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The taxpayer-funded ‘Lanyard Class’ really do think they’re a law unto themselves. As I reported recently, Australia’s ‘eKaren’ tried to unlawfully trick X into blocking Australian content that an Australian court had already ruled was legally permissible. When caught out the eKaren tried to absolve herself by claiming that, since she had acted outside her legal powers, the Administrative Review Tribunal had no jurisdiction to review her illegal actions.
But for sheer chutzpah, nobody holds a publicly funded candle to the Ultimo far-left collective laughingly dubbed ‘Australia’s national broadcaster’. The ABC has long regarded itself as above the law, at least as far back as the mid-’70s, when ABC management airily hand-waved away criticism of Richard Neville’s simpering pro-paedophilia ‘panel of pederasts’, saying, “in general, men will sleep with young boys”.
More recently, the ABC responded to accusations of overwhelming bias by appointing an internal review that proceeded from a publicly stated position that the reviewer didn’t think the ABC was biased. Which, surprise, surprise, was his conclusion as well.
It gets worse. Not only is the ABC reviewing itself, the monkeys are telling the organ-grinder exactly which tune to play.
When the ABC’s top journos want big boss Hugh Marks’s opinion, they’re more than happy to let him know what it is – particularly when it comes to defending their own stories.
In the latest glaring indication of who is really running the show at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster, Diary can reveal high-profile presenter Sarah Ferguson dictated key parts of what eventually became Marks’s personal public response after Ferguson’s contentious Four Corners series on Donald Trump was accused of misleading viewers.
This is the series that promoted, at great length, the wholly fictitious ‘Russian collusion’ conspiracy theory. Even after the whole affair was exposed as blatant disinformation, a Democrat-engendered hoax, the ABC has never apologised for, let alone retracted the program.
Not to fear, Marks soon sprung to Ferguson’s defence and publicly championed her three-part Downfall series, describing it as “powerful” while insisting the ABC was “proud of it”.
This was, as it turns out, exactly what this taxpayer-funded liar had instructed her nominal boss to say.
Remarkably, the ABC’s managing director and editor-in-chief formed this strongly held personal view little more than two hours after Ferguson specially requested the broadcaster describe it as “powerful” while – you guessed it – insisting the ABC was “proud of it” […]
The messages were released to the Senate after Liberal senator Sarah Henderson asked Marks to “provide on notice all correspondence” relating to the Downfall series amid claims the program selectively edited Trump’s address to a rally ahead of the assault on the US Capitol in January 2021 to remove key context from his speech.
And that is exactly what the BBC did – and landed itself in a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit it’s almost certain to lose. Heads have already rolled, with the BBC’s director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness, stood down.
No such even pretence of accountability, at the ABC.
Even though commentators Chris Kenny and Tim Blair drew almost immediate parallels between the shows’ respective handling of the speech, Marks issued a spirited defence on November 12 while insisting that “comparing the BBC’s Panorama program to the ABC’s Four Corners program is opportunistic and false”.
“The grab on Four Corners was used accurately by the program. The editing did not change the meaning of that section of the speech and did not mislead the audience,” he said.
It’s not a lie if we believe it, as George Constanza might say.
Intriguingly, the internal emails revealed that neither of those descriptions were in the initial statement drafted by ABC comms type Sally Jackson, and sent to news boss Justin Stevens, editorial director Gavin Fang, head of investigations Jo Puccini and Ferguson, at 9.50 that morning.
Instead, her version suggested: “The ABC stands by the journalism in the Four Corners program. It did not create misleading commentary of the events covered or comments made.”
And then she got put in her place by her supposed underling.
Although Fang reckoned that was “fine” by him, Ferguson was less than impressed.
“The statement is clear but also bloodless/generic. We deploy the overused ‘stand by the journalism’. As if it was in doubt,” she complained in response at 10.32am.
“Can we not say the programme (sic) was powerful or good?”
You’ll never guess what happened next!
Surprise, surprise, little more than 45 minutes later, the statement had been updated to say: “Downfall is powerful journalism of the highest standard. The ABC is proud of it.”
That’s more like it. Ferguson couldn’t have said it better herself even though she did.
This is the sort of arrogant misinformation mill you can only buy with a billion dollars a year of taxpayers’ money.
