Andrew Bolt: ABC’s three fails while covering Bruce Pascoe’s latest book

Within a week the ABC has failed three times while covering fake Aboriginal Bruce Pascoe, who is flogging his latest book.

Just one week ago I set the ABC a test: prove they’re in the truth business.

I specifically asked: “Will the ABC now disown its hero”, fake Aborigine Bruce Pascoe, as he flogged his latest book, on life on his Mallacoota farm?

Since then: three fails.

As most informed people must now know, Pascoe is not Aboriginal.

Genealogical records indicate all his ancestors are of British descent, and two of the three tribes he claims are his say he’s fake.

His bestseller Dark Emu has also been debunked.

Pascoe relied in part on false citations to claim Aborigines had actually been farmers living in “houses” in “towns” of 1000 people.

Now, in his latest book, he even claims Aborigines were here for “100,000 years” – twice as long as accepted science suggests – and to end their disadvantage we should buy flour they used to make from, say, kangaroo grass, which is so impractical that a kilo from Pascoe’s farm costs $360.

Bruce Pascoe never got asked for evidence he wasn’t a fake Aborigine.

But here’s what happened when Pascoe was interviewed three times last Tuesday on the ABC.

Not one of the four interviewers – Rafael Epstein, David Lipson, Emma Rebellato and Michael Rowland – asked Pascoe for evidence that he wasn’t a fake Aborigine.

They merely asked how it felt to have been, er, criticised, for something they didn’t dare name.

They all asked variations of the poor-you question on the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast: “That backlash post Dark Emu, what was that like?”

Lipson even advertised Pascoe still as Aboriginal and praised him for being “honest”.

None challenged Pascoe’s claim that Aborigines were here for 100,000 years, or that they’d been farmers, or that kangaroo grass flour was a viable solution when it costs $360 a kilo.

I once thought truth counted.

But to today’s tribalists it now seems that the more false a claim by one of their own, the more credit they get for believing it.

How little the facts now count was made clear last week by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter FitzSimons, who declared the truth of Pascoe’s race wasn’t relevant: “I’m happy to take (Pascoe) at his word – not that it is particularly relevant.

Let’s say he also claimed to be a great dancer – and he wasn’t. Would it remotely affect what he wrote?

Well, if Pascoe tells untruths even about his race, why believe anything else in his Aboriginal “history”? But which Leftist journalist still cares about truth?

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: ABC’s three fails while covering Bruce Pascoe’s latest book