The editor of The Age has written to the masthead’s digital subscribers to seek feedback on the newspaper’s decision to censor images of men performing the Nazi salute on the steps of the Victorian parliament.
Patrick Elligett, the recently appointed editor of the Melbourne-based newspaper, sent an email on March 24 to The Age’s tens of thousands of online subscribers, conceding he may have made a mistake by deciding not to publish the pictures.
The photos were widely shown across several media outlets, including the ABC, News Corp (publisher of The Australian) and the Guardian.
In his 700-word email — titled “The confronting image we didn’t show you” – Elligett says he was “confused” and “outraged” after the “second-grade bullies, the men in black” attended a Let Women Speak event led by women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (aka Posie Parker).
Elligett said that after the images landed in the inboxes of staff at The Age “it didn’t take long for an often-fought newsroom debate to begin”.
“A strong argument against running the picture was made by a senior editor … who believed the image would be unnecessarily confronting and disturbing for readers, particularly in the Jewish community,” he wrote. “One of our journalists, who is Jewish, told me … she was repulsed and disturbed by the images”.
Read the article by Sophie Elsworth in The Australian.