NAOMI LEVIN

THERE were no shy silences when The Age’s editor-in-chief, Paul Ramadge, asked for questions following his speech to Melbourne’s Jewish community last week.

Around 200 people packed Beth Weizmann on October 6 for the speech, which Ramadge aptly called “dialogue”.

The evening ran over time as the audience made comments and fired questions at the editor.

Ramadge has been editor-in-chief for a year, since Andrew Jaspan left. During that time, he has been criticised by both Jewish community leaders and Jewish members of the public for the paper’s reportage of Israel and Jewish community issues.

Ramadge began his speech by expressing wishes of chag sameach for Succot, before remarking, “I do not want to pretend to understand the Jewish narrative as well as you do.”

Nevertheless, throughout his address he showed he was well read on contemporary and historical issues, citing many Jewish and Israeli novelists, historians and politicians.

He spoke about Fairfax’s Middle East correspondent, Jason Katsoukis, who he said has built strong links with Jewish and Arab leaders in the Middle East, as well as with Israeli Ambassador to Australia Yuval Rotem.

Ramadge listed a number of reports Katsoukis had filed for the news organisation, in an attempt to indicate the correspondent had provided a balance of stories from the Israeli perspective and the Palestinian perspective, and a balance of hard, political stories as well softer, human-interest pieces.

“Jason Katsoukis is following his brief to report accurately, fairly and with courage,” he said.

“His articles in Israel have often gone beyond politics, which I thought was one of the things you [the Jewish community] asked for.”

In response to concerns about the paper’s coverage of Operation Cast Lead, Ramadge cited the old catchcry, the fog of war, saying it is difficult for journalists to see through the spin during a war and report with accuracy. But he maintained his faith in Katsoukis’ journalistic ability.

Over the past 12 months, Jewish community leaders have petitioned Ramadge a number of times. The two most serious complaints were about a column by Michael Backman -– who no longer writes for the paper –- that leaders called “blatantly anti-Semitic”, and a report of an Orthodox man’s death in a road accident, which mentioned unrelated year-old allegations of sexual assault in the Adass Israel community.

Ramadge conceded a number of times that The Age is not perfect, but added that each time a mistake was identified, staff training was reviewed, meetings with the journalists involved were held and sometimes counselling was provided to ensure similar future mistakes were avoided.

He called anti-Semitism “abhorrent and sickening” and emphasised that both he and the paper “believe in a society that is free”.

He also encouraged members of the community to stay in touch with him.

“Know that I value dialogue on every issue of concern,” he said.