As I wrote recently, the potentially devastating – for both the broadcaster and the UK government – defamation lawsuit from US President Donald Trump has significant implication for Australia’s [taxpayer-funded left-wing propaganda outfit] ‘national broadcaster’. The exposure of the BBC’s deep and institutional bias must also raise questions about local legacy media outlets who use the BBC as one of their primary ‘news’ sources. Who has any real confidence they don’t share the BBC’s biases, making them blind to its blatantly fake news?
Still, the ABC are probably lucky that they’re so irrelevant on the world stage that the president is barely aware of them. Well, except as an annoying buzz in his ear on the Rose Garden lawn, that time.
Well, to be more precise, we the taxpayers are probably lucky. Because we’re the ones whose taxes will pay for it if the president ever bothered to take them to court for defamation, too. Because the ABC’s boss is not just admitting that they doctored Trump’s speech in a similar fashion to the BBC, he’s actually bragging about it.
ABC managing director Hugh Marks has denied Four Corners misrepresented comments made by Donald Trump on the day of the Capitol Hill riot, with the broadcasting executive insisting he is “proud” of the journalism produced by the organisation’s flagship current affairs program.
In the same way that only a mother could be ‘proud’ of their little darling’s terrible finger-paintings.
The BBC’s Panorama program spliced together two separate quotes from Mr Trump on the day to make it appear that the US President had directly encouraged the crowd to engage in violence on the Capitol.
On Monday, it emerged that an ABC’s Four Corners program, Downfall – the Last Days of President Trump, which aired in February 2021, also omitted key excerpts from Mr Trump’s speech, specifically when he implored the crowd to behave in a patriotic fashion.
It’s not the first time the ABC has published false information about the US president. In 2021, Four Corners aired a three-part ‘Russiagate’ special: based entirely on material we now know without doubt was false and intended to directly harm the president’s reputation. The ABC have not only never apologised for or retracted the fake story – they’re refusing to even discuss it.
On Tuesday, the Australian reported that the ABC ombudsman was unable to review any editorial material published before June 2022 under the terms of the broadcaster’s “complaint handling framework”.
The Four Corners’ Downfall episode, hosted by star reporter Sarah Ferguson, aired in February 2021 […]
The revelation of the “Trump edit” on the Four Corners episode in question prompted Liberal MP Sarah Henderson – herself a former ABC journalist – to call for a Senate inquiry into the taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s repeated failures to meet its statutory obligation to be impartial and accurate in its reporting.
Like so many captured institutions, the ABC is beyond redemption.
It’s long past time to strip it of taxpayer funding, except for perhaps core functions such as rural emergency broadcasting. Make it a subscription service – then we’ll see just how much Australians really ‘treasure’ it.
