Melbourne – The editorial team at The Age has offered an unreserved apology to the Jewish community for the controversial Michael Backman column that appeared in last Saturday’s newspaper.
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A formal apology appeared on page two of Tuesday’s edition (January 20) of the newspaper, with The Age editor Paul Ramadge telling The AJN that the anti-Semitic views expressed by Backman “have no place at The Age. We completely reject his views”.
“We fully accept that the article has caused hurt and distress to the Jewish community and we apologise without reservation,” he said.
Ramadge said the story was published while he and other senior editors were on leave.
“We have a different crew editing the paper during the holiday period,” he said.
Ramadge would not comment on whether any Age employees would lose their jobs over the publication of the story, but did admit that more than one Age staffer were guilty of “errors of judgement”.
“We have taken steps to ensure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again,” he said, adding that the staffer was being dealt with internally.
Ramadge, who replaced Andrew Jaspan as editor of The Age last year, met with community leaders Mark Leibler and Dr Colin Rubenstein on Monday and will meet Israeli Ambassador Yuval Rotem on Thursday to try and repair the damage caused by the article.
Backman’s article appeared less than two weeks after Jewish Community Council of Victoria representatives John Searle and Geoff Zygier met newspaper management to express concerns over the paper’s coverage of the war in Gaza.
Ramadge told The AJN he did not believe The Age has a credibility issue with the Jewish community.
“We’re starting to get feedback from Jewish leaders praising us for our balanced coverage,” he said.
“Not everyone will agree with everything we publish on Israel. That comes with the territory.
“But we want to continue to tell great stories and The Age will continue to have a dialogue with Jewish leadership in that respect.”
Ramadge said he believes The Age is being proactive in dealing with disgruntled Jewish readers on this issue.
He also plans to personally respond to every letter of complaint he has received since Backman’s article appeared on Saturday January 17.
The Age has a long history of dishonesty and hostility to Israel; the jump from there to outright antisemitism is a short one. The only difference with Backman’s article is that it was so explicit, and shorn of the usual code words.
I remember an incident in 1981, when terrorists raided a kibbutz nursery and killed five children, whereupon the army burst in and killed two terrorists. The Age’s headline was “Seven Dead In Israeli Raid”.
If the advertisers pull their ads from this & other papers that publish such hate, you can be damn sure that there will be far fewer articles like this being printed. We CAN control the media. It’s called economics.
The Age consistently publishes cartoons,articles and opinion pieces that are biased and slanted against Israel.Last week they published a hate filled opinion piece by Khalid Meshaal
Ramadge says that “He also plans to personally respond to every letter of complaint he has received since Backman’s article appeared on Saturday January 17.”
I haven’t received a response to my email. Obviously, this is a lie.
Well, what do you expect from an anti-semetic paper? All lies!
I just recieved an apology in an email today. The email stated that some said that the article in the age is part of a larger anti-semetic conspiracy, however the age denied all such allegation of an anti-jewish slant in its reporting.