Opposing Schwartz Media
1 March 2023
While Schwartz Media profits from the stories of certain model minorities, it is a systemically zionist company with an explicit, top-down racist agenda.
This agenda is enabled by all those who provide the company with their creativity, labour and capital.Schwartz Media is owned and operated by Morry Schwartz, a committed zionist who spent nine years occupying stolen Palestinian land. In 2017, Schwartz told The Age: ‘I have no shame in saying I’m a great supporter of Israel’.In 1967, and again in 1973, Schwartz wanted to join the zionist military to participate in the theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.Former employees of Schwartz-owned Black Inc. Books have described how Palestinian-authored manuscripts were quietly rejected on ideological grounds. The outlet's ‘progressive’ image, they say, is ‘built on the exclusion of Palestinian voices’. Authors have been quietly told by the publisher to remove Palestine from their manuscripts.Incoming journalists at Schwartz Media’s news masthead The Saturday Paper have been explicitly warned by enabler-in-chief Erik Jensen that their boss is ‘very sensitive about Israel’ and ‘would not like to see Israel under attack’.Former employees have described Schwartz’s colonial agenda as an ‘open secret’, an ‘unofficial but widely known editorial policy’ and an ‘ugly hypocrisy’.In his book Dateline Jerusalem (2021), journalist John Lyons records the following testimonies:In 2014, Schwartz launched The Saturday Paper. The person hand-picked to be its editor, Erik Jensen, contacted Hamish McDonald and said he would like McDonald to be the publication’s world editor.McDonald said yes. But then, McDonald recalls, ‘Jensen said “there’s one touchy subject – Morry (Schwartz) is very sensitive about Israel, he would not like to see Israel under attack”.’Former morning editor of The Saturday Paper Alex McKinnon wrote to his former editors:‘While I was at Schwartz, there was an unofficial but widely known editorial policy of avoiding coverage of israel and Palestine, especially any coverage that could be perceived as critical of the israeli government’s ongoing human rights abuses of Palestinians. Numerous members of staff mentioned this unspoken policy in conversations with me, unprompted, while I worked there. Many expressed discomfort with it, but all seemed resigned to it.’Writer Omar Sakr also challenged Schwartz editors:‘When I wrote to the editors of The Saturday Paper about their lack of coverage of the ongoing crisis in Gaza, and the absence of Palestinian writers in their publications, I got a generic and utterly unsatisfactory response……There comes a point where people have to have some integrity and push back. I think the editors need to heed their own advertising and ‘take a stand while sitting down’ – resign. I certainly won’t be writing for them again.
Additionally, former The Monthly editor, John Van Tiggelan is quoted by Overland Literary Journal:…when you work at a small publication, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Morry Schwartz at Black Inc or The Monthly […] there are certain glass walls set by the publisher that you can’t go outside of and […] one of those is Palestine. I mean, it’s seen as a Left-wing publication, but the publisher is very Right-wing on Israel […] And he’s very much to the, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu end of politics. So, you can’t touch it; just don’t touch it. It’s a glass wall.
An ideologically zionist company cannot be reformed — it must be abandoned.Made aware of Black Inc.’s agenda, former contributors to its Growing Up series have publicly expressed regret and have encouraged fellow writers to avoid the company in future. Faced with the revelation of Schwartz Media’s agenda, former Black Inc authors Tom Cho and Sara El Sayed have redistributed their royalty payments to Palestinian organisations.
In response to this backlash, Schwartz has begun peppering his platforms with a few non-meaningful mentions of Palestinian existence — while ensuring that these mentions are entirely divorced from the reality of invasion, colonialism, military occupation and apartheid.Schwartz’s attempts at damage control are weak, cynical and transparent.A number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and writers have joined Palestinians in establishing a clear picket line against Schwartz Media.If we condemn colonial violence in one place, we cannot enable it in another.
There is no ethical way to collude with a fundamentally zionist organisation.Schwartz Media platforms include:The Saturday PaperBlack Inc. BooksThe Monthly7am Podcast The Politics Podcast La Trobe University PressAustralian Foreign Affairs The Quarterly Essay
Anna Schwartz GalleryContact: hello@thesundaypaper.com.au