The fact-averse pearl-clutching by Stan Grant and his legacy media groupies continues unabated.
As you may recall, Australia’s most famous tanning bed afficionado threw a massive tanty last week, in response to the backlash against his massive tanty the week before. He’s quite the taxpayer-funded tanty-thrower, our Stan.
When Stan the Tant used coverage of the King’s coronation to embark on a racist tirade against Australia, thousands of viewers took exception. The ABC was hit with a flood of complaints. Racism! shrieked Stan, who promptly announced that he was quitting television because of a “flood” of “racism” online.
The only problem is that he has never once stumped up a single shred of evidence. Not one tweet, link or screencap.
But if Stan has a problem with facts and evidence, his fellow lefty-luvvies in the legacy media are even worse.
Fresh data has discredited claims that News Corp and Sky News engaged in a sustained campaign to target journalist Stan Grant and the ABC over the national broadcaster’s coverage of the King’s coronation.
Internal publishing data provided by News Corp (publisher of The Australian) reveals media outlets, most notably the Nine Entertainment tabloids (The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald), Guardian Australia, and Crikey – as well as some high-profile ABC journalists – wildly exaggerated the volume of news and commentary in the company’s mastheads about Grant and his appearance on the controversial pre-coronation panel show.
Here’s the thing with media commentary: we can check, you know. Every news outlet has a search bar. Failing that, there are search engines, especially media-specific ones like Lexus-Nexis.
We have the receipts, as they say.
This new analysis stretches from when the ABC’s coverage of the coronation programming started at 5pm on May 6 to when Grant announced on May 19 that he planned to step down as host of Q+A.
In this period, The Australian, News Corp’s metropolitan and regional mastheads, news.com.au and Sky News digital produced a total of 36 unique stories. Not all of these articles were syndicated.
In fact, as is so often the case when the left embarks on a screeching campaign, they’re just so many demented budgies attacking their little mirrors.
Similarly, between May 19 and last Thursday, as the ABC and other media debated and reported Grant’s decision to leave Q+A, 50 unique stories were published across all these titles – a figure comparable to reporting for many other public interest issues, considering more than 20 titles were involved. Again, not all of these articles were syndicated.
And, as is also too often the case, the left media simply lie through their teeth. But, again, we have the receipts.
Crikey has reported Grant was mentioned more than 150 times in this same period in The Australian and in footage by Sky News. But its data includes the number of times the words “Stan Grant”, “Stan” and “Grant” were mentioned in any single Sky discussion.
Of a list of articles that Crikey has used as the basis for its analysis it claims, for example, Grant’s name was uttered 14 times in a single five-minute exchange between Sky host Chris Kenny and The Australian’s media reporter Sophie Elsworth.
That’s even less than Stan Grant talks about himself. And about a single percentage point of the number of times Stan Grant interrupts everyone else when he hosts a Q+A episode.
It’s suggested that the ultimate source of the fake news is the ABC itself.
ABC managing director David Anderson was asked about the matter at senate estimates last Wednesday by Liberal senator Hollie Hughes.
“There’s been some suggestion that some of that misinformation around numbers of mentions etc … was actually being put up by the ABC communications unit, namely Sally Jackson and Nick Leys,” Senator Hughes said.
“Could you please confirm, or if you don’t know already, take it on notice whether or not the communications team was responsible for putting out those figures to the Guardian and other outlets that are incorrect?”
Anderson chose to take the question on notice. He has until early July to answer.
Still, the ABC is proving quite the stickler for accuracy — when it suits them.
Last Wednesday, the ABC communications unit requested The Australian correct a report stating that the ABC received 1700 complaints about its coronation coverage, on the basis this figure was inaccurate and too high.
Hours later, Mr Anderson told the Senate hearing that the ABC had received 1832 complaints.
The Australian
Can these taxpayer-funded loafers tell the truth about anything?
