Re: Media Watch - Responses from JBD and Danby

David Knoll issued the following statement regarding Ed O'Loughlin and the missing piece...

"Media Watch contacted us for our point of view, and CEO Vic Alhadeff informed them that the Jewish community has long held grave concerns about lack of balance in Ed O'Loughlin's reporting, but that the Board of Deputies had had nothing whatsoever to do with the non-appearance of his farewell piece in the Herald.
"However, they chose not to air our remarks.
"They also made no attempt to contact Board president David Knoll for a comment on the fact that they would be running an extract from his letter to the AJN."

And this came from Michael Danby...

"Jackie Mason, the New York Jewish comic must be writing the scripts of the ABC Media Watch Program", Michael Danby, the Member for Melbourne Ports, claimed today.

"Last night the ABC Media Watch program implied that a column I wrote for the Jewish News 8 months ago criticising Fairfax Middle East reporter Ed O'Loughlin was at least partially responsible for the Age spiking (censoring), the Age/SMH O'Loughlin's final column," Danby said.

"This leap of logic, this vastly exaggerated claim of Jewish power is straight out of the humour of the American comedian, Jackie Mason. By using extravagant exaggeration, particularly on claims about the sinister, "all powerful Jews", Mason ridicules the paranoid excesses of such rhetoric about "Zionist lobbies", etc," Michael Danby explained.

"Media Watch was unprofessional and failed to solicit my view before broadcasting the program. Perhaps it is no coincidence that I trenchantly criticised the previous Executive Producer Tim Palmer in the past. Years ago I criticised Palmer when he was former ABC Middle East correspondent for his refusal to interview Arnold Roth, the father of Malki Roth, the first Australian murdered by Palestinian homicide bombers. Roth was interviewed by practically every newspaper and broadcaster in the Western world apart from the ABC".