‘On the inside I felt a rage’: Antoinette Lattouf on emerging from her bruising battle with the ABC
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Most people facing a gruelling federal court trial, hostile press and the glare of the public spotlight would hesitate to add more challenges to their load.
But for journalist Antoinette Lattouf, the public drama she was starring in and the “molasses of multiple legal battles” she faced was a good time to become “match fit” by taking on tough physical challenges and start writing a book.
“I needed to try and find some kind of blueprint or way out of what I felt was so overwhelming and so despairing and so unfair, and I just honestly couldn’t have done it by myself,” Lattouf says.
Lattouf became the “overwhelming” centre of attention after she shared a Human Rights Watch post about the war in Gaza while she was a casual host on ABC Radio Sydney.
“Would the relentless toll of this public battle – the daily erosion, the pressure to be flawless – eventually wear me down?,” she wrote in the book, published this month by Penguin. “Would it make me hesitate, afraid that one misstep would confirm every bias held by those who were waiting for me to fail?”
In between the paranoia and sleeplessness which led to her occasionally having a “cup of vodka to sleep” she “gathered women’s stories around me” so she could take strength from their achievements.
“I’ve always found knowledge and storytelling very comforting, and I’ve always found it very empowering,” she says.
The other challenge she set herself was physical. Not a natural athlete, Lattouf took up running, learned to swim and embraced hot yoga as she battled anxiety about facing financial ruin should she lose her case and how the high-profile battle would affect her career.
‘Mental health weaponised’
Lattouf, who is of Lebanese heritage, co-founded Media Diversity Australia in 2017 and worked as a journalist for Network Ten, ABC and SBS. She moved into social commentary and, in recent years, wrote a column for the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I needed to prove to myself that I could get through things that are really uncomfortable, that make me want to bolt in the other direction, so that that could build up my stamina to see this through,” she says of her exercise regimen.
Readers looking for a behind-the-scenes account of the unlawful termination case, which cost the ABC $2.5m, will not find it in her book. Women Who Win is not a forensic account of the battle. Instead it provides glimpses of her personal experience as she dips in and out of the women’s stories.
“I’ve had plenty of headlines of coverage on myself, and I really wanted to take an opportunity to shine a spotlight and to honour other women,” she says.
Lattouf does reveal how it felt to be a party to a court case, in particular one live-streamed on YouTube, and what it’s like to sit through your adversary’s evidence.
“I just had to sit there and stay composed, even though, on the inside I felt a rage,” she wrote.
Lattouf had advance warning of the correspondence between ABC executives and Ita Buttrose, including the infamous line from the then chair: “Why can’t she come down with flu or Covid or a stomach upset? We owe her nothing.”
“I had already read every word ABC board members and other leaders had penned about me,” she wrote. “Every insult. Every self-preserving decision dressed up as protocol. Every sentence wishing me ill-health. And every damn step they took that brought our public broadcaster into disrepute.”
There was widespread dismay when it emerged early in the trial that the ABC’s defence of Lattouf’s unlawful termination case argued she must prove the existence of a Lebanese, Arab or Middle Eastern race.
The tactic angered ABC staff and Australian Middle Eastern and multicultural groups and infuriated Lattouf.
“My older sister texted me from home as she watched the live stream of the court proceedings: ‘Close your mouth!’ she wrote. ‘Everyone can see your reaction.’” The ABC withdrew the defence and apologised.
But Lattouf says the broadcaster’s decision to use her episode of postnatal depression after the birth of one of her two daughters as a reason to question whether she could be believed was the lowest point.
She had written about the illness for ABC online and was featured in ABC TV’s You Can’t Ask That episode about perinatal depression, which made the betrayal worse, she felt.
“Undoubtedly the most harrowing and unfair moment was having my mental health weaponised against me and be used to discredit me or just to suggest that, oh well, she was crazy anyway, or she was damaged anyway, simply because I had experienced postnatal depression,” she says. “As though you can’t have a pretty significant mental health condition and still be harmed by your employer. The two don’t rule each other out.”
Seizing the moment
As sections of the press became more hostile over her support of the Palestinian cause she considered taking on another legal battle, but decided it was not worth it.
She says some of the press criticism of her was so “horrible and inaccurate” she received legal advice that she had a solid case to sue for defamation. “I just decided I didn’t have it in me,” she says.
In June last year Justice Darryl Rangiah found the ABC contravened section 772 of the Fair Work Act and breached five clauses of the ABC’s enterprise agreement. Lattouf was awarded $70,000 in compensation and later an additional $150,000 in pecuniary penalties.
“We’re almost a year in to Ette Media, and we’re really learning a lot from journalists and independent media companies in the UK and the US who are a bit further along,” Lattouf says of the weekly podcast We Used to Be Journos, and the media critiques the duo post on Instagram.
“We have found an audience, we have a couple of staff members and we’ve had live shows sell out across the country.
“We would love to be the success story.”
Facing the cameras after her court win, Lattouf said her case had exposed “the systemic racism and rot at the heart of the ABC”.
Can she now separate her toxic fight with ABC management from the journalism the organisation produces?
“There are definitely some excellent journalists doing some excellent journalism at the ABC. I still think that the coverage of Gaza and human rights atrocities and holding the Israeli government and its actions to account has gotten a bit better. I don’t think it’s as strong or as independent as it can be on other topics.”
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