Law Lecture Theatre 1, Grosvenor Crescent, Sandy Bay Campus
Summary:Former news boss at the ABC and Seven Network discusses media coverage of Palestine and its people.
Presenter(s):
- Professor Peter Manning, University of Technology, Sydney
Peter Manning is an Australian journalist, author, broadcaster, commentator and academic.
He is an Adjunct Professor in Journalism at the School of Communication at the University of Technology, Sydney. His new book, Representing Palestine: Media and Journalism in Australia since World War 1, has just been released in London, Sydney and the US through publisher I.B. Tauris and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
Peter was awarded his Doctorate of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at UTS in 2014. He was Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Monash University (2009-2012) and Adjunct Professor of Journalism at UTS (2000-2009). He has also taught at Sydney and Qatar universities.
Prior to teaching Peter was the Head of News and Current Affairs at the Seven Network (1996-2000), and Head of TV News and Current Affairs at the ABC (1989-1993). In the latter role, he began the ABC’s very successful website (abc.net.au) and founded long-running programs Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and Landline.
In the 1980s he was a field producer and then Executive Producer of Four Corners, winning many awards for its investigative journalism. He began his career at Fairfax and has been a reporter in print, online, radio and television.
Peter is the author of four other books: Janet Venn-Brown: A life in art (New South, 2016), Us and Them: Media, Muslims and the Middle East (Random House, 2006 and now an e-book), Dog Whistle Politics and Journalism (ACIJ, 2004) and Green Bans (ACF, 1975).
There has been a long-running debate in academic, philosophical and professional circles about bias in the media. The search for who determines the content of our daily news and current affairs has focused on media owners, lobby groups, governments, cultural assumptions and various levels of journalism from editors to individual journalists.
Peter Manning undertook a critical analysis of the Sydney Morning Herald's foreign correspondents reporting of the conflict in Palestine under occupation, first from the British after the First World War and then by the Jewish Agency from 1948 onwards until today.
Peter found that the correspondents barely recognised the existence of the Palestinians whose land was under siege. If they did at all, they were nameless “Arabs”. Reporters saw this through biblical, racial and military terms, barely telling their readers of what they had seen. For the next 40 years, until the Israelis opened up their archives to their own historians in the 1990s, the Palestinians would become a demonised people who simply lost a war.
Refreshments from 5.30pm.
