Communications Minister Michelle Rowland must take action against the national broadcaster:
Does the work of a journalist in society receive its greatest and most fundamental justification in the reporting of truth as it would be determined ultimately by a court of law? We say, with respect, absolutely not. The journalist plays, we say, a far more important role in society, than that. We say free speech and public interest rises well above truth.”
– Nicholas Owens SC outlines his ‘defence’ of the ABC in the Russell defamation trial
“We were only following orders, Sir”
Did he just admit that the ABC lies?
Yes, where is Minister Rowland, who wants to crackdown on people contesting or exposing the “official truth”?
What was it she said?
I’d say lying about an Australian soldier committing a ‘war crime’ undermines national security – in the eyes of a domestic public and foreign adversaries – more than just about anything else.
ABC
Absolute Bullsh*tting Communicator
I think we can clearly see that Rowland doesn’t view the ABC as ever fitting into the Bad Actors category regardless of the tacit admissions that might be made in the courtroom. Which media outfit would highlight the double standard being applied here?
what C.L. says 31 July, 2023 at 2:51 pm
It is also, incidentally, makes the Taliban look like the good guys.
The Coalition should have abolished the ABC when it had control of both houses.
When exactly does the Australian Broadcasting Corporation start to realise its charter doesn’t mention anything about undermining Australia or Australians?
C.L. made the very accurate comment a few weeks ago that the less people watch the ABC, the more dangerous and unhinged it becomes.
Ignoring this sinister, pernicious organisation, an organisation that daily engages in criminal malfeasance against this country and its citizens, is in itself dangerous. Either ignoring it or chucking lots of dosh at it to try and appease it is what numerous Coalition governments have done for decades. How’s that worked out? I think we all know the answer.
You only have to look at the lies this organisation’s so called journalists have propagated over the last decade, and the numerous lives it’s destroyed, here’s some names for those who might have short memories, Cardinal George Pell, SAS soldiers, Andrew Laming, Alan Tudge, Christian Porter, Craig McLachlan, to know that this malevolent organisation is, as far as I’m concerned, EVIL. There is simply no other word to describe it.
Either ignoring it or chucking lots of dosh at it to try and appease it is what numerous Coalition governments have done for decades. How’s that worked out? I think we all know the answer.
Sorry – I messed up the quote thing there….
Didn’t Morrison toss many tens of extra millions at the ABC before the last election?
No doubt in an hilariously (but not hilarious for the taxpayer) failed attempt to get the ABC’s backing.
Like almost everything else he did in his last couple of years in office (such as signing up to Net Zero, throwing conservatives and colleagues under the bus, supporting a liar in parliament and calling her a victim, and stopping a gas project in a key electorate), Morrison thought he could gain the support of people who were never going to vote for him.
But protecting free speech and the public interest is about protecting principled processes that enable actually arriving at truth and not about protecting processes whereby the processes themselves come to be ‘above truth’ – and therefore not truth (since truth cannot be both ‘truth’ and ‘above truth’).
Yes, although maybe the claim is more that the telling of lies is OK because the telling itself is ‘above the truth’ that was the truth lied- about.
Maybe.
While alienating large tracts of those who just might have.
Slightly off topic, but an Australian Judge has found that Nine Network, and 60 Minutes did defame Peter Schiff by accusing him of criminality.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-government-can-destroy-anyone-how-an-irs-led-global-alliance-ruined-an-innocent-american-banker
It’s a longish story, but you can see how they operate … set up an “investigation” which suggests a lot but actually finds nothing … then illegally leaky leak out internal private details to the press and send their pet jurnos out to crank the hatchet job accusations … soften up the target and destroy his reputation.
They then use the damage of his reputation as justification to force him to close his business … and worse than that even blocked the sale of the business in order to fully destroy it. Very dirty. This is how your tax money gets spent.
The uni-party has been in operation in Australia for at least 50 years.
The Liberals are put in power to implement the globalist agenda that Labor couldn’t do and then Labor are put in power to implement the globalist agenda that Liberals couldn’t do.
It is still all part of the globalist agenda.
I don’t understand how anyone can think lies and not truth are in the public interest.
what Tel says 31 July, 2023 at 4:20 pm
Lil’ Dennis Elbow insists that the Voice is but a “modest” ask.
Oops!
Even Morticia Langgon wants moolah and land.
Marcia Langton – a key architect of the Voice to Parliament – details plans to ‘compensate’ Aboriginal people and return ‘stolen land’
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/marcia-langton-a-key-architect-of-the-voice-to-parliament-details-plans-to-compensate-aboriginal-people-and-return-stolen-land/ar-AA1exlOp?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=f2ae8bc6d35b4b3f900641037bd23292&ei=6
The ABC has lost this case and they know it.
This is just an attempt to lay claim to ‘passionate’ brio.
Which they can afford to do because we’re paying Mr Owens.
Compensation for something no aboriginal still alive suffered.
In his opening statement on Monday, barrister for the ABC Nicholas Owens SC quoted from a landmark US freedom of the press case from 1964, where a court found the media were protected even when publishing false statements.
In doing so, he asserted the broadcaster had a “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open.”
And we all remember this “commitment” with Their ABC’s extensive coverage of both sides of issues like COVID, vaccines, immigration, the InVoice and so many other important issues.
Lying liars lying lyingly.
Owens missed his true vocation as a stand-up comedian.
“The uni-party has been in operation in Australia for at least 50 years”
Taking some comfort in not having voted for the uni-party for decades.
As for the ABC – I agree it’s a place of malevolence; completely infested.
I thought I was seeing things. On this morning’s Sunrise (Ch 7) there was a story about a boxing/sporting club hosting a neo-nazti event over the weekend. The event attracted a few hundred? protesters. The story included a live interview with one of the protesters… a woman probably in her mid-twenties. The peculiarity was that the woman appalled by the naztis was wearing a t-shirt with “Victorian Socialists” plastered on the front. The ironing/absurdity was lost on both the interviewer and the interviewed.
Look up the “Victorian Socialists” on gaggle.There seem to be a fair few young ‘uns who can barely wipe the snot from their noses.
The Hunchback – the Jackass of Spring Street – is racking up the “lead balloons”. Just in the last weeks
– the Comm Games fiasco*
– pushed along the Victorian Voice
– banned gas connection for new builds
* There is some speculation that, Victoria being broke, the Hunchback sought funding from the comrades in Beijing for the Comm Games. He came back with sinositus.
Hunchback: I need a few billion for the Comm Games, Xi.
Xi: We giff money but want Chinese frag frying at all events.
Hunchback: But, Xi, China isn’t even in the Comm Games. I don’t think the Australian public will wear it.
Xi: Then, no dough, Hunchie.
SPIN SPIN
Hunchback: “Victoria may be broke but it has state-of-the-art riot gear”.
Dan Andrews is accused of hypocrisy as photo resurfaces amid ban on new homes from having a gas connection
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/dan-andrews-is-accused-of-hypocrisy-as-photo-resurfaces-amid-ban-on-new-homes-from-having-a-gas-connection/ar-AA1ez5az?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=9d72ef02f2cc46a3dae6862440011ec3&ei=10
… and Haaayylee’eigh, why did you join the Socialist Party?
Haaayylee’eigh: I love… just love… socializing. Ja’know what I mean?
Christine says:
31 July, 2023 at 7:20 pm
Regrettably, a fittingly analogous description. Also the BBC.
From the little research i have been able to do, a couple of matters deserve noting.
The NSW public interest defence ( which is based on a UK reform) is very wide, but UK courts have put restrictions around it. It is possible that the ABC cannot rely on if its employee told a lie; that is, he knew what he wrote was false. But it might apply if he made only a false statement, while believing it to be true. There are midway scenarios, such as his being reckless as whether he told the truth
As usual, the judge’s findings of fact will be critical.
What was said by the barristers for both parties is more rhetoric. It won’t influence by Lee J in the slightest. I don’t see that the ABC’s barrister asserted that it was OK to lie. He spoke of a false statement.
That’s casuistic nonsense, Raf.
“Josh” also told Willacy he never saw anything.
For Willacy to present this as a murder committed by Russell (or by others under his authority) was a lie. The ABC’s barrister is more or less saying that the lie was noble insofar as it bespoke some meta-‘truth’ about the moral wretchedness of Russell, November Platoon or, like, war itself, bro.
Speaking of hazy and fuzzy, Willacy couldn’t explain why he’d only offered the court evidence that supported his case, not the trove of evidence which did not. He claimed he had so much material it was difficult to go through it all, this undermining his own defence.
If it was so difficult to go through all the material, why was it so easy to only find the stuff that supported his, er, ‘reporting’?
List of trusted professions, TV reporters 11%, Newspaper reporters 15%, similar numbers to the percent of people that vote greens.
CL
I responded directly to your post (and so kept within the bounds of your request that this is what we all should do in respect of all your posts). Owens SC did not say that lies are free speech and stand above the truth. If that’s the ABC case, then it will probably sink the public interest defence. It makes more sense to understand him referring to false statements, some of which will be protected by that defence
It was especially puke-inducing to see the ABC claiming to support free and open debate. This from an organisation that ruthlessly censors anything unacceptable to the Stalinist wing of the Greens.
Peter Sutton, by the way, has come out swinging in the Australian over the hatchet job the ABC and Marcia Langton did on him over his critique of Dark Emu.
Yes, I know. I wasn’t chastising you.
?
Again, you are reverting to casuistry. A knowingly “false statement” is a lie. The key words are false and knowingly. Willacy knew his summary of the so-called testimony of “Josh” was nothing more than cherry-picked malarkey. “Josh” even warned Willacy his ‘memories’ were inadequate for any sort of indictment.
This reaches the threshold of lying; it isn’t accidental falsity. Owens SC is trying to argue, in effect, that reporters have the right to represent as truth what they know to be less than true. In common parlance, this is called lying.
CL I respectfully agree with your definition of lying, but I cannot see in the extract you quoted a claim by Owens SC that the new public interest defence justifies a lie. It will certainly include some statements that a court might regard as false, following here the USA Supreme Court case of Sullivan (1964). It will probably not protect lies, or even reckless statements.
Perhaps Lee J will (if it is put to him) agree with your analysis of the facts to find that the NSW defence is ot available to the ABC. I hope so.
I didn’t think I was chastising me! I was gently suggesting you had breached your guidelines. There’s nothing wrong about that of course.
Thanks, as always, for your reply, Raf.
1. the ABC abandoned a truth defence precisely because its Heston Russell claims were untrue;
2. it continues to defend those claims.
3. Ergo…
Hacks and Henchmen: ‘Disinformation’ Means You’re Over the Target
What this case also impinges upon is the shocking, abysmal cesspit known as the supposed ADF Hierarchy.
What is here being claimed – that the ‘work of a journalist’ is, per se, by virtue of its very nature, not subject to being judged as anything other than the reporting of truth by a court of law?
In court today:
Willacy also made a “flippant” remark today about former News Corp journalists having to absolve themselves of their “sins” by working at the ABC. Dumb move. Justice Michael Lee was not impressed and intervened to ask his own questions – apparently concerned the witness was not being candid.
Meanwhile, their Australian ‘gubbamints’ are going to control our speech!
Disinformation and Censorship, 1984–2023