For ABC viewers, reality must come as quite a shock

The Auschwitz fail may be the last straw for our toxic, taxpayer-funded broadcaster and its warped anti-journalism.

Sky News’ Sharri Markson and her reporting on the origins of Covid-19 have been the victim of the ABC’s anti-journalism, but there are examples abound.

When world leaders gathered at the Auschwitz concentration camp this week to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the ­liberation that first revealed the horrors of an industrial-scale extermination program aimed at eliminating Jews, our national broadcaster did not have a camera crew or reporter in attendance.

The previous night, when Palestinians celebrated the release of Hamas terrorists from Israeli jails in lopsided and repugnant deals to free Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 atrocities, the ABC was there. Senior reporter John Lyons shared joyful scenes in the West Bank, gave one Hamas terrorist a platform to criticise Israel and aired unverified claims of ­torture against Israel.

A starker example of the ABC’s warped priorities could hardly be found. There are many more.

Take the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than interrogate the draconian measures imposed by state and federal governments, and the alarmist claims made by some medicos, the ABC appointed itself panicker-in-chief and lockdown cheerleader.

It also showed a worrying lack of curiosity about the origins of the virus, rejecting out of hand the theory it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even though publicly available information from early 2020 showed that to be the most likely source. When Sharri Markson broke world exclusive stories detailing further evidence to buttress this theory, the ABC should have followed her lead, but instead it attacked her.

This was anti-journalism as often practised by the ABC’s Media Watch program, with host Paul Barry smugly mansplaining that Markson should have told readers that “almost every virus expert had dismissed the lab escape theory”. Barry dubbed the lab leak a “conspiracy theory” and said there was “no evidence” that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, as he returned to the topic repeatedly with pompous admonitions for Markson.

This was a national broadcaster misleading the public and attacking the diligent reporting of other media. The ABC told audiences the virus probably came from animals in a natural setting – but the CIA has now confirmed that its intelligence assessments have long determined the Wuhan lab as the most likely source.

The ABC’s misleading coverage is all still available online, without corrections and apologies. Here is a public broadcaster established to inform the nation and bind it together having the ­opposite effect.

If the ABC fails to unite the ­nation and instead amplifies the liberal-left elite’s criticism of mainstream concerns and priorities, and if instead of informing the nation it distorts debate based on ideology and partisanship, then what is the point of having it? I have worked at the ABC, dealt with its journalists as a political adviser, appeared as a guest and regular contributor, and confronted it in public debates and courtrooms.

For the past decade or so I have been one of Auntie’s most prolific critics in print and on television, but I have always argued that the national broadcaster needs to be reformed and refocused rather than relinquished. Now I am not so sure.

We need to stop pussyfooting around when discussing its toxic effect on national debate. It is counterproductive to spend taxpayers’ money on a broadcasting behemoth that hurts the country more than helps it.

To illustrate the point, consider the Environmental Defenders Office which has received $8.3m over four years from the Albanese Labor government. This is one of the most scandalous uses of public money imaginable.

Projects like the Blayney goldmine in NSW or the Barossa gas project off the Northern Territory coast passed state and federal approval processes before facing legal challenges from the government-funded EDO. So, having issued approvals, the government, through the EDO, has funded attempts by environmental activists to overturn those same decisions.

This is government using our taxes to attack their own legitimacy. This is national government undermining the nation – equal parts absurd, anti-democratic and damaging. (Peter Dutton has promised to scrap the funding if elected.)

It is the same story with the ABC. If it does not illuminate our public debate, if it is not an antidote to toxic debate but often poisonous itself, then we are spending $1.2bn on national self-harm.

Our national energy self-harm is another case in point. There is probably no issue more important to our country’s future than the energy transition.

Driven by UN emissions reduction goals, the transition involves abandoning our cheap, plentiful and reliable fossil fuel bounty and switching to a world-first renewables-plus-storage model. Less than halfway to the target, we already face record electricity prices and perilous energy security.

The ABC has failed to evaluate energy alternatives, examine the practicality of the renewables rollout, or attempt to assess the cost in dollar terms or economic impact. Instead, the national broadcaster has advocated for the renewables plan, ignored the difficulties and set about demonising the Coalition alternative of adding ­nuclear energy to the mix.

Four Corners ran a piece last year clearly setting out to debunk Dutton’s nuclear option, amplifying the views of renewables enthusiasts and Dutton protagonists like Malcolm Turnbull and Simon Holmes a Court. “Is nuclear a ­viable answer to Australia’s energy woes or is it a quixotic quest never to be realised?” the ABC asked (spoiler alert, you can guess the answer).

Needless to say, the ABC has never run a similar ruler over the engineering and economics behind the renewables plan, nor has it focused on the communities up in arms about the damage to their environments and farmlands from solar, wind and transmission projects. In perhaps the most consequential economic debate of our time, the ABC has skewed the ­debate in a way that avoids rational evaluation and only encourages the unbridled self-harm advocated by Labor, the Greens and the teals.

On the Indigenous voice, which was destroyed by Labor’s refusal to find a bipartisan compromise, provide details or mount arguments beyond an emotive plea, the ABC only fuelled the folly. It did not provide a valid ­critique of the proposal’s flaws or make more coherent arguments in favour of it, and it did not even run forensic rebuttals of fallacious opposing arguments – it simply barracked.

This lack of intellectual rigour seems to be a result of its ideological monoculture. When you are conditioned to going with the green-left zeitgeist, there is little need for critical thinking.

The public loses out terribly in all this. The national broadcaster only confirms their biases, misleads or alienates them.

Consider also the ABC’s entrenched delinquency on Donald Trump. Like the worst of the US media, the ABC has been constantly outraged by Trump, exaggerating his faults and mischaracterising his words, as if the political maverick’s unvarnished words and deeds are not newsworthy enough.

The obsession continues and is accompanied by deference to his opponents – the ABC has shown little interest in Hunter Biden’s escapades, the cover-up of his laptop revelations or the enrichment and pardoning of the Biden clan.

Instead, Four Corners spent months in 2018 and probably at least a million dollars on Sarah Ferguson’s “investigation” of claims Trump “actively colluded with Russia to subvert American democracy”. This series promoted rather than tested this conspiracy theory, now debunked by a series of inquiries.

ABC presenter Sarah Ferguson in the US for Four Corners.

Ferguson called it “the story of the century” and summarised it as a win for Vladimir Putin. “The Kremlin’s puppet master now has America dancing to his discordant tune,” she concluded. “He couldn’t have planned it better.”

This was conspiratorial dross, but it was believed by many. Again, this nonsense is still available for viewing online, without corrections or apologies.

In the same genre, the ABC ran dozens of episodes of a podcast called “Russia, if you’re listening”. It was a weekly deep dive into the same leftist delusions – Trump derangement syndrome funded by Australian taxpayers.

All along, viewers and listeners were misled. If you only consumed ABC media you could not have known Trump had a path to victory in 2016, that Biden was never going to run for a second term, or that Trump was well placed to win again last year.

If the ABC has been your only source of information, you must have lived a life full of surprises. Both of Trump’s wins, Scott Morrison’s 2019 win, the Brexit victory, the demise of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott’s stopping of the boats and emptying of detention centres – all shocks, all the time, for ABC audiences.

There are so many examples of tendentious campaigns. For decades the ABC shamed Australia’s border protection policies, arguing they were inhumane and unnecessary, and that the flow of boats could not be stopped; it has promoted Bruce Pascoe’s dubious claims and attempted to shame and silence conservative Indigenous leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, settling a defamation action with her along the way; it led the witch-hunt against Cardinal George Pell until he was exonerated by the High Court; it was front and centre in the ugly #metoo trials-by-media involving Bruce Lehrmann, Brittany Higgins, Christian Porter, Linda Reynolds and others; and it leads the activism against our national day.

At the end of another week marred by anti-Semitism, we do not need any reminding about the importance of social cohesion. The ABC has been at the forefront of demonising Israel, legitimising Hamas as some king of liberation force rather than the Islamist terrorist outfit that it is, and excusing the hateful protests that have become commonplace on our streets and campuses.

The result is widespread ignorance that breeds enmity. It is not unusual to meet ABC media consumers who are surprised to hear that Israel withdrew from Gaza almost two decades ago, shocked to hear details of Hamas’s actions on October 7 or amazed to learn there has never been a Palestinian state.

Propaganda does not cut it for a national broadcaster in a liberal democracy. The ABC has habitually flouted its charter, which demands objectivity, a diversity of views, and a mission to educate.

The national broadcaster has become a corpulent behemoth ­beyond reform or redemption.

Hardworking taxpayers are being forced to fund a sheltered workshop for disaffected progressives using their sinecures to distort vital public debates and reshape the country in their green-left image.

The only question worth asking in this information-rich age is whether the ABC does more harm than good. Unless a case can be made for the good, we should wind it up and spend the money on something beneficial.