Antoinette Lattouf has sparked another media storm by using a now-deleted slur to describe ABC viewers.
The former ABC Radio presenter wrote an opinion piece for Nine newspapers where she half-jokingly introduced herself as Paul Barry’s replacement as Media Watch presenter.
However, a reference to ABC’s older audience as the “colostomy bag crowd” drew immediate criticism.
Cartoonist Kaz Cooke denounced the X term as “strange and cruel.”
Journalist Lucie Morris-Marr denounced it as “one of the most appalling, offensive and disgusting phrases I have ever heard when I was a young bowel cancer patient who had it for a year due to emergency surgery.”
The words were later removed from the online version of the Sydney Morning Herald column, although it was too late for the print product.
Antoinette Lattouf described ABC viewers as the “colostomy bag crowd”, prompting criticism.
Lucie Morris-Marr, a bowel cancer survivor, denounced the joke about
“The national broadcaster needs younger viewers to survive,” Lattouf had written in an earlier version of the article. ‘
“You can’t handle the multitude of colostomy bags forever.”
Guardian Australia’s Weekly Beast column quoted SMH opinion editor Chris Harrison as saying the reference was removed due to the risk of “upsetting others”.
Ms Cooke pleaded with Lattouf to “reconsider referring to older people” in that way.
Another reader noted a recent health trend of colon cancer and other intestinal diseases in young people, and that it should not be assumed that only older people have colostomy bags.
A woman in her 20s with Crohn’s disease wrote: ‘I don’t have a colostomy bag, but many people of all ages with Crohn’s and other diseases do!
“It’s already a highly stigmatized medical device and it shouldn’t be used as an insult…disgusting.”
Readers also took to the Herald’s Letters page to criticize the use of the term.
‘Antoinette Lattouf’s description of ABC viewers as “the colostomy bag crowd” is insensitive, wrote one reader.
‘As bowel cancer rates rise among young people, it’s not even an accurate attack on an older demographic. Perhaps Paul Barry can discuss the comment next week.
Daily Mail Australia asked Lattouf to respond to criticism of the comment.
Lattouf has half-jokingly introduced herself as the new presenter of Media Watch despite being locked in a wrongful dismissal battle with ABC.
Current host Paul Barry is stepping down after 11 years running the media criticism show.
In her column, Lattouf, 40, revealed that she had conducted a private online poll on who should be Barry’s replacement and that she was crowned the favourite.
Lattouf is immersed in an unfair dismissal case against the national broadcaster.
Lattouf was taken off the air three days into her week-long stint as a fill-in presenter at ABC Radio last December after reposting a Human Rights Watch video about the use of starvation as a tool of war in Gaza.
Lattouf subsequently lodged a Fair Work claim, claiming she was dismissed because of her political views and Lebanese heritage.
The ABC claimed she violated the organization’s impartiality policy on social media and was not actually fired because she was paid for the full week.
But Lattouf won a major victory in her case earlier this month when the Fair Work Commission ruled that she had effectively been sacked by the national broadcaster.
The bitter and protracted legal fight could still end up in Federal Court if scheduled mediation talks between Lattouf and ABC fail next week.