Audiences are cheated when denied all details of news events

In a hyper-partisan media world, what is real depends totally on which media you consume.

Chris Mihchell writes about left bias in news.

In a hyper-partisan media world, can voters really understand politics properly without consuming news from both left-wing and conservative sources?

Returning from seven weeks away last week, I was struck by how what is reported about crucial issues depends totally on which media you consume. Three examples stood out: the uproar about Alan Jones and the advertising of Saturday’s Everest Cup barrier draw on the sails of Sydney Opera House; the confirmation hearings for the US Supreme Court of judge Brett Kavanaugh; and the release last Monday of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Watching the ABC or reading the Fairfax papers, media con­sumers might have thought the plan to screen the barrier draw for six minutes on the famous landmark was unprecedented. And ­indeed sensible friends of mine on the north shore of Sydney, where The Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC dominate media consumption habits, were outraged.

Yet in the city’s biggest newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, in much of the commercial electronic media and on Sky News there was amusement at the moral panic and online petition that ­accumulated more than 300,000 signatures to try to reverse NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s ­apparent backdown to 2GB ­broadcaster Alan Jones after his interview on Friday, October 4, with Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron.

I say “apparent” because the Left media seemed unaware NSW Sport Minister Stuart Ayres and Racing NSW had been discussing the proposal for weeks.

Yes, Jones did bully Herron, implying her job was under threat. But he bullies politicians every day. He is brash, just as Sydney is. He is also generous, amusing and intelligent, and one of the best broadcasters our nation has produced.

He has also been our most controversial broadcaster for decades. Comments about the petition on Twitter make it clear many signed because they dislike Jones.

Lost in the overblown outrage was an early acknowledgment such as that by Paul Murray on Sky News’ PM Live on Monday night that the Opera House had allowed rugby and cricket to advertise World Cups on its sails and had carried Samsung ads for its major sponsor.

Critics claimed ads for commercial events such as a horse race would never be allowed on ­famous landmarks in Europe. But wait. They are allowed and have been for ­decades.

Murray on Monday night showed footage of a Ryder Cup golf promotion with people teeing off from high on the Eiffel Tower. He also showed footage of the ­Incredible Hulk holding up London Bridge in a movie promotion for Disney and Marvel Comics.

On Tuesday night Jones said French car company ­Citroen had first advertised on the Eiffel Tower from 1925 for nine years. There had been criticism that the Opera House promotion was linked to gambling but critics seemed unaware that the place was ­financed by the profits of the Opera House Lottery. And people bet on rugby and cricket, Jones said.

People who don’t consume News Corp papers, listen to talkback radio or watch much Sky­ News seemed to have no idea of such facts.

Ditto the Kavanaugh ­appoint­ment to the US Supreme Court last week and the FBI’s finding that no corroboration could be ­obtained for allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that in the early 1980s, when she was 15 and Kavanaugh 17, he and a friend had tried, and failed, to remove her clothing. None of the friends Ford claimed were at the party could remember the party or the incident. Her witnesses were all people she told of the allegation after 2002, including her second husband and her counsellor.

As Paul Kelly and Janet ­Albrechtsen both wrote last Wednesday, Kavanaugh’s right to the presumption of innocence and his reputation were trashed by the airing in The Washington Post and The New York Times of this and other claims the FBI also could not corroborate.

It is difficult to find any criticism of the process or of the role of the #Metoo movement and the US National Organisation of Women in the Kavanaugh hearings in Fairfax, the ABC or The Guardian. As Albrechtsen wrote, NOW was very reluctant to condemn former Democrat president Bill Clinton for his sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky revealed in 1998. The then NOW president, Patricia Ireland, said at the time: “None of us believes that a charge made is a charge proven.”

This is not to diminish the heartfelt testimony of Ford, but it does raise questions about how media consumers who engage only with left-wing media can inform themselves of the broader implications for the law and politics that are barely mentioned in their preferred news sources.

Readers who see this as confirmation bias from a News Corp ­employee should look at the fact check provided on September 7 by The Washington Post — which broke the original Ford story. Senior Democrats openly admit their main concern about Kavanaugh is his attitude to the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision on Roe v Wade, which effectively legalised abortion in the US.

Yet the Post fact check makes clear the judge has not directly ­opposed Roe v Wade and has indicated he will not do so.

Similarly with the IPCC report. Avid TV current affairs viewers may have noted that just as ­Andrew Bolt was criticising the ­report on Sky News on Monday night, ABC 7.30 political editor Laura Tingle, filling in for Leigh Sales, was presenting an item about the IPCC that was full of dire predictions for the Great Barrier Reef if the world did not abandon coal. The Sydney Morning Herald splashed on the story, the paper’s environ­ment editor, Peter Hannam, tweeted implied criticism of The Australian for its coverage and The Guardian criticised papers across the world that did not lead their front pages with the report.

Yet many of these progressive sources did not see the need to ­include any mention of previous IPCC admissions in its own papers that global warming climate ­models had exaggerated predicted levels of warming. The Australian Financial Review said the report was reigniting the “culture war” over climate change but did not criticise its own sister papers, those behind the mawkish annual Earth Hour begun in 2007.

Media bias highlight of the week for me was Graham Lloyd’s report here on Wednesday that the World Health Organisation had officially accepted wind farms did cause health problems in people affected by turbine noise. The Australian and Lloyd eagerly await an apology from the ABC’s Media Watch, which has been criticising the paper for its correct coverage of the issue for years.