On April 19 2025, an opinion article published by The Daily Telegraph (DT) breached the Australian Press Council’s General Principle 3 concerning fairness and balance:
- Ensure that factual material is presented with reasonable fairness and balance, and that writers’ expressions of opinion are not based on significantly inaccurate factual material or omission of key facts.
The article falsely claimed that Gaza is not occupied, presenting this as fact, and improperly linked a non-religiously/ racially radicalised stabbing attack in Australia to Palestinian refugees, despite no evidence of correlation. It further cited a British Pakistani man’s ties to extremism to suggest that Palestinians fleeing the war in Gaza are similarly dangerous, perpetuating harmful and unsupported generalisations. These claims rely on significantly inaccurate information and omit critical context, leading to misleading and prejudicial conclusions. A formal complaint has been submitted to the APC, requesting the removal of these misleading assertions.
Verdict – The APC has concluded that the journalist has not violated their standards. We will continue working closely with he APC to ensure their policies accurately reflect our concerns.
Journalists have used their opinion on the Gaza war to claim that it is not occupied by Israel, despite the UN, the ICC, the ICJ and multiple International human rights organisations concluding that Israel indeed occupies Gaza and the West Bank.
The image highlights how the journalists claim that a number of Palestinians fleeing Gaza are terrorists, using unrelated cases to support this assertion. They reference the radicalisation of a 16-year-old Caucasian male who carried out a stabbing in a parking lot, despite the incident having no connection to Palestinians or Islam. They also cite the 2019 arrest of a British Pakistani man on terrorism charges to reinforce their argument. These examples are entirely baseless and bear no relevance to Palestinians seeking refuge in Australia. We argue that the journalist is using these unrelated cases to deliberately portray Palestinian asylum seekers as a threat to Australian society.
