ABC shows its smug contempt for the other half in Four Corners

Sarah Ferguson and her ABC colleagues are blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome and Murdochophobia. Picture: ABC

So Sarah Ferguson, Four Corners and the ABC loathe Donald Trump and believe that News Corp and the Murdoch media empire are a force for evil. Hold the presses – this is another world exclusive, surely worthy of another prize from the journalists’ union at the Walkley Awards.

It stretches my patience to take this sort of so-called journalism seriously. It is anti-journalism – leftist activists crusading in crass, partisan attempts to silence any journalists who refuse to toe the progressive line – all done at taxpayers’ expense.

Ferguson and the ABC cannot understand why anyone could have voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton, or for Trump against Joe Biden. Their deeply anti-intellectual, ill-informed, intolerant and out-of-touch explanation is to conclude that only bigots and fools would have done so, and those stupid enough to be tricked by Fox News.

Imagine having such a low opinion of close to half the American populace. Imagine having such a smug and unjustified sense of your own superiority.

They do the same in Australia, repeatedly, of course. John Howard never earned an election victory; it was always due to the intolerance of mainstream voters, the deceit of children overboard, the inflammation of the war on terror or the injustice of the electoral system when Labor won more of the two-party preferred vote.

Oh, and occasionally News Corp got the blame there too. If the conservatives were the victors, it could never actually be the case that voters got it right.

Ferguson and her ABC colleagues are still so blinded by what have become known as Trump Derangement Syndrome and Murdochophobia that they attempt to attribute the rise of an astonishing political disrupter all the way to the White House, his volatile presidency, strong re-election showing and chaotic exit on the operation of a single media organisation. It is batty.

What is particularly illuminating is that the ABC explains this by saying American voters were hapless dupes whose views were dictated by Fox News. Former defence contributor Ralph Peters actually said Fox News went from giving voice to the concerns of US conservative voters to being the “shaper of their views”.

Such disdain for voters is precisely the elitism that Trump identified, called out in 2016, and used to drive out the establishment in his own party and across Washington in his stunning election campaign and one-term presidency. It is as though the progressives refuse to learn: cheese, electric shock, cheese, electric shock.

That Trump was a poor loser and made outlandish claims about the 2020 election being “stolen” is beyond doubt. It has been reported extensively by all media, including Fox News. Even Ferguson could not hide the fact (although she skated by pretty quickly) that the network’s highest rating ­opinion leader, Tucker Carlson, dismissed the stolen election conspiracy.

In the very program the ABC sought to make the case that News Corp pushes dictated lines, its key critics talked about divided political views. Essentially the ABC and Ferguson tried to make the case that reporting Trump’s election claims – remembering he was still president at the time – amounted to partisan journalism. Again, this is plain silly.

The ABC, on the other hand, has never properly ventilated the many issues surrounding US presidential election processes, ­including the major changes to mail-in ballots this time around because of the pandemic, which must be a legitimate issue for investigation, debate and reform. Yet, the ABC was concerned about the electoral processes in 2016 when Clinton won the popular vote but not the electoral college. Go figure.

That Donald Trump was a poor loser and made outlandish claims about the 2020 election being ‘stolen’ is beyond doubt. Picture: AFP

The Capitol Hill riot in January was a horrible day for the US. Trump’s “stolen” election rhetoric shamelessly inflamed tensions but the call to arms was promulgated far more by digital media, Facebook, Twitter and the like (as the ABC’s reporting has previously revealed) than any reporting from American cable networks, newspapers or radio.

Yet it is grossly overstating the case to frame that day as imperilling US democracy; remember some journalists said the nation had never been so deeply divided, apparently forgetting the civil war and other less bloody upheavals. When Trump won the presidential election in 2016 there were ­violent protests across the country, with cars burned, windows smashed and police attacked.

However, a typical ABC news report of the time referred to “throngs of demonstrators” holding “marches across the United States” and did not mention protesters throwing “objects at police” or burning rubbish and smashing “store front windows” until four paragraphs into the story. When hundreds of protesters were arrested at protests against Trump’s inauguration three months later, with shops damaged and police injured, the ABC did not suggest it was a threat to democracy. Nor did they criticise Hillary Clinton for encouraging “resistance” or Madonna for fantasising about bombing the White House.

Indeed, in our own country, I do not recall the horrible 1996 riots and invasion of Parliament House in Canberra attracting analysis from the ABC about democracy being imperilled, even though the crowds had been fired up by speeches from ALP leaders and union bosses. In fact, in its dissection of the Washington riots this year, much of the inane “only in America” ABC commentary seemed to “unremember” our own experience.

All this just confirms the underlying ideological bias of the ABC that colours its reporting. ­Violent protests should always be condemned and violence that ­either decries or threatens democratic processes is especially egregious because it undercuts the very values that underpin the success of liberal democracies. This should always be the position no matter which side of politics is ­behind the unrest.

Trump won the 2016 election and improved his vote in 2020 to more than 74 million, more than any other candidate in the history of US politics, except for Biden in the same election. That tells you either that more than 74 million Americans are rednecks, fools and dupes, or that the ABC, Ferguson and many other green-left activists are so filled with ideological hatred that they have lost touch with reality.

This sort of polemic from the ABC shows that the corporation’s misuse of taxpayer’s money is worthy of a royal commission. The ABC Act that enshrines the broadcaster’s charter is a law that ought to be obeyed.

Remember Ferguson produced a three-part series on the so-called Russian collusion theory dubbed “The story of the century” in 2018 that was designed to undermine the Trump presidency but was embarrassingly erroneous and remains a stain on the journalistic reputation of the ABC, Ferguson and Four Corners. Then, last February Ferguson produced a Four Corners program on Trump’s “Downfall” in which she tried directly to blame the out­going president for the violence perpetrated by protesters.

But the campaigning goes on, and perhaps the best line in Monday night’s latest instalment came from Ferguson when she asked former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell: “Do you ever hear yourself and think it sounds ridiculous?” No self-awareness in that question, no self-awareness at all.