ABC and Media Watch continue to wipe Israel off the map

The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) - taxpayer funded to the tune of $1 billion annually - still continues to feature a map which falsely identifies "Israel" as "Palestine".

This bizarre conduct came to light after the ABC had initially removed the segment "Misplaced Map Outrage" from its Media Watch website - which had contained the offending map and was headlined:

Daily Mail accuses the ABC of wiping Israel off the map but misses the point of the story

When I wrote to Media Watch disapproving of their decision to delete the segment and sought an explanation for the segment's removal – I was shocked to receive this response from Gabrielle Clark at Media Watch:

This hasn't been purposely removed. Just looks like a back end publishing error. It is back online now.

Shortly thereafter I received a further reply from Jason Whittaker, Story Editor, Media Watch:

The story has not been removed from our website. It remains here:

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4729053.htm

We have issued no apology, retraction, correction or amendment to this item.

When I clicked on the above link supplied by Whittaker – I noticed that 20 or more comments previously posted – including mine – had all been removed.

This prompted me to ask Whittaker to:

Immediately reinstate all the posted comments that have been removed in the course of someone in the ABC reinstating the segment to the website.

I found Whittaker's reply quite disturbing:

You're welcome to re-post the comment. We apologise if a technical error removed it.

As for the story itself, like I said, we stand by it and have nothing more to add. But if you'd like to take the matter further you can do so through the ABC complaints process (http://www.abc.net.au/contact/complain.htm) or through Free TV Australia (http://www.freetv.com.au/content_common/pg-viewer-feedback-and-complaints.seo).