The Fourth Pillar, Redacted

Careful with that pen, Eugene

“We have a problem. A big one. We live in a society, and an epoch, where we do not have time to think any longer. We live in a time when taking a step back and a deep breath have become a luxury that many cannot afford. Our minds, our souls, have slowly been corrupted by materialistic nothingness that has been created for us, billboarded in front of our eyes, and printed, tattooed on our cells by advertising, marketing, and vulture capitalism.”

These words, which could’ve fit into a Tyler Durden monologue in Fight Club, are taken from an essay on activism, written by Frank Barat. Now placed in the introduction to “On Palestine” - a collection of essays and conversations between Barat, Noam Chomsky, and Ilan Pappé - they press on an old wound: why do we struggle to acknowledge what’s happening in Gaza? After all this time, why are we speaking in hushed voices and coded language?

Barat continues this lament into our overwhelmed lives, our fatigued mind and senses, and the diminishing amount of time we have left to look outside our bubbles. Perhaps, he suggests, we have lost the energy and ability to pause.

With such things, to pause is to look, and to look is to acknowledge. Which, sometimes, comes with a burden.

Let me take you back to 9th July, 2022. That afternoon, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa abandoned his palace in Colombo, fleeing first the building and then the country, amidst nationwide protests over a catastrophic economic crisis. The situation had turned so severe that the streets of every major city in Sri Lanka were packed with protesters demanding Rajapaksa’s immediate resignation. In Colombo, many had even reached his home.¹

At that time, the Australia men’s team were playing a Test match against Sri Lanka in Galle. The Galle International Stadium is placed a hop away from the northern ramparts of the Galle Fort. The 16th century fort’s wide, grey, granite walls usually make for a unique, picturesque backdrop to Test cricket. That day, they served a greater purpose.

As the cricketers went through their routines on the field below, the fort walls above were taken over by hundreds of Sri Lankans, many holding flags and banners rippling from the strong sea breeze. They hadn’t come for the cricket, but to force change.

Atop the fort. Credit: Ishara S Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images

The Australian travelling media found themselves in the enviable position of getting to place a sport in context. And they rose to the occasion. They spoke of cricket becoming a lens for history, of sport’s inseparable bond with the upheavals around it. They painted the poignance of Test cricket continuing while a revolution brewed in the streets; of how these old walls, once built to keep people out, now amplified voices demanding change. The cameras panned to pictures of the streets, every inch packed with people, as amplifiers and percussion instruments went off when the news of Rajapaksa leaving wafted through.

Two years and a bit hence, Australia are back in Galle, playing Test cricket. The ramparts of the fort are now empty, barring a few travellers using this incredible vantage point to indulge in some slow living, and a handful of locals watching the world’s best cricket team hang out in their backyard.

The fire rages many thousand miles westward. And the Australian mainstream media have, this time, found themselves in the convenient position of ignoring everything outside their cricket bubble. Like a ball outside the off stump, left alone in the best Test cricket technique, because they can.

Their actions have been reserved for those who dared to play.

This week, Peter Lalor, a writer with decades of experience covering Australian sport, was removed from air by SEN Radio, simply because he retweeted images and news from Gaza. The official conversation to Lalor from SEN cited that Australian listeners had been feeling unsafe hearing his voice on the radio, knowing he expressed sympathy for those enduring a relentless carpet bombing.²

Station boss Craig Hutchinson offered the postscript: “SEN Cricket is a celebration of differences and nationalities and a place where our SEN audience can escape what is an increasingly complex and sometimes triggering world.” He added that Lalor is respected as a journalist and long-time contributor, but he also had to “acknowledge the fear that many families in our community feel right now”.

“The Hebrew verb le-hitnahel or le-hityashev and the Hebrew nouns hitanchalut and hitayasvut were used ever since 1882 by the Zionist movement and later the state of Israel to describe the takeover of land in Palestine. Their accurate translation into English is ‘to settle,’ ‘to colonize,’ ‘settlement,’ and ‘colonization,’ respectively.

The tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story—hard to understand and even harder to solve.” - Ilan Pappé

When Peter Lalor shared voices from Gaza, he was doing what writers and journalists—at least the good ones—have always been trusted to do: amplify sounds that deserve to be heard, show pictures that need to be seen.

A loosely-used cliché portrays the news media as the fourth pillar of a democratic ecosystem. The term was coined by Edmund Burke during a parliamentary debate in 1771, as the House of Commons of Great Britain finally allowed press reporting of its sessions. Burke wasn’t thinking about a new institution – it was merely an acknowledgment that power corrupts even the most noble, and every democracy needs narrators who stand apart from power.

It’s futile to hold too strongly to Burke’s words in 2025, but the media still remains the one profession that has the access, reach, and thereby, the power to hold a mirror to the establishment.

And what happens when media organisations, those supposed guardians of truth, themselves become part of the establishment? When they begin to regulate not just what goes on their airwaves but what their journalists can amplify in their personal capacity? SEN’s response to Lalor reveals something more insidious than simple censorship – it shows how the very language of safety and comfort has been weaponised against acknowledging the air of ash and debris outside our windows. To claim that listeners feel “unsafe” hearing the voice of someone who acknowledges that a civilisation is getting bombed is to redefine safety itself. It transforms the discomfort of confronting reality into a threat, making awareness seem like an act of aggression.

And this transformation has happened slowly, brick by brick, one media organisation at a time. The moment mass media became embedded in corporate structures, their tolerance for disrupting comfortable narratives was naturally diminished. You can’t, obviously, walk with a foot on either side of a thick fence.

The journalist’s role, too, has been quietly redefined. Today, it neither requires credibility nor a spine. In fact, credibility can be bought in a couple of clicks, available for a princely $8, gift-wrapped with a blue tick. And it’s no coincidence that this shift has accelerated as news became less about informing and more about entertainment. You’ve got to agree - when reporting and activism can be turned into a matter of convenience, everyone dines happy.

“Remove this, then remove that, then remove this other line, and that last line too.”

When Craig Hutchinson describes SEN Cricket as “a place where our audience can escape,” he’s articulating that very shift. The escape he offers, in this specific situation, isn’t from the dullness of daily life but from the moral burden of awareness. It falls neatly into this hierarchy of causes, where some stories are deemed worthy of interrupting our comfort while others are marked as too disruptive to tell.

The news media once prided itself on its coverage of the apartheid regime in South Africa, celebrated cultural boycotts as moral imperatives. Athletes who crossed the picket line to tour South Africa were crucified in newspapers, their moral fibre questioned in bold headlines.

Closer on the timeline, articles and thinkpieces ran like streams of glacial water when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The outrage was loud enough that sport federations had to take decisive steps. Russia are still banned from major athletic competitions, including the Olympics.

In Galle ‘22, the story wrote itself: citizens rising against economic failure, flipping over a government. The media could embrace the protesters without hesitation - here was democracy in action, fitting perfectly into well-worn narratives of resistance. And hence, they indulged.

But Gaza, Gaza is “complicated”.

The difference in the tone of reportage isn’t a function of the scale of suffering – Gaza’s casualties mount daily in horrifying numbers, even after a ceasefire.³ It isn’t even in the clarity of the humanitarian crisis – the images and stories tell an unambiguous tale of civilian devastation. The difference lies in who gets killed, whose flag flies over the tanks that plough through houses, and what historical wounds we’re afraid to probe.

The blue star on white, once the symbol of history’s greatest humanitarian catastrophe, is now engraved on bombs that are razing down an entire populace. It would’ve probably been understandable if the American and European political stance took a bit of time to reconcile with the crimes committed by a community they’re determined to support. But, at some point, the West embraced their role as bystanders who have nothing to do with whatever’s happening.

And that’s a lie thinner than the paper on which they sign their treaties.

The U.S. has spent over $22 billion supporting Israel’s military operations in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria since October 7, 2023 - the day Hamas attacked Israel through a barrage of bombs - knowing full well that, for decades, Israel has used every opportunity to assault Palestine. The Biden administration made at least 100 arms deals with Israel.⁴

Between January and August 2024, Germany approved $16 million in arms exports to Israel. Between August and October, that number climbed to - hold your breath - $100 million.

Along with this being a week where a leading radio station of an important country fired a senior journalist for showing solidarity, this was also one where Donald Trump spoke about taking up Gaza as a development project, while sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister and captain of the International War Crime XI, Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The Palestine question is emblematic of what is wrong with the world. The role played by Western states, the complicity of corporations and of various institutions make this case a very special one. The fact that Israel actually benefits from violating international law and receives “red carpet” treatment from the West means that we all have a role to play in ending the injustice that the Palestinians are facing. The injustice in Palestine has ramifications throughout the world. From Ferguson to Athens, via Mexico, it is clear that many governments are reproducing the tools that Israel uses to repress and oppress the Palestinians.” - Frank Barat

Peter Lalor’s removal from radio duties is the first domino, a small piece that will be forgotten by next week’s game. Hell, he’s still in the Galle press box, calling the play, retweeting messages from Gaza. SEN has lost more than Peter in this exchange.

But his removal should be remembered as a smoke signal. It was a significant show of muscle that betrayed a major media organisation’s refusal to be within an earshot of an uncomfortable conversation, and a loud announcement of the turn we’ve taken from the fork in the road.

I mean, we are still calling the whole Israel-Gaza thing a “conflict”, aren’t we?

Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman. Credit: The New York Review.

1. The protesters eventually broke into the presidential palace and become temporary owners. And they did what all owners of a palace do - hit the gym and take a swim.

2. Clearly, no one at SEN has heard of the Streisand Effect.

3. The death toll is higher, much higher, than initially feared.

4. This includes Foreign Military Financing ($6.8 billion), missile defence ($4.5 billion), Iron Beam missile defense ($1.2 billion), enhancing artillery production ($1 billion), and replenishing arms delivered to Israel from U.S. stocks ($4.4 billion).