Andrew Bolt: ABC is guilty as sin of conducting witch hunt against George Pell
The broadcaster failed to question the critical weaknesses in the allegations against George Pell and didn’t carry out basic reporting checks that would have revealed the claims were improbable, writes Andrew Bolt
Andrew Bolt
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The ABC has officially denied the truth: it led a witch hunt to destroy Cardinal George Pell.
ABC editorial director Craig McMurtrie defended it after the High Court last week cleared Pell of his ludicrous conviction for raping two teenagers at once.
“Language thrown around … about ‘prejudice’ and a ‘witch-hunt’ against George Pell seems to ignore the first principles of journalism and the facts,” McMurtrie protested.
Rubbish. The ABC united behind reporter Louise Milligan as she seemed to peddle multiple allegations against Pell so weak that all were dropped by prosecutors or overturned by the High Court.
McMurtrie didn’t mention that. Instead, he boasts: “It was the ABC’s Louise Milligan who met the former choirboy at the centre of the now-quashed case against Cardinal Pell and it was Milligan who found and interviewed the family of the second alleged victim.”
But he doesn’t mention a critical weakness in these allegations which should have warned off the ABC: that second “alleged victim” told his mother he hadn’t been abused at all.
Nor did the ABC do what I consider basic reporting that would have revealed that all the anti-Pell allegations it promoted were improbable.
None even checked whether Pell and his “victims” in the Cathedral could have been at the scene of the alleged crime — the open changeroom in which the rapes supposedly occurred — at the only time it was empty.
I did and reported the answer was no. This was key in the High Court acquitting Pell.
Instead, Milligan (and the ABC) just seemed to take the word of the lone accuser, despite overwhelming evidence that his allegations were baseless.
She did the same with other “victims”, including another key anti-Pell accusers who later admitted he’d told a lie because he was having a “meltdown” when he spoke to her, thanks in part to drugs and drink.
McMurtrie also mispresents the High Court’s findings to make the choir boy still seem a witness of truth: “The High Court was largely silent on the veracity of the key witness.”
Wrong. All seven judges considered his allegations so implausible that they threw them out.
Finally, McMurtrie ignores how the ABC prepared for this acquittal — by publishing days earlier a fake claim that it had found “new” Pell accusers.
If this is the ABC’s best defence, it’s as guilty as sin.
Andrew Bolt interviews George Pell in a TV exclusive on Sky News at 7pm Tuesday
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: ABC is guilty as sin of conducting witch hunt against George Pell