‘Get Christian Porter’ a media disgrace that will alter his life
Her bosses at the ABC should have had closer oversight of Louise Milligan’s story, given her close personal involvement in it.
Last week I wrote about the odious, confected and vicious politicking around rape allegations inside the Canberra bubble, and how much of the media were so consumed with resentment that they were confused between the House of Representatives and House of Cards.
This week, the Canberra bubble said, “Hold my beer”.
The treatment of Attorney-General Christian Porter has not been merely trial by media but a deliberate, malicious and anti-democratic campaign by some journalists and their political comrades to destroy a politician and damage a government, regardless of the facts.
If we are prepared to stand by and watch as Labor and Greens politicians (along with Malcolm Turnbull) destroy Porter — based on unethical, deceptive and vindictive journalism funded by taxpayers at the ABC — then we will rue the day.
If the rule of law, natural justice and presumption of innocence can be disregarded in the pursuit of one Coalition minister, they can fall away for anyone. Those who have been cheering yet another savage pursuit of a conservative should pause to think; one day it could be them in the frame.
This is even more chilling than the prosecution of Cardinal George Pell because, for all the obvious faults that were eventually exposed under appeal, his wrongful convictions required action by police, prosecutors and courts. In the case of Porter, journalists, activists and, remarkably, politicians are demanding that the police findings be placed aside because they do not like the outcome.
They demand an extrajudicial inquiry because they are disappointed by the outcome of the criminal justice system. Their choice of extrajudicial process is motivated not by justice but by their desire to get Porter.
Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong and others suggesting such a process know that it can only elevate and give credence to allegations that were withdrawn by the alleged victim before she died. They seek to overrule, from beyond the grave, the alleged victim’s decision not to proceed.
Porter, as he said, could not prove something did not happen. The process could not establish the truth but certainly would entrench the smear.
Much will flow from the grotesque politics of this week but one of the least obvious consequences, for now, might be that it destroys Albanese’s leadership. How can Labor present as the alternative prime minister a man who is prepared to be so reckless and partisan with the rule of law?
We already have the control case — we do not have to imagine it. Only seven years ago, then opposition leader Bill Shorten faced historical rape allegations that were treated appropriately by police, media and politicians.
Police investigated, journalists were restrained, and when the investigation was reported they did not name Shorten. Once police decided not to proceed, Shorten identified himself, held a calm media conference for less than five minutes, and declared he would never speak about it again.
By and large the media kept to that bargain, despite his alleged victim often agitating to reanimate the controversy. Shorten’s political opponents, including Turnbull and Tony Abbott, accepted the matter was dealt with and said it was time to move on (Abbott faced infinitely more criticism over a 30-year-old allegation, which he denied, about punching a wall).
This week, many of the same journalists and ALP politicians who were central in that decent and fair treatment of Shorten have been frothing at the mouth in pursuit of Porter. A clearer example of double standards and bias could never be found.
The media manoeuvring in this case has been opaque and, obviously, has happened without the imprimatur of the alleged victim. As NSW police confirmed on Thursday, they had been in contact with her five times last year. She was concerned about her mental health and the fact she “dissociates”, and before her death she explicitly advised them that she did not wish to proceed with a formal complaint.
With all that background, it is hard to fathom the decision by the ABC and their journalist Louise Milligan to go public with the allegations last week. Milligan had been researching the case for many months and decided not to include it in her Four Corners report last year, which nonetheless was a hatchet job on Porter that included allegations of sexual harassment that he denies.
Yet late on a Friday, at the end of a week dominated by the Brittany Higgins Parliament House rape allegations, Milligan suddenly appeared breathlessly on television revealing how an anonymous letter had detailed historical rape allegations against a cabinet minister (Porter). What was the ABC doing?
This is the same reporter who had relentlessly and obsessively mounted a public prosecution of Pell, in a case where trial by media fuelled actual trials until the High Court acquitted the cardinal in a decision that was a clear vindication of the rule of law and a repudiation of the sort of activist, emotive campaigning that the ABC had facilitated. Surely, someone at the national broadcaster needed to slow Milligan down, check her facts, and perhaps carefully consider their best course of action over the weekend.
Instead, Milligan rushed to air with news of a letter, composed by anonymous friends of the alleged victim, being sent to politicians. At least one person, who does not deny being involved in the letter, is one of Milligan’s closest friends and was quoted in one of her reports as a friend of the alleged victim, without disclosure of the friendship with Milligan.
Senior editorial staff at the ABC should have provided strong oversight of this story, especially given Milligan’s record on Pell, and her longstanding and close personal involvement in the story. In this tragic saga, those who forced this issue into the public arena (against the wishes of the deceased alleged victim) have had their anonymity preserved — only Porter has been named, after the police confirmed the case was closed. This is a gross perversion of natural justice. It will change Porter’s life forever, and it might sully our politics for a long time to come.
Yet media dishonesty goes much further. While squadrons of journalists and politicians were happy to quote the allegations referred to in the anonymous letter, I was staggered to read what they were deliberately not reporting.
The letter made clear that its authors intended for this story to hit the media: “When news of ********’s rape becomes widely known to the public (as it most likely will) legitimate questions will be asked about who knew what, when they knew it and what they did,” it said.
Yet the letter openly canvassed issues about the reliability of the allegations, a crucial element that I did not see reported in the media until after I ran it on Sky News on Tuesday night.
The authors were honest enough to include these aspects, but journalists decided to ignore it.
The letter said that before she died, the alleged victim’s parents worried about her reliability as a witness: “They worried that she may have confected or embellished the allegations due to her mental illness.”
This is distressing information to process, but if the allegations were to be aired and weaponised against Porter, then it was crucial to share these aspects publicly. Rather, they were censored by many reporters.
Neither should the fact that she had “attempted suicide on previous occasions” have been kept from the public. None of this is palatable, and none of these facts materially proves one thing or another — but they provide relevant and vital context.
It pains us all to discuss such tragic and personal matters, and we feel great sympathy for the parents. But journalists should not censor the facts to create maximum pain for Porter while removing reasonable doubts about the allegations.
Just why journalists would leave these pieces of information out of their reporting is mere conjecture. It might be accidental that they appear to be matters that diminish the plausibility of the allegations and the likelihood that the alleged victim’s suicide was related to them.
It might be a coincidence, also, that so many journalists seemed to leave out the same telling facts. And maybe it was an unfortunate oversight that saw the ABC unleash these allegations in our media/political debate before putting them to Porter and getting a response.
There have been many improbable lapses. And strangely enough they all feed the same emotive and accusatory narrative. In the febrile and feral age of social media, a matter of life, death and justice is reduced to a reckless media meme.
All of the biases and weaknesses in the debate are age old — the sort that played out in the Salem witch trials — but digital media amplifies and accelerates them. We might not remember what we had until it is gone.
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