Truth, Lies and Media

Fear not! This week's episode of Truth, Lies and Media will be available on Thursday instead of Wednesday, so that we can give you a full analysis of the WA Supreme Court defamation case unfolding right now. See you tomorrow! As always, Thank you to our amazing supporters! You can help us here: https://buymeacoffee.com/truthliesandmedia Support independent journalism Become a member Our Socials Fa...

We'd love to see you at our live Q&A on 7th October at the North Fitzroy Library hosted by Friends of the ABC: https://events.humanitix.com/truth-lies-and-media-meet-the-podcasters-talk __ Dogwhistling up clickbait - A News Corp tabloid reproduces a flyer for an anti immigration national protest complete with racist slogans, dates and times .. as a young migrant chef tells us why she...

A deadly airstrike kills the whole of Al Jazeeras reporting team in Gaza City .. Israel increasingly enraged as the world sees the carnage and opinion turns against them.   Five newsmen died .. their crime .. telling their peoples story of starvation and suffering.   Australia now says it will recognise a Palestinian state conditional on the removal of Hamas .. as the Liberals and t...

Murdoch's News Corp conflates a remarkably peaceful pro Palestine protest with hate and Hamas. Sky News called the historic Sydney Harbour Bridge rally a sign of "moral decline." It didn't matter this was the voice of up to 300,000 people taking a stand against violence and starvation. It didn't matter there were no arrests and no violence, even when police had to turn that sea...

Journalist Gary Tippet has seen a lot of tragedy but when he was assigned to cover the Port Arthur massacre and stopped at a beautiful old tree where two little girls and their mother were murdered something broke in him and he could not stop the tears. How do journalists carry the trauma of the stories they report .. and how do they protect the survivors from secondary trauma when they approach t...

A photo of a skeletal child cradled in its mothers arms finally brings home the horror of mass starvation in Gaza and the tide of media opinion turns against Israel. Denis Muller says journalists are discarding an old taboo and using the word "genocide" to describe the mass starvation Israel denies is happening. Plus the big global news organisations sign a joint statement warning the journalists...

Reporting on a massacre - Israel mows down dozens of starving Palestinians trying to get food at aid hubs. Dr. Denis Muller says only running IDF talking points while covering these atrocities is not journalism, and sets out the principles reporters should be keeping in mind.   Plus the growing calls for anti semitism envoy Jillian Segal to be sacked after it was revealed her husban...

Trauma and journalism live side-by-side. Journalists often find themselves having to interview people who have been through a traumatic experience because traumatizing events are often matters of serious public interest. That’s because they raise questions of public safety and, sometimes, questions about causation and about the adequacy of the official response. The people who lived through these...

Anti-semitism envoy or propagandist? Jillian Segal puts those favourite whipping boys the ABC, SBS, universities and the arts straight into the firing line by suggesting they be stripped of funding if they fail to address anti semitism - but cannot identify any smoking gun failings to would justify such draconian action. Denis Muller has condemned the sweeping review as an authoritarian overreach...

A Leongatha mother of two Erin Patterson is declared a triple murderer who killed her in laws with a lunch of beef wellingtons laced with death cap mushrooms, and newsrooms in Australia and around the world go into overdrive. It's the biggest international story to come out of Australia since Cardinal George Pell was convicted according to Denis Muller, and it's not over yet. Plus ex ABC broadcast...

The Federal Court has found that the ABC breached the Fair Work Act when it sacked casual broadcaster Antoinette Latouf, ordering it to pay her $70,000. Senior ABC managers fell into “a state of panic” after an orchestrated campaign by pro Israel lobbyists to have Latouf taken off air, and pressure form The Australian newspaper. Thank you to our amazing supporters! You can help us here: https://bu...

Ancient enemies Iran and the United States lock horns as Donald Trump unleashes his GBU57 bunker buster bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles on Iranian nuclear sites which he claims were "obliterated", and then paints himself as a great world peacemaker. If truth is the first casualty of war how can consumers of media drill down into what is true amid blizzards of disinformation? And, he was a respe...

Israel hits an Iranian television station - the missile attack is broadcast live to air as the presenter runs for cover and the studio fills with choking smoke and debris. Denis Muller unpacks why the media are regarded as high value targets in war zones. Plus a US Sheriff brazenly tells reporters his police will execute protesters and contact family to find out where the remains should be se...

Updated audio - National Guard soldiers have been ordered into LA to quell violent riots with a Channel 9 journalist hit by a rubber bullet fired by a police officer while she was reporting live to air. Footage appears to show one police officer deliberately moving his aim in her direction. When billionaire gorillas - one in the White House - start hurling excrement at each other it's a...

Australia is sending a whistleblower to jail after documents he leaked to the ABC revealed war crimes in Afghanistan, making the whistleblower the only person to be imprisoned after the shocking revelations. Why do Australians have to risk everything to reveal military and government injustice? Plus we look at Karoline Leavitt, the 2019 college grad and MAGA zealot hurling insults at everyone...

Journalists aren't supposed to be the propaganda department of political parties... now  The Saturday Paper  has lifted the lid on the Abbott-Credlin-News Corp alliance that controls the Liberal Party. Their expose reveals the wrecking ball of a bizarre shadow government-in-exile that, with its media mates, still shapes messaging and wages war on dissenters. Plus a top CBS News boss...

The Liberals and the Nationals split in an election aftershock ..  But who will the media cast as the villain? The journalist versus the disgraced war hero - Ben Roberts Smith is vowing to take his fight to the High Court in a proceeding Denis Muller says is the most significant defamation case in Australian legal history. And .. Why would Donald Trump fan boy over the Saudi Crown Prince who...

Five people are served beef wellingtons made with mushrooms for a special lunch hosted by a country Mum. Three guests do not survive the lunch, and the Mum is charged with 3 counts of murder, and one of attempted murder, to which she has pleaded not guilty. It is called the Mushroom Trial. The case has journalists and news watchers fixated.   Why is this story dominating n...

We look at the blind insanity of News Corp as it takes Peter Dutton by the hand and leads him to electoral annihilation - then lectures the Liberal Party for "missing the warning signs" in its national broadsheet.   What's the future of the love in between Rupert Murdoch and the Liberal National Party, and has Saturday's bloodbath irreparably damaged the mogul's brand? Plu...

As the polls solidify against him, Peter Dutton equates journalistic scrutiny with hate speech. His "Hate Media" includes the ABC, Guardian Australia, and "others", which by inference are The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Thank you to our amazing supporters! You can help us here: https://buymeacoffee.com/truthliesandmedia Support independent journalism Become a member Our Socials Facebook Blu...

Advance and Atlas - the forces at work to mislead voters at election time. Influencers and their political ties - some progress on accountability. Word of a Russian military base in Indonesia is, for Dutton, too good to be true. Thank you to our amazing supporters! You can help us here: https://buymeacoffee.com/truthliesandmedia Support independent journalism Become a member Our Socials Facebook B...

The damage done underplaying a pandemic - New University of Melbourne research reveals how News Corp's harmful Covid reporting made the crisis worse.  Sizzling political slogans - the right wing firebrand Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says it loud and proud - the LNP want to make Australia great again!  How will that go down as Peter Dutton distances himself from the Trump t...

Peter Dutton sets his sights on the ABC, with a threat to cut funding if they don't produce  his  version of excellence - think LNP spin instead of news, and no pesky reporters asking questions.   The News Corp machine ratchets up the Albanese name-calling as Dutton falls behind in the polls. And as the Trump-induced global stock market bloodbath shows no signs of aba...

It's election season - that means the Murdoch press will back-in Dutton while spewing out overblown critiques of the Teals, the Greens and Anthony Albanese. How do you wade through the carefully curated polly-speak, the claims and counter claims and the inflammatory headlines that may or may not be true?   Plus why are social media influencers now included in the Budget lock-up...

The unprecedented arrangement between a former Supreme Court Justice and an Australian Newspaper journalist is yet another serious malfunction exposed around the Lehrmann saga. Plus - Meta and other US tech giants take issue with our News Media Bargaining Code, but this is about more than just media. And - Trump's culture-war surveys reach Australian universities. Audio clip from The Daily Show wi...