In reality they've never stopped...
Climate propaganda parades as science on your leftist ABC
Maurice Newman
The Australian
12:00AM May 31, 2018
In 2005, then federal treasurer Peter Costello and his media adviser had a private “off the record” dinner with three members of the parliamentary press gallery, including Michael Brissenden of ABC TV’s 7.30 Report. It was agreed the treasurer could speak openly and without attribution. In the lead-up to the November 2007 federal election and in the context of a predicted tight poll, Brissenden contradicted Costello’s understanding in what appeared to be a partisan act.
Brissenden did himself no favours when, to the cameras, he implied that he had notes of the dinner. In fact, according to media reports at the time, what he brandished were collective, wrongly dated notes, initiated by another journalist. Shortly after, Brissenden conceded he had brandished a note that was drafted by Paul Daley.
ABC management never properly investigated the matter but, post-election, relocated Brissenden to the Washington bureau, proving once again that, at the ABC, no one gets demoted for pushing leftist political and cultural causes.
This disregard for perception, let alone reality, was apparent when the Australian Communications and Media Authority upheld a complaint ruling the ABC had breached its impartiality rules with an unsubstantiated and opinionated attack on former prime minister Tony Abbott describing him as “the most destructive politician of his generation”. Rather than apologise, the ABC has not accepted the verdict.
Indeed, management resorted to Orwellian sophistry to justify its position, relying on a Macquarie Dictionary definition of “destructive”. Still, it did advise the regulator that “ABC News will incorporate the finding into its editorial compliance training programs”.Orwell’s Ministry of Truth would be proud.
An apparently unreconstructed Brissenden is back in Australia, demonstrating the same attention to detail Costello once criticised. Recently he fronted an ABC Four Corners program, titled Weather Alert, which was entirely devoted to global-warming advocacy masquerading as science. The program’s promo led: “There are no politicians in tonight’s story … Only people who’ve seen, from their own experience, that the change to our climate is under way.” Brissenden added: “These farmers and businesses aren’t waiting for politicians to agree that our climate is changing.” Really? Politicians not agreed? Why does he think Australians pay the world’s highest electricity prices?
In the segment on Brown Brothers wine, he made it clear that due to the warming climate “the company has planned to move part of its operations to cooler country”.However, retiree Bob Fernley-Jones wrote to Brown Brothers and found: “At this stage we don’t intend on selling any vineyards in Victoria. We have always had the philosophy that we grow the right varietals in the most suited climate …” So, the story appeared to be an ABC invention, meant to add weight to the program’s catastrophic global-warming theme.
This was one of many exaggerated examples of so-called climate change. Perhaps none was worse than the blatant perpetuation of a false Bureau of Meteorology announcement that at Penrith on January 7, the Sydney Basin recorded its hottest day. The bureau, with lightning speed, corrected the record to acknowledge Richmond in 1939, but [highlight]the ABC chose to ignore the correction.
The errors and omissions kept coming. Amateur records were preferred to official archives. Viewers were told that warming in southwest Western Australia had “happened faster than anywhere else on the planet”, without mentioning the region had just recorded one of its coldest summers in two decades. It beggars belief that any broadcasting organisation could put such biased rubbish to air. But unforced corrections or apologies are not in today’s ABC’s DNA. When Malcolm Turnbull raised 11 grievances about a story on research and innovation spending, with one exception, all aspects of the complaint were rejected. The Abbott episode exemplifies the [highlight]ABC’s refusal to acknowledge mistakes
Fernley-Jones lodged five complaints about Weather Alert. All he achieved was a rebuke. “Our records indicate that to date you have lodged five complaints via our webform regarding the edition of Four Corners 5 March. In future should you wish to lodge a complaint about a program please set out your entire complaint in one submission … Kieran Doyle wrote to you on 12 April acknowledging your emails and attachments … The email advised you your complaint would not be investigated by Audience and Consumer Affairs. This advice relates to all of the complaints you have submitted.” Take that!
On climate change, the ABC has long adopted the “science is settled” position. Giving sceptics or sceptical views a platform is likened to promoting the tobacco industry. So Fernley-Jones’s complaints never stood a chance.
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