In Australia, the ABC is the worst example, but globally the trend follows the financial success that mainstream media organisations such as The New York Times have had in building audiences who want to read journalism that damages former US President Donald Trump.
Parts of the US media – The NYT, Washington Post, MSNBC – are effectively working hand-in-hand with Democrats’ state legal authorities to try to use the law to destroy Trump’s chances at the November presidential election. It’s a tweak of the intelligence tactics the media used to pump up the Russiagate hoax against Trump’s presidency.
Polling suggests the US public is seeing through these efforts to use the courts and journalism rather than the ballot box to defeat Trump.
For those not on social media platform X, it was fascinating to see many senior Australian journalists react to dishonest efforts to pretend Trump on March 18 had threatened “blood on the streets’’ if he did not win the November election.
Anyone who checked Trump’s speech would know he was talking about the future of the US car industry as he addressed a March 18 rally in Dayton, Ohio.
Politico reported: “Trump says country faces ‘bloodbath’ if Biden wins in November.” In fact, Trump said re-electing Biden would be a catastrophe – or “bloodbath” – for the automotive industry.
Jonah Goldberg, writing in the Tampa Bay Times on March 21, got the partisanship of much reporting dead right.
No fan of the former president and someone who believes Trump does use language to send signals to his base, Goldberg said: “Members of the Trump hating press would help their own cause by being more restrained in their coverage.”
Writing for Racket News, independent journalist Matt Taibbi – former Rolling Stone US political correspondent – said journalists trying to misrepresent Trump were only driving undecided voters towards him. So, what did Trump actually say?
“We’re going to put a 100 per cent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected. Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
Trump, without a teleprompter, according to CNN online, had been “in the midst of an extended riff on the auto industry, unions, the transition to electric vehicles and auto plants in Mexico”.
Democrats-aligned media group Acyn cut the original 17 second Trump grab to nine seconds which said only: “If I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for the country.” No hint he was talking about a financial bloodbath for the car industry.
Biden spokesman James Singer said Trump “wants another January 6”. Hillary Clinton wrote on X: “A bloodbath. What would you say if you saw this in another country?”
Former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki “fact checked’’ the speech on MSNBC after Republican objections. She went back years to quote various Trump hints at violence, as if that “context” justified misreporting of Trump’s Ohio speech.
Several senior Australian journalists approvingly retweeted the Psaki item as proof Trump was threatening violence. It was the very definition of “misinformation”.
An ABC apology to entrepreneur Dick Smith this week proved its fact check unit is just as ready as US media to twist its reporting to hurt conservative political causes.
As has been widely reported, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has called for a debate on nuclear power in Australia. On March 18, Dick Smith on Sydney radio 2GB reacted to a piece in this newspaper by Christine Middap in which former Labor MP and ACTU president Jennie George said the option of nuclear power should be examined.
Smith told 2GB: “This claim by the CSIRO that you can run a whole country on solar and wind is simply a lie. No country has ever been able to run entirely on renewables. That’s impossible.”
The ABC RMIT fact check of Smith’s quotes led with this sentence: “Businessman Dick Smith has thrown his support behind calls to introduce nuclear generated power to Australia, rejecting renewable-led electricity generation in the process.”
Smith told Sky News Australia’s Chris Kenny last Monday that he would write to ABC managing director David Anderson and sue if he did not receive an apology and correction. The ABC backed down 24 hours later but its reworked fact check still contains misrepresentations.
The updated online version dropped the first paragraph’s clause suggesting Smith was “rejecting renewable-led electricity generation in the process”. As Smith told Kenny, he has always been a strong supporter of renewables.
Smith took part in Australia’s first “solar challenge” car race, drives an EV and has done for many years, and relies heavily on domestic renewables.
What the fact check unit and even some ABC critics missed were the key words “run a whole country on solar and wind”. Renewable power generation may one day work to power the electricity system but electricity is a third of the country’s total power use.
Even in the electricity system, tens of thousands of kilometres of power lines and hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in pumped hydro and battery storage will be needed to reach net zero on the grid.
The International Energy Agency says that at this time much of the storage technology that will be needed is yet to be developed. Think green hydrogen for starters.
But in the context of net zero emissions by 2050 across the whole economy, there is a bigger issue. Electricity aside, to meet net zero other fuel sources powering cars, trucks, ships and planes will need to be offset, as will emissions across industrial, agricultural and pastoral enterprises.
Smith correctly criticised the original ABC fact check for claiming four countries – Paraguay, Nepal, Bhutan and Albania – were already 100 per cent renewable. All four also use a variety of fossil fuels, wood and dung to power transport and heating.
Such mistakes may be down to the ignorance of the fact checkers. Yet the deliberate selective editing of Smith’s actual words suggests political motivation.
The updated fact check says: “the first version of this article was based on the inference that in Mr Smith’s interview with 2GB he was only referring to electricity grids”. But there was no such inference in Smith’s interview.
The updated fact check admits renewables – rather than 100 per cent – contribute 33.7 per cent of Albania’s total energy needs, 37.5 per cent of Paraguay’s and 6.1 per cent of Nepal’s. Bhutan also tops up its electricity supply via the Indian grid, which is largely coal-fired.
ABC RMIT fact checks on the voice, on rental shortages under the Labor government in the 1980s when negative gearing was abolished, and on Dutton’s claims about Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s proposed fuel standards are just as suspect as the Dick Smith check.
Thankfully, the ABC has signalled it will end its $165,000-a-year “fact check” deal with RMIT on June 30.
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