You Don’t Hate Them Enough

As the saying goes: no matter how much you hate the legacy media, you don’t hate them enough. And if you don’t distrust them even more than you distrust an email from a Nigerian prince, then you’re a fool.

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann coined the term ‘Gell-Mann Amnesia’, when he read a newspaper report on physics which, as one of the world’s greatest physicists, he knew was entirely wrong – but when he read the next article, on a subject he didn’t know at all, he trusted it to be true. Then it struck him like a thunderclap: if he knew they were wrong about a subject he knew very well, then why would he trust them to be right about a subject he knew nothing about?

How much less should he trust them now that we know for a fact that they’re not merely wrong, but are actively and deliberately lying?

For instance, when journalists almost universally accepted Hamas’ claims of Israel ‘starving children’, they were just wrong. Then journalist Bari Weiss published the truth: all of the emaciated children pictured had severe illnesses and many of them genetic (unsurprisingly, in a place where one-third of marriages are between first-degree relatives: cousins, siblings, parents, etc).

So, they not only refused to admit the truth when it was laid out for them, but actively attacked the truth-teller: they weren’t just wrong – they were lying. Lying with intent.

They’re still at it.

Some journalists last week tried to claim there was no reason to believe ASIO in pinning blame on Iran for two anti-Jewish attacks – the firebombings late last year of a delicatessen in Sydney’s Bondi and the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne.

They seemed unaware that the Iranian Republican Guard Corps has a long history of exactly this sort of behaviour in Europe and the US, as ABC’s 7.30 revealed on Thursday night.

Why publicly prefer the credibility of the murderous, Jew-hating Nazis of Iran over a statement from our own security agencies?

It’s fascinating to reflect on how many of those urging caution about accepting ASIO’s word were only six months earlier claiming there was no evidence of anti-Semitism in Australia’s suburbs, let alone among “peaceful” bridge walkers for peace.

Despite the fact, amply documented in photographs, of marchers waving gigantic placards of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, as well as Hamas and ISIS flags. Not just fringe randos, either: many were at the forefront of the march, standing directly behind the front-runners, Labor powerbroker Bob Carr, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and hacker Julian Assange. Did not one of them so much as look over their shoulder, all day? Or glance up, to see the ISIS flag flying from the bridge?

The media led a massive campaign against the Morrison government, based on Brittany Higgins’ claim that that government had organised a massive coverup of her rape claim. The witch hunt contributed in no small measure to the Albanese government’s ascension to power, especially given how frenetically the then-Albanese opposition weaponised the claim in parliament.

And it was all a huge stinking lie.

Last Wednesday a second judge discredited false political claims by former coalition staffer Brittany Higgins about a cover-up by the Morrison government of allegations she was raped by Bruce Lehrmann in March 2019 at Parliament House.

Justice Paul Tottle in the WA Supreme Court in his judgment in favour of Higgins’s former boss and minister for defence industry, Linda Reynolds, found Higgins had lied 26 times in media interviews about attempts by Reynolds and chief of staff Fiona Brown to cover up the rape allegation. Reynolds and Brown had encouraged Higgins to report it to the police, as Justice Michael Lee found in Sydney last year.

Leaked recordings of talks between Higgins, her now husband David Sharaz and staff at Ten’s The Project made it clear Ten was interested in the story because of the political impact it could have on the Morrison government.

The legacy media are just as deceitful when it comes to global politics.

ABC’s Media Watch owes it to the public to examine how current 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson screwed up her pretentiously named three-part “Story of the Century” for ABC Four Corners in 2018. She uncritically accepted the words of Democrats-aligned national security figures who knew all along the story was false.

The ABC has never apologised for, corrected or retracted the story.

They lied about Covid.

While at it, new Media Watch host Linton Besser should look at predecessor Paul Barry’s campaign against Sky News Australia host Sharri Markson over her reporting of the Covid-19 virus leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – a claim that we now know was true.

They’re lying through their teeth about ‘renewables’.

This column and the Australian’s Chris Uhlmann have for years discussed problems with electricity grid stability when high penetrations of renewables are reached. This is not just about the unreliability of wind and solar generation but about the physics and engineering involved in integrating different power sources without the system inertia provided by large spinning generators.

California has again faced blackouts this northern summer and Spain and Portugal endured a total system shutdown. Reporters at the Nine papers, Guardian Australia and ABC won’t report the issues – even though the Australian Energy Market Operator has begun to admit there is such a problem.

In fact, as they have with the ‘starving Gazan children’ lie, the media’s sole focus is on attacking anyone who tells them the truth.

[Donald Trump’s Energy Department director, Chris Wright’s] panel, commissioned to report on the latest climate science to the US Department of Energy, have been bagged in mastheads such as the Guardian for being sceptical about climate doom predictions.

Yet all are serious experts. Professor Judith Curry from Georgia Tech runs the popular Climate Etc blog, Roy Spencer is a prolific researcher and former NASA scientist, Steve Koonin was undersecretary of energy to president Barack Obama, John Christy is an atmospheric scientist from the University of Alabama, and Ross McKitrick is a highly credentialed Canadian environmental economist.

Other than attack its authors, the legacy media have not covered the report at all.

They’re not just wrong: they’re lying. We know they’re lying. They know we know. Yet still they refuse to tell the truth.

You don’t hate them enough.