LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian
April 7, 2020
By Amanda Meade
News Corp columnists and other Pell supporters say the national broadcaster conducted a ‘crusade’ against the cardinal
The ABC has backed its journalists and its reporting on George Pell after the cardinal’s release from jail prompted a spate of attacks on the national broadcaster by Pell supporters.
Minutes after Pell’s conviction was quashed by the high court, the News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt posted a blog saying the cardinal was innocent and pointing the finger at the ABC for allegedly conducting a witch-hunt to have him convicted.
Bolt, who has an exclusive interview with Pell on his Sky News program at a date yet to be announced, said the national broadcaster had “with one voice persecuted him for years with false claims and never once had a presenter express doubt about this crusade to destroy him”.
“Shame on the ABC, our national broadcaster, for hysterically pushing damaging claims against Pell that all turned out to be too absurd to lead to charges, or too flimsy to go to trial, or, now, too weak to survive an appeal,” he wrote in his column in the Herald Sun.
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