Jaundiced ABC surrenders last vestiges of objectivity, by Chris Kenny at The Australian newspaper..
[The ABC] led its television news bulletin on Tuesday night with a story that is a jaundiced concoction of rumours and factual errors purporting to suggest Malcolm Turnbull lost the prime ministership because of a media campaign led by this newspaper.
This so-called reporting by the ABC’s national political editor, Andrew Probyn, repeated in an online version, is so wide of the mark and far-fetched it would sit more neatly on the pages of the Green Left Weekly rather than on the publicly funded platforms of the national broadcaster.
The ABC’s claim is akin to what we might read from an undergraduate activist writing for a university newspaper: that Rupert Murdoch directed the dispensing of a prime minister, and through the agency of this newspaper, a clutch of strongly opinionated Sky News hosts and, bizarrely, Fairfax Media radio hosts, he had his way. …
The best way to demonstrate the deception is to take one clear and completely false statement from Probyn: “Until the end, News Corp’s The Australian had been unabashed in its advocacy for an end to the Turnbull prime ministership.”
This is not just incorrect — it is entirely the opposite of the reality. The editorial line of The Australian and The Weekend Australian consistently, repeatedly and without exception supported Turnbull’s prime ministership from its tumultuous start to its sudden end, urging him to improve his performance and warning of looming policy and political problems. …
Like the old Soviet Union, the ABC lies by omission so much that that they mislead their audience:
The Liberal leadership changed because a majority of Liberal Party MPs voted for change, of course. They were driven to that decision primarily because Turnbull tried to deliver the same outcome that led to his demise in 2009 — a climate and energy policy that would be acceptable to both Labor and his own party room.
To blame the media that warned of the impending peril is really just a way for the ABC to create a diversion from the embarrassing fact that it could see none of this coming.
Like many other journalists, the ABC’s political analysts had left their audiences in the dark.
Indeed, the ABC is still yet to explain these events to its audience, offering jejune conspiracy theories instead. You have to wonder if anyone is in charge at the national broadcaster.
