Antoinette Lattouf has stirred up another media storm, using a now-deleted slur to describe ABC viewers.
The ex-ABC Radio host wrote an opinion piece for Nine newspapers where she half-jokingly put herself forward as Paul Barry’s replacement as Media Watch host.
However, a reference to the ABC’s older audience as the ‘colostomy-bag crowd’ drew immediate criticism.
Cartoonist Kaz Cooke decried the term on X as ‘odd and cruel’.
Journalist Lucie Morris-Marr denounced it as ‘one of the most hideous, offensive and nasty phrases I’ve ever heard as a young bowel cancer patient who had one for a year due to emergency surgery’.
The words were later cut from the online version of the Sydney Morning Herald column – although it was too late for the printed product.
‘The national broadcaster needs younger viewers to survive,’ Lattouf had written in an earlier version of the piece. ‘
‘You can’t cater to the colostomy-bag crowd forever.’
Guardian ‘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 begged Lattouf to ‘reconsider referring to older people’ in that manner.
Another reader noted a recent health trend of colon cancer and other bowel ailments in young people – and that it should not be assumed only older people have colostomy bags.
A woman in her twenties with Crohn’s disease wrote: ‘I don’t have a colostomy bag but lots of people of all ages with Crohn’s and other conditions have them!
‘It’s already such a stigmatised medical device and should not be flung around as an insult… gross.’
Readers also took to the Herald’s own Letters page to criticise 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 the young, it’s not even an accurate dig against an older demographic. Perhaps Paul Barry could discuss the comment next week.’
Daily Mail has asked Lattouf to respond to the criticism about the comment.
In her column, Lattouf, 40, revealed she had conducted a private online poll on who should be Barry’s replacement – and that she was crowned as the favourite.
Lattouf is engaged in an unlawful dismissal case against the national broadcaster.
Lattouf was taken off air three days into her week-long stint as a fill-in host on ABC Radio last December after reposting a Human Rights Watch video about starvation being used as a tool of war in Gaza.
Lattouf subsequently launched a Fair Work claim, alleging she was fired over her political opinions and her Lebanese heritage.
The ABC claimed she breached the organisation’s social media policy around impartiality and she was not actually sacked because she was paid for the full week.
But Lattouf scored a major win in her case earlier this month when the Fair Work Commission ruled she was indeed sacked by the national broadcaster.
The bitter and drawn-out legal fight could still end up in the Federal Court if scheduled mediation talks between Lattouf and the ABC fail next week.