Any further federal action would have to be taken by the complainants and does not involve the commission.
Sharri Markson and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an interview this year.Credit: Sky News Australia
Karvan, a three-time Logie Award-winning actor, is quoted in the complaints as saying that News Corp and Sky commentary “silences me and makes me fearful”.
The complaints alleged the reporting “demonised her as an Australian for speaking out”.
Karvan is not specifically mentioned in the Sky and News Corp commentary but the complaint argued that reading and watching the articles made her feel unsafe and prevented her from speaking out.
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The complaints also allege that the respondents “intimidated many Jewish Australians by falsely portraying Palestinian freedom protests as hateful and dangerous towards Jewish people”. They cite an alleged assault against Slezak in November 2023 as an example of the intimidation and aggression faced by Jewish-Australians who are pro-Palestine.
The complaints were lodged by Sydney law firm Birchgrove Legal and call for apologies, retractions and financial compensation for the complainants.
One of the accepted complaints is focused on Andrew Bolt and his publishers, and another on Sharri Markson and her publishers. There is a general complaint, which canvasses a range of articles published by News Corp and 15 journalists and commentators, and one which targets Sky News and 12 of its presenters.
Sky News and News Corp said they had been advised this week that AHRC had decided to terminate the complaints.
“Sky News stands by its coverage of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, the ensuing conflict in the region, and its impact in Australia,” a Sky News spokesperson said.
The complaint alleged against Bolt includes 11 of his articles and seven appearances on Sky News between October 2023 and February 2025. In one quoted media appearance, Bolt said Gaza had a “very sick culture”. In a separate article, he said pro-Palestinian protests are “likely to be violent, destructive, abusive and threatening.”
The complaint calls Bolt “a contrarian, controversy-confecting commentator” whose tone in the quoted works was “calculated to inflame public sentiment against Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Jewish people in Australia as well as Anglo/White Australians who support Palestinians.”
It’s not the first time Bolt has been the subject of racial discrimination claims. In 2011, a judge ruled in favour of nine Indigenous applicants that Bolt breached the Racial Discrimination Act in two articles published in 2009, which claimed people with light-skin who identified as Aboriginal did so for personal gain.
Bolt did not respond to a request for comment.
A News Corp spokesman said: “The AHRC this week advised it had terminated the complaints against The Australian, Nationwide News and Sharri Markson.”
Moustafa Keir, from Birchgrove Legal, contested this.
“I can confirm no complaints have been terminated,” Keir said. “We would encourage all parties to respect the process and participate in good faith to apply the law. If we determine that any party is not doing so, we will be pursuing the matter through the federal court.”
This masthead has confirmed Sky sought to have the complaint against Markson terminated, arguing it was misconceived and there was no prospect of conciliation. The AHRC favoured terminating the complaint against Markson because there was no prospect of conciliation, with the process still ongoing.
The complaint against Markson focuses on her criticisms of pro-Palestine protests. It quotes various media appearances made in October and November 2023, when she called the protesters “threatening”, “troubling”, “aggressive” and “antisemitic”. The complaint also cites a media appearance in which she claimed those supporting a ceasefire in Gaza “must be supporters of terrorism.”
The third complaint quotes 22 articles from News Corp publications – The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and The Herald Sun – between October 2023 and February 2025, mostly covering issues surrounding the war in Gaza.
Andrew Bolt is the subject of a racial discrimination complaint submitted to the Australian Human Rights Commission.Credit: Sky News
The complaint alleges the articles are biased towards Israel in the “disproportionate portrayal of Israeli victims compared to Palestinians in conflict situations like Gaza”.
The fourth complaint focuses on Sky News and 12 of its presenters and quotes 20 separate media appearances, alleging they were “seriously (really) offensive, insulting, humiliating and intimidating.”
The core focus of the complaints are that the articles and media appearances all breach sections 18C, 9 and 17 of the Racial Discrimination Act. Section 18C specifically makes it an offence to do an act that could “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people” because of their “race, colour or national or ethnic origin”.
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