James Morrow: The ABC can’t help itself when it comes to Donald Trump

For a show that claims to take a sophisticated look at the world, Four Corners doesn’t seem to understand America very well at all, writes James Morrow.

Journalists are just like people in any other business. They have days when they struggle to find a topic to cover, and days when they are spoiled for choice.

Which makes it all the stranger that at a time when Covid is tearing at our federation, Afghanistan is falling to pieces, China is eyeing off Taiwan, and the American empire is in retreat, the ABC’s so-called “current affairs flagship program” has let itself become obsessed with a news network broadcasting 10,000km away.

Last week’s Four Corners, the first of a double-barrelled hit on America’s Fox News Channel, was mostly a going-over of old ground set to sinister music. This week’s was an attempt to link the broadcaster to Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud and discredit both in the process.

The ABC are running yet another hit piece on former U.S. President Donald Trump. Picture: Getty Images

Key to the ABC’s claims was a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, alleging that Fox pumped up claims that the company’s technology had been hacked and causing it untold commercial damage in the process.

But as the ABC crows about Fox being sued by voting technology companies for defamation, that is exactly what the ABC is doing to Fox.

While big companies can’t sue for defamation in Australia in the same way they can in the US, there is little doubt that were the laws different here, Fox would have a pretty strong case against the ABC.

And that’s before we talk about the issue of election fraud.

While Trump was ultimately found not to have a case – and plenty of American news outlets associated with Fox, including the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, frequently urged him to give up his quest to overturn the results – both left and right in the US have previously litigated elections in the courts.

ABC Four Corners journalist Sarah Ferguson. Picture: John Appleyard

In 2018, progressives claimed that Democrat Stacey Abrams had the Georgia governorship stolen from her by “corrupt” state officials.

Robert Caro’s biographies of Lyndon Johnson make a strong case he committed fraud to get into the US Senate and may have helped rig things as JFK’s running mate in 1960.

Horrifying to Australians, perhaps. But also part of the rough and tumble of American politics.

And while the ABC is keen to claim that Trump did untold damage to American democracy, that’s an odd reading of an election that saw record turnout and a new president from ­opposition inaugurated on schedule in Washington, DC last January.

But underlying all this is a bigger question: What are they so afraid of?

Journalism is all about competition – the more voices the better – yet the ABC collective consistently wants to see the scope of news and opinion heard by Australians narrowed.

Former US President Lyndon Johnson with ex-Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

When Sky News Australia (I am a presenter) was suspended from YouTube for a week, ABC journos cheered the move on Twitter.

After the first episode of their hit piece on Fox aired last week, the ABC stopped people from discussing the show on their own Facebook pages.

A spokesman claimed the move was due to a lack of moderators, but it is hard to imagine this wasn’t about stamping out “wrongthink”.

Maybe, maybe not.

The ABC would be a lot more believable – and a lot truer to its charter – if it adopted Fox New’s old “fair and balanced” motto as its own.

And then lived by it.