Written by Alicia Vrajlal, with additional reporting by Phoebe Saintilian
Audiences’ (including millennial and Gen Z women) appetite for independent and new media is undeniably on the rise. So, what better way to engage with the discourse around our shifting news consumption, than by creating your own independent media outlet dedicated to just that?
The concept of “audiences losing trust in legacy outlets” was front of mind for Antoinette Lattouf and Jan Fran when they launched Ette Media earlier this year. With over 43,000 Instagram followers, a podcast, a newsletter and now a live tour in February, the Australian journalists are delving into a space that was a long time coming.
“We were making content about the media consistently for two years on our own time and dime and our videos were attracting millions of views,” Jan tells Missing Perspectives.
“I also had a lot of teachers contact me saying they were sharing my videos with their students as part of a media literacy subject, so all of this made us think we should formalise the process.”
The duo announced the new platform in June after the Federal Court found the ABC had contravened the Fair Work Act by terminating Antoinette’s employment, “for reasons including that she held a political opinion opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza”. In December 2023, Antoinette had been taken off air three days into a five-day casual stint as an ABC Radio Sydney presenter after sharing – on her social media – a post from Human Rights Watch “about Israel using starvation as a weapon of war”.
“There was no single lightning strike,” Antoinette tells Missing Perspectives when asked if a specific moment or conversation sparked the start of Ette. “It was more of a slow burn over the two years since October 2023,” she says.
Acknowledging that her experience with the ABC “was one part of it”, Antoinette explains that “another was the growing realisation that large sections of the media had become soft targets for political pressure and lobbyist campaigns”.
“Add to that, the way journalists and presenters from diverse backgrounds were treated with suspicion and slapped with the ‘activist’ label whenever they questioned shoddy framing or lazy reporting,” she continues. “All of this unfolded against the backdrop of audiences losing trust in legacy outlets. And rather than simply complain about it from the couch (although we do recommend that as an occasional sport), we wanted to give people the literacy tools to wade through the mess.”
The last five to six years have presented a series of local and global events – Australian bushfires, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19 pandemic, the US presidential election to name a few – that have shown the ease with which misinformation can spread, and how that in turn impacts the media and public opinion on issues such as politics, global conflict, climate change, race and healthcare.
“It is the perfect storm,” says Antoinette. “Tech giants control the pipes through which news flows, their algorithms warp reach and amplify misinformation, and the rapid rise of AI is only going to make the chaos harder to contain.
“At the same time, audiences are rightfully furious at outlets they once trusted.”
Antoinette believes many mainstream media outlets have, “over the past two years, delivered a version of events in Gaza that bears little resemblance to what people are seeing in real time on their feeds.
“Avoiding the word genocide. Platforming war crime propaganda. Silencing or punishing staff who called for more ethical coverage. Spending far more time avoiding Palestinian humanity than showing it,” she says.
Jan adds that “Trump and the COVID era accelerated the distrust in mainstream media over the past 10 years by undermining facts and evidence – two things that should be the bread and butter of all good mainstream media outlets”.
Both Antoinette and Jan have Lebanese heritage, which they give a nod to in the name of their brand itself.
“Ette is the last four letters of both our names. Antoinette and, for those who don’t know, Jan’s full name is Jeannette,” says Antoinette.
“We wanted something short, clean and with a quiet nod to our shared Lebanese ancestry. Many of our aunts and cousins have names ending in ette, a colonial hangover from France’s time in Lebanon. A little history lesson baked into four letters.”
Whether it’s being assigned the ‘ethnic’ stories in a newsroom, feeling silenced after challenging a questionable headline or angle, or being branded as too outspoken, being a woman of colour in Australian media doesn’t come without various challenges. It can be isolating, especially when the reporting of multicultural stories is consistently in the hands of people with little lived experience.
“I think it is immensely important for communities of colour to control their own narrative and not have one foisted on them, particularly a narrative they are constantly forced to defend against,” says Jan. “In that sense, it’s important that women of colour are represented as reporters and storytellers in the Australian media, but it’s not the be all and end all. In recent years, I’ve come to rethink representation because it has veered too many times into tokenism.
“Bluntly, what needs to change are Australia’s colonial structures (that minor thing), but in the immediacy, one thing that will aid women of colour in speaking freely is solidarity with other women of colour. It is collectives that protect their members and amass power as they grow. Indeed, solidarity – not support, not sympathy – from allies (of colour or otherwise) is crucial.”
Running a platform that dissects widespread news coverage, media commentary, and online discourse comes with great responsibility in itself.
“In terms of running Ette, the main thing that keeps me up at night is whether or not we’ve got all of our facts straight and iron-clad and whether or not we have been fair in our analysis,” she shares. “I stew over these two questions 23 out of 24 hours a day. It’s really important that if we are going to critique others for lack of fact or fairness, we best make sure we’ve got both of those things in abundance and must always, always be willing to accept critical feedback where we have failed.”
Jan doesn’t foresee the “mainstream media changing, at least not profoundly”, but she still holds hope for the media landscape overall, and it comes down to shifting audience behaviour.
“I do have hope that audiences will change, and I think if there is one thing that is going to change the media, it’s their audiences changing first.”
Jan Fran and Antoinette Lattouf’s debut live tour, It’s a No From Me is taking place in Sydney and Melbourne in February 2026. More information and ticket details are available here.
Top photo – Pictured: Antoinette Lattouf and Jan Fran, Source: Supplied (with additional design by Missing Perspectives)