The bigoted reporting about President Bush, the Iraq War and the Pope Benedict XVI served to highlight the inflexible dogmatism that motivates our leftwing journalists. The agitprop these self-professed reporters churned out reminded me of the Lionel Murphy scandal that leftist journalists successfuly covered up.
Wendy Bacon, a former journalist with Fairfax and now a professor of journalism, admitted in The Australian (24 January 1999) that Jim McClelland confessed to her and others that the late Lionel Murphy, Labor Party hero and High Court Judge, had been corrupt.
Not only that, McClelland, a prominent member of the Labor Party, also confessed to perjuring himself at MurphyÕs trial thus securing MurphyÕs acquittal. Now let us try to comprehend the full import of what happened.
Bacon justified concealing the admission of perjury by claiming confidentiality. What needs to be noted is that any reasonable view of Òjournalistic privilegeÓ, a concept with no legal standing, cannot include a criminal act, especially a serious one. The other point is that by making the same confession to a number of other people McClelland made a mockery out of any claim to confidentiality, something his admirers in the media fully understood.
Yet left-wing journalists like Bacon, Brian Toohey and David Marr still concealed the truth from the public. Why? After all, perjury is an offence that strikes at the very heart of the legal system, particularly when it involves the highest court in the land.
I think Bacon inadvertently revealed these journalistsÕ ideological motive when she wrote that ÒMcClelland was only one of several confidential sources on the progressive (emphasis added) side of politics . . .Ó For progressive read left-wing.
What guaranteed these journalistsÕ silence was ideology, pure and simple. Every single informed individual I know believes that if McClelland had been a conservative judge this story would have been splashed across the front pages of every paper in the country Ñ and rightly so.
But McClelland was a leftist and that made all the difference. These left-wing journalists could either choose to uphold the rule of law and so protect the integrity of the High Court or aid and abet Murphy and McClelland in their corrupt activities. They chose the latter, as did the Labor Party itself. These actions render any discussion by the ÔprofessionÕ of journalistic ethics superfluous. In other words, what is there to discuss?
Though readers do not need to be reminded of this BrookesÕ contempt for Australian journalism the McClelland scandal Ñ and it is still a scandal Ñ does at least lend additional weight to our assertions that the ÔprofessionÕ is morally and ideologically corrupt.
It certainly helps explain why so many Australian journalists defended Clinton, despite his high crimes and misdemeanors,* while pouring scorn on his critics, even going so far as to twist the truth. We now have the same situation with Howard and Bush.
The whole shabby affair made it clear that we cannot truly believe what the media tell us. It has certainly made it obvious that in the media ideology counts more than truth and on which side of politics you stand determines how you will be treated. We can at least thank Wendy BaconÕs revelations for bringing home these facts so forcefully.
Note: Wendy Bacon followed her revelation with an article in Rupert MurdochÕs Australian (2 February 1999) in which she tried to justify her actions in not revealing McClelland's perjury.
It seems that the Declaration of Principles of the International Federation of Journalists has declared that Òjournalists should respect confidences in all circumstancesÓ. What pompous Rot! Journalists are not priests and they have no confessionals. Would, for example, Bacon expect any journalist to protect the identity of a serial killer because he confessed in confidence?
Bacon, Toohey, Marr and the rest of the pack knowing betrayed the public interest by allowing a corrupt left-wing judge to sit on the High Court bench. The way things are in the media today, journalists who mouth-off about ethics have as much credibility as a brothel keeper who preaches the virtues of chastity to his customers.
*It is a lie that perjury and obstruction are not considered high crimes and misdemeanours.
