Andrew Bolt: ABC a propaganda vehicle on public dime
The ABC accuses Fox News of bias, but our public broadcaster itself is an echo chamber and propaganda vehicle. And it does it all with your money.
Andrew Bolt
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How dare the ABC attack the Murdoch media for its bias. How dare it accuse Fox News on Monday of spreading “the Big Lie”.
Those shameless and dangerous hypocrites.
On Monday, the ABC’s Four Corners ran another hit job on media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, claiming his US-based Fox News had become president Donald Trump’s “most reliable echo chamber” – “a propaganda vehicle“ that “helped destabilise democracy”.
Talk about projection.
It’s the ABC itself that is an echo chamber and propaganda vehicle that destabilises democracy.
Worse, it does all this with your money, in breach of the law.
The ABC, being taxpayer-funded, is required under the ABC Act to be impartial.
The Murdoch media, being privately owned, is entitled to be Right-wing, just as other privately-owned outlets like The Guardian, Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Channel 10 are entitled to be Left-wing.
But the ABC cannot accept this.
It is obsessed with Murdoch, and especially with his Fox News and Sky News. No one must dissent from the ABC line!
And Four Corners on Monday seemed particularly shocked that some presenters on Fox News, America’s only Right-of-centre network, actually – duh! – preferred the Right-of-centre President Trump.
I won’t go through all the shoddy half-truth that Four Corners and presenter Sarah Ferguson told on Monday to smear Fox, and how she failed to note, for instance, that Fox’s ratings actually fell through the floor because its hosts attacked Trump’s fake claims that voter fraud caused his defeat.
Nor will I point out every bit of hypocrisy, although I can’t resist one.
Ferguson was outraged that Fox News presenter Sean Hannity appeared on stage at a campaign rally for Trump.
But ABC presenter Wendy Harmer appeared at an anti-coal campaign rally here – clearly aimed at the Morrison government – and tweeted a picture of herself with protest head Bob Brown, the former Greens leader, with the caption: “Here with Bob Brown at Parra Park. Do come!”
Let me instead point out the ABC is guilty of everything it alleges against Fox News, and more.
Take Ferguson’s claim that Fox News is an “echo chamber”.
How I laughed when the credits rolled on Four Corners on Monday, revealing that the writer and producer of Ferguson’s stinking pile of anti-Murdoch paranoia was her husband, Tony, himself a long-time ABC presenter and as Left-wing as both his wife and Four Corners boss Sally Neighbour.
No chamber has a bigger echo than the ABC, stacked from top to bottom with the Left. And how it shows.
The ABC unanimously backed the fake claims that Cardinal George Pell was a paedophile. It unanimously backed the fake history of fake Aborigine Bruce Pascoe.
It also unanimously backs the global warming scare, and fake claims that the Great Barrier Reef is dying.
As another ABC presenter, Kerry O’Brien, once declared on Four Corners: “For nearly half a century as a journalist, I’ve been reporting, reading, watching and now presenting stories on its decline.”
But the latest survey by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, shows the reef has near-record levels of coral cover.
Then there was Ferguson’s claim that Fox News pushed “the Big Lie” – Trump’s false claim that he was beaten by election fraud. (Ferguson failed to add that several Fox presenters damned Trump’s claims, causing its ratings to fall through the floor.)
Ferguson is actually the last person at the ABC to point the finger.
In 2019, she presented no fewer than three Four Corners shows pushing fake claims that Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia to hack the emails of Democrat opponent Hillary Clinton.
As she announced on Four Corners: “Tonight, we begin our special three-part investigation into the story of the century – the election of US president Donald Trump and his ties to Russia … Next week on Trump-Russia, secrets, spies, useful idiots and the case for collusion.”
And never forget the ABC’s other “Big Lies” – on Pell, on the reef, on Pascoe.
Plus its fake claims that our navy tortured refugees, racist officials stole tens of thousands of children just because they were Aboriginal, and our country is riddled with racism.
The ABC is now destabilising our democracy.
Our national broadcaster is so hostile to Liberal politicians that very few ministers will now appear on flagship shows like Q&A.
The ABC legitimises far-Left voices and, as we saw on Monday, demonises the few media outlets which still hire conservatives.
That makes it a public menace. A true danger to our democracy.
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