The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has written an open letter to Head of Australia’s Special Broadcasting Corporation (SBS), Michael Ebeid, slamming his mischaracterization of the Armenian Genocide during Federal Senate questioning last month, the Armenian National Committee of Australia reported.
This letter pours cold water over SBS’s editorial policy not to refer to the Armenian Genocide as “genocide”, saying: “Genocide denial is not history: it is ideological. And we are disappointed that a reputable organisation, such as SBS, has chosen this route”.
During Australian Parliament’s Senate Estimates in May 2017, Ebeid was grilled on the broadcaster’s unacceptable editorial position on the Armenian Genocide. The article in The Australian said SBS News and Current Affairs has a specific policy on referring to the Armenian Genocide that prohibits its reporters from naming it as such and proposes to call it ‘mass killings of Armenians’ instead.
Ebeid responded: “We at SBS refer to it as ‘mass killing of Armenians considered by many to have been a genocide’ and I think that way we make sure that our viewers understand that this is a matter of contention that historians the world over dispute…”
The IAGS open letter addressed to Michael Ebeid, signed by its President, Professor Andrew Woolford said calling the Armenian Genocide as an ‘Armenian situation’ is akin to calling the Holocaust the ‘Jewish situation’.
“The sticking point for us as genocide studies scholars is your argument that academically recognized historians dispute the genocide. This is a falsity. There are a handful of historians who deny the genocide who are not recognized as scholarly academics by the majority of genocide studies scholars”, Andrew Woolford said, calling on the SBS to reconsider its policy on the Armenian Genocide.