The Executive Council of Australian Jewry says it would be very useful for the ABC to be examined, after welcoming a proposed royal commission probe into media and sharpening its criticism of the ABC and SBS over antisemitism. The group said the two government-funded public broadcasters had refused to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, even though the government has adopted it and the royal commission is using it.

The council said there was a real question of responsible journalism and how a lack of it feeds into heated tensions in Australia. It also questioned why the ABC and SBS would take a different political position from the government on antisemitism, saying their language and approach on Israel can stir local agitation even as the broadcasters claim absolute independence.

The dispute lands in a broader fight over how public institutions should talk about antisemitism and Israel at a time when scrutiny of media has become part of the national argument. Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell has said the definition itself is not problematic in any way, a point that gives added weight to the council’s complaint that the broadcasters are standing apart from a standard already accepted by government and the commission.

That is what makes the council’s complaint sharper than a routine media dispute. The ABC and SBS are funded by the government, yet the Jewish body says they are choosing a different political position from the one Canberra has already taken on antisemitism. What the commission does with that criticism is the open question, and there was no immediate response in the material provided from either broadcaster.

The outcome now turns on whether the commission’s scrutiny leads anywhere beyond the public rebuke. For the ABC and SBS, the issue is no longer only about editorial judgment; it is about whether government-backed broadcasters can keep resisting a definition their own funding source and the commission itself have already embraced.