The Australian’s Chris Mitchell has penned a well argued article calling for the left to acknowledge its own media bias before throwing mud at the Murdoch press:
Media bias is in the eye of the beholder — but if the beholder is a Twitter warrior, bias means anything not of the political Left. Too bad about the 50 per cent of the population who vote conservative…
Three tweets by journalists last Wednesday make the point.
Chip Le Grand tweeted out the front pages of that morning’s Daily Telegraph in Sydney and Herald Sun in Melbourne. The Tele’s splash with a picture of Labor’s Bill Shorten said in caps: “The great divider”… His tweet showing the two front pages asked, “Did someone miss the orders from Rupert or could it be that different Newscorp editors make independent judgements about what goes in their papers?”…
Also responding to Chip was the US correspondent of the left-wing The Monthly, Richard Cooke, who without any apparent self-awareness tweeted of Chip, “Imagine tweeting this out to try and show that your company *lacks* bias.” This is breathtaking from a journalist working for mega-rich Melbourne left-wing publisher Morry Schwartz, who also owns The Saturday Paper, Quarterly Essay and publisher Black Inc. Schwartz Media wages non-stop war on anything conservative, giving the Melbourne property developer cover for his high-rise development business…
It’s a company fixated on the Murdochs and News, but only for commercial reasons… Schwartz knows lefties will pay to read about what they hate…
Neither Dunlop nor Cooke, or the Schwartz empire, see their own biases. Yet from where half the population stands and votes, the ABC, Guardian Australian, the Conversation, Crikey and many of Nine’s former Fairfax papers seem every bit as biased as they claim News to be.
Too right. For every allegation that the Murdoch press is biased in favour of the Coalition, the very same could be said about The Guardian, The ABC, SBS, The Conversation, Crikey, Fairfax, The New Daily or Schwartz Media, each of whom have shown clear bias towards Labor.
Worse, both the ABC and SBS are taxpayer funded, so we are effectively paying for this bias.
As readers know, I have given a large number of interviews on immigration policy to a variety of media. Only at the ABC have I experienced its pro-mass immigration bias first hand.
For example, last year I gave a detailed 30-minute interview, as well as provided research supporting my claims, for ABC 7.30 Report’s three-part ‘Big Australia’ special (read my write-up here).
All the key parts of my interview were left on the cutting room floor, with The ABC instead running a few incidental sound bites and giving most coverage to immigration boosters.
The overall message from The ABC’s three-part special was that Australia has heaps of room and that population growth is inevitable, so we better get used to it. We don’t have a choice. Mass immigration is also supposedly driving our economic prosperity by skilling the nation and driving exports (myths debunked repeatedly, such as here, here and here).
I was told by the reporter that this segment was aiming to right the clear bias in the immigration debate at the ABC, as was shown in the earlier Four Corners ‘Big Australia’ report. However, instead of informing debate and presenting Australians with a choice, it merely reinforced the myths surrounding a ‘Big Australia’.
The fact of the matter is that bias exists across the Australia media spectrum. And the lefty’s living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
