ABC presenter off the air over Twitter list controversy

Fauziah Ibrahim. ABC

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• By Avi Yemini

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‘Cancel Culture’ is alive and well during the Federal Election, with the latest victim (surprisingly) hailing from the ABC.

Fauziah Ibrahim, an anchor with the ABC’s Weekend Breakfast lineup, which she joined in 2020, essentially vanished in a puff of smoke when it was discovered that she had been keeping badly-named ‘lists’.

‘Lists’ on Twitter allow a user to connect together accounts they wish to follow on a particular topic – isolating them on a separate feed. This is particularly useful if you have a large Twitter account and you want to filter your news feed by ‘friends’, ‘sport’, ‘work’ etc.

That is what is meant to happen in the polite, fictional world of IT development. In reality, we’re dealing with humans, and Twitter is full of offensive and hateful lists. Conservative commentators will find themselves on all sorts of unprintable lists.

It seems as though Fauziah Ibrahim decided to join in with the well-established fad of creating overtly offensive list names. The two lists that got her into trouble were titled ‘Labor Trolls/Thugs’, which is exceptionally mild compared to the lists in frequent use by left-wing activists, and ‘Lobotomised sh**heads’.

The lists are public. Anyone added to a list is notified by Twitter so there was no expectation that these lists would be kept private.

Fauziah Ibrahim has since removed all references of the ‘ABC’ from her employment, despite a spokesperson from the ABC insisting that she was not ‘fired’ but rather having a break. Her behaviour has triggered a review of the ABC’s social media policy.

She also set her Twitter account to ‘private’ meaning that only the thousand-odd people that Ms Ibrahim follows will be able to read her tweets.

The main complaint trending on social media was Ms Ibrahim’s apparent ‘anti-Labor bias’.

The response to her colourfully named lists drew a mixture of indifference and scorn, the most hypocritical of which came from commentator Mike Carlton – who has made a range of highly offensive tweets and direct messages targeting, not only his peers, but members of the public. He accused Ms Ibrahim of ‘trashing the ABC impartiality’ and ‘blowing her own credibility’.

According to The Australian, other staff at the ABC were not happy to discover that one of their colleagues had been making lists.

‘Ibrahim’s intention with the lists on her private Twitter accounts seems to have been to expose the intellectual failings of Labor’s leaders and supporters. But such lists aren’t exactly a winning formula for a presenter to be reporting impartially on both sides.’

Many assessments and investigations have been done over the years confirming what most Australians already know – that there is a considerable left-wing bias present at the ABC, both in employed staff, talent choices, and commentary. An independent review in 2020 confirmed that the ABC was lacking in conservative voices, with most of its content leaning to the left.

One test of bias is the opinion of the viewership, and they continue to send in complaints to the ABC in alarmingly high numbers.