BishopAccountability.org

PRESS CLUB AWARDS FOR OUTSTANDING BIAS

By Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun
March 19, 2017

https://goo.gl/k6xQwj

Savva at the Quills

The Melbourne Press Club disgraces itself at its Quill Awards, as well as showing its bias.

Its Journalist of the Year is the ABC reporter behind a dangerously biased report on children in detention in the Northern Territory, and the Gold Quill goes to an ABC report smearing Cardinal George Pell on the flimsiest "evidence" as a likely child abuser.

This is astonishing, and yet more justification of my refusal to enter these circuses:

Four Corners reporter Caro Meldrum-Hanna was named Journalist of the Year for her reporting on Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, which led to a Royal Commission.

Louise Milligan and Andy Burns from ABC’s 7.30 won the Gold Quill for their reporting on George Pell & sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

First, Meldrum-Hanna's report was dangerously one-sided, making a hero victim of an offender who (it failed to disclose) had 23 convictions for assault, including of police and warders, and drew up a list of inmates and warders he wanted to kill.

Here are just some of the many other things Caro-Meldrum's report failed to mention about Dylan Voller, the hero of its report, including the length of his record, the extent of his violence, the reason he wore a mesh hood and the reason he was seen restrained.

Then there's the letter Meldrum-Hanna wrote to the then Justice Minister, asking him to participate in the report. In it, she admits to what her show did not reveal - that he had overseen many reforms to the juvenile justice system.

And the Melbourne Press Club singles this out for honor?

But worse is the prize given for the ABC's smearing of George Pell, raising vile allegations of him that are so dodgy and so implausible and so trivial that police even seven months later have still not decided whether to charge Pell, and I suspect will not, despite its leader's apparent animus to the church.

As I wrote at the time:

The ABC’s allegations, furiously denied by Pell, boil down to two.

First, one man, Les Tyack, claimed he’d found Pell in a changing room in Torquay more than 30 years ago towelling himself for a suspiciously long time while naked in front of boys.

Second, Pell, then a popular young priest involved in education, allegedly fondled the penis and anus of at least two boys when horsing around in a pool more than 30 years ago, throwing hordes of children off his shoulders.

The first allegation is plainly a ridiculous basis for smearing Pell more than three decades later.

Can Tyack .... know what was in Pell’s mind when towelling himself?

As for the second allegation, the ABC did concede that its main two witnesses both had police records. But it omitted more information that goes to the credibility of one, former drug addict Lyndon Mark Monument.

Monument also had a history of psychiatric illness and had been admitted to a psychiatric institution soon after being charged with numerous offences for which he served jail.

Nor did the ABC’s 7.30 interview any witnesses in Pell’s defence, including the wife of the then pool manager, who’d told police she’d never seen him do anything that raised her concerns...

As I went on to say, I am not calling Pell's accusers liars. I am saying that memories play tricks, especially with vulnerable people over so many years.

I went on to list three of a number of examples of Pell being accused of all sorts of things by people who, despite being sincere, have been proved to be completely wrong. In fact, none of their allegations have been accepted by the royal commission into child abuse, whose own case against Pell has been crumbling.

Yet this ABC report gets the Golden Quill?

How sad. All the more reason for me to maintain my resolve never to attend or enter these groupthinks of the Left. (And, no, I did not enter the radio awards. A producer did that against my wishes and without my knowledge, and despite what happened I have said never again.)

Oh, I should add: Niki Savva got a lifetime achievement award, and Laurie Oakes gave a speech trashing the Abbott Government. (Oakes presenting Savva with an award; does it get any more clubby?)

This is how groupthink is enforced in my rightly despised profession.

 




.


Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.