Fighting Fake News with REAL, 12/6/21; ABC, Murdoch, Morrison, The Good the Bad and the Ugly; Dark Emu, Sutton;

 

 

 

How Four Corners became the story in the government’s ABC wars

“Of course it’s bad, but is it worse than it was when Tony Abbott was accusing us of being un-Australian in our reporting of war matters and slashing our budget?”

Former ABC executive Alan Sunderland

 

Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, UK’s biggest newspaper for decades, is now worth zero

News Corp wrote down the value of its once high-flying The Sun title to zero, underscoring the dramatic decline in Britain’s newspaper industry.

Is that as good as saying it can't be, or at least there is no value, suing The Sun? It's always been regarded as a PR rag rather than a source of news. Countless conservative governments have used the Sun and it's like elsewhere as their propaganda machine rather than utilising creditable publications for that purpose. Here in Melbourne it's the valueless Herald Sun rather than the ABC conservatives turn to which they claim is their enemy.

The politicization of that is the mere propaganda of bullies claiming to be the victims of those calling them out for what they are. If one regards accountability a form of victimization? Abbott had no policies other than nope nope nope and when accused of just that had Murdoch hail him as the misunderstood victim in the circumstance and calling the real victims the bullies. Andrew Bolt still doing it these days using misdirecting, politicizing, simply flipping terms like Racism and Cancel Culture. All in all right-wing thugs can't face "accountability"or close examination can they?

 

‘How To Look Busy While Doing Absolutely Fuck All’, By Scott Morrison

"If you think you’ve done too many cheesy photo shoots of you doing barrely all in a meatworks factory, you haven't done nearly enough"

 

Anthropologist and archaeologist say Dark Emu was littered with weak evidence and unsourced claims

Two leading Australian academics have savaged the best-selling Indigenous history book Dark Emu for being riddled with mistakes and ignoring Aboriginal voices.

Private News exists to sell papers and what better way than to raise the issue about Dark Emu, Bruce Bascoe and the claim that white men have underestimated, under taught the history of Aboriginal Australia and it's wider complexity. It seems to me that Sutton and Pascoe fundamentally agree on the issue. However it seems to be being sold as the sledging of Pascoe and he being wrong. The ensuing publicity a beneficial quid pro quo for two academics the newspaper but is it one that improves our understanding of First nations peoples, Aborigines or Old Fathers?

What is more odd it's taken 7 years for Sutton to respond to Pascoe and even more curious some 4-5 years to even bother reading his book central to Sutton's subject of interest. It's almost as if he were commissioned to write it. There is a lot of energy put into disparaging Pasocoe's credentials and a repetition of old arguments that he got the historical facts wrong. Arguments we have heard over and over again by right-wing commentators from the get go. But it doesn't exactly destroy the basic argument of misunderstanding the complexity of Indigenous cultures does it?

Strange also is the fact that Sutton sides with the LNP on what should and shouldn't be taught in our schools. Sutton's strict academic and generally white history to date might be brushed on but the complexity raised by Pascoe be left well alone. That debate were there i really is none should according to Sutton be left alone be left alone. Sutton sounds almost like a flatearther warning that any new propositions are unfounded and can never be proved so drop the subject. He's weirdly an academic in line with the right-wing commentators and the LNP isn't he?

 Isn't it a coincidence that this has come to light just at a time when the LNP is desperately trying to dictate what needs to be taught to our children and that a book has been put together in some 18 months, 5 years after the authors even first paid paid attention to it. Something that questioned their metaphysical and cosmological explanations of the Old Father's  world and grounded them with a different investigative approach. To say Dark Emu is littered with weak evidence and outsourced claims seems just the same old same old we've heard before bu fundamentally one that doesn't destroy the fact that we don't see it as an inclusive part of Australian History which today remains and oversimplified white myth. As for the two "leading" academics well we only have that descriptive of them from Ch9. Wait for the reviews to follow.

FAKE NEWS AND MISINFORMATION EXPOSED

 

ACADEMICS SAVAGE BRUCE PASCOE: ‘DISTORTS AND EXAGGERATES’

To me, white "Aboriginal historian" Bruce Pascoe is the biggest fraud in Australian literary history.  Now the Sydney Morning Herald admits two top academics prove his book Dark Emu, claiming Aborigines were actually farmers in towns, actually  "distorts and exaggerates" and is   “riddled with errors of fact". Will the ABC finally say sorry?

So this is what it takes to bring the self obsessed  Andrew Bolt out of hibernation. Bolt promotes himself as " Australia's most-read political blog" a falsehood that's proven by his lack of writing or posting anything week in and week out. His boast is as much bullshit as him saying he was "educated at Adelaide Uni". In short Bolt's a liar and the ABC has nothing to apologise for.

As for the two "academics" savaging Bruce Pascoe neither are historians. They say little more than what's been said before by the likes of Bolt. That 1) Pascoe is unqualified to comment on Australian history because he isn't an "academic" 2) the points listed and referred to aren't new they are the same as what others like Bolt and "replacement theorists" have said previously. 3) However they agree that the history told to date has fallen short and is far more complex than has been told to date. That in fact they seems to agree with Pascoe rather than dispute him on that central point.

As for the "academics savaging Pascoe" well one wonders why if they work in the same field of study as Pascoe which they don't why it's taken 7 years for them to respond in a manner that Bolt considers a peer-review when it's not. Sutton's an Anthropologist and linguist who for 50 year's focus has been on the metaphysics and cosmology of indigenous culture rather than Indigenous history. Their fields of expertise Sutton's is regarded as more of philosophical area of interest rather than historical. While Keryn Walshe an archeologist, also not a historian, focuses on Pascoe's methodology. Yet like Climate Change Bolt grabs any scientist not a climatologist and holds them up as experts. Anyone with a Phd after their names from any discipline is regarded as a source to prove that he's right.

What is suspect is that the SMH's priority is to sell news papers while Sutton's and Walshe's is to sell a book. There is a solid argument that quid pro quo relationship exists between the two and Bruce Pascoe the easy vehicle fit for that purpose. Was the book commissioned for the purpose of "sales" because it's hardly an academic work that shines any new light on what's gone before it. Rather it's just another political polemic fit for purpose other than any new information.

 It has Pascoe and Sutton actually agreeing that indigenous history and culture is far more complex than we have previously and historically admitted to. However given that, Sutton and Walshe according the SMH anyway. leans on the side of white man's history the myth only to be taught to our children in schools. That glorious settler myth promoted as history without any of it's inglorious truths told but known to aboriginal peoples but not listened to because it replaces our history as ideology told and taught. It's odd that it took Sutton 5 years to getting around to reading Pascoe and only now 18 months later to put not a new pen to paper but just his name. 

No surprise Bolt's there to chant "I told you so". Politics is a small numbers game and Newscorp's purpose has always been to influence small numbers that 1-4% of voters that determine the outcome of which people should vote. Bolt doesn't really search for truth he prefers to cast doubt apply emotional fear as tactics to do that. In this case it's simply to maintain he's right and the ABC is wrong in their approach to news and information. It will be interesting to see how Sutton's and Walshe's book is received when really reviewed.