Andrew Bolt: Journalism no longer the truth business

Journalism, I once believed, was the truth business. But now too often, Australia’s top media honours are handed to people spreading ruinous falsehoods.

How naïve I was when I first became a journalist, 43 years ago. This wide-eyed country boy who worshipped George Orwell thought he’d joined the truth business.

But now I see Australia’s top media honours go to people spreading ruinous falsehoods. To journalists pushing populist smears they can’t prove.

No wonder respect for journalists is down the toilet, when those awards are not withdrawn even when the untruths are exposed.

Doesn’t truth matter even to the journalists’ union? To organisers of the Walkley Awards? To the Melbourne Press Club?

Right now, the Nine Network is being sued by former federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming for falsely claiming last year he’d committed a filthy crime – “upskirting” a woman in a Brisbane shop.

That claim ruined Laming’s reputation and he was forced to resign.

But Laming was innocent. As the woman’s own colleagues admitted, he’d just (foolishly) taken a picture of the woman in her workplace, and police promptly dropped the case.

Andrew Laming is suing Nine Network after it published false claims he “upskirted” a woman.

Yet the media staged one of those sanctimonious pack attacks for which it is now notorious.

“Laming took a photograph up a woman’s skirt,” declared Channel 10.

“Upskirting is a criminal offence,” frowned The Saturday Paper.

Laming “defends upskirting picture as ‘dignified’,” mocked The New Daily.

The ABC’s Louise Milligan accused Laming on her private Twitter account of a “grossly offensive” crime, taking “a photo of a woman’s underwear under her skirt without consent”.

And on March 27 last year, Nine’s nightly news bulletin also accused Laming of “upskirting”.

Laming spent months trying to get journalists to retract and apologise.

Most did. Milligan did dig in, but the ABC rescued her by paying Laming $79,000 in court-ordered damages, plus an estimated $50,000 in legal fees.

But Nine wouldn’t budge, and only now that Laming is about to take it to court has it finally dropped its defence of truth, and admitted in court documents that Laming is entitled to damages. He wants $1m.

ABC journalist Louise Milligan.

Look, mistakes can happen. I’ve made some mortifying ones myself over the four decades, and apologised.

But what’s different here is that Nine’s report won the reporter and producer a Walkley Award – Australia’s highest – for television/video news reporting. The journalists’ union, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, made them the Queensland Journalist of the Year. Neither award has been withdrawn.

You see, you can be proved totally wrong but still get to keep awards for maintaining the highest standards of journalism. Which are what, exactly?

The examples are too many now to ignore.

In 2017, Louise Milligan also wrote Cardinal – The Rise and Fall of George Pell, falsely smearing the treasurer of the Vatican as a pedophile.

Pell is innocent. Every absurd charge laid against him by seemingly vindictive Victoria Police collapsed or was dismissed in court, although not before Pell spent 404 days in prison for crimes he could not possibly have committed, until the High Court freed him.

George Pell was falsely named a pedophile.

Yet the Walkley Foundation, which claims it “benchmarks the industry standard for excellence and best practice journalism”, made Milligan’s diatribe its Book of the Year – and has not withdrawn that award.

Barristers of the Sir Owen Dixon Chambers made Milligan their “legal reporter of the year” for her book – and have not stripped her of that undeserved honour.

The Melbourne Press Club gave its highest award to Milligan for articles on Pell, one of which had to be pulled from the ABC website, for being so unfair. Yet it, too, has let Milligan keep it.

This isn’t the first time it hasn’t let truth be its guide. In 2020, it gave its Quill Award for sports news to an Age journalist for reports on a disastrous Adelaide Crows pre-season training camp.

The company which ran the camp then took legal action against The Age, which apologised and removed the articles. But the Melbourne Press Club decided this year to let the reporter keep his award, against objections by some board members.

We see the same charade with the Pulitzer Prize, America’s top media award, which in 2018 went to the reporters behind the biggest fake news of this century.

Its prize for national reporting went to journalists from the Washington Post and New York Times for pushing the preposterous claim that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

That claim has since been exposed as a hoax, yet the Pulitzer board refuses to revoke the award.

Yes, I thought journalism was the truth business. But too often, it seems, the truth is not good business.