penalties gave the case real consequences for the broadcaster, and the affair became a precedent wherever public broadcasters weigh lobby-group pressure against their employees’ rights. Lattouf emerged from the case with a ruling that her original cancellation was itself the unlawful act — and, in the podcast she launched afterward, a platform to keep examining the media organisations involved.