Last Friday, Sky News broadcaster and former chief of staff to Tony Abbott Peta Credlin set the “days since we’ve broadcast shoddily-researched racial vilification” counter from three back to zero.
She claimed on her show that Melbourne’s new outbreak could be blamed on “poorly-assimilated migrants” from the South Sudanese community who couldn’t speak English and had ignored social distancing in an “end-of-Ramadan feast”.
It was based on unconfirmed reports that an Eid celebration sparked an outbreak, and linked that — seemingly without evidence — to a community that is 90% Christian, making the claim more laughable.
The expected outcry came — followed by that rarest of things, an actual apology from Credlin:
It wasn’t accurate. It was incorrect and given I pride myself on being accurate, I apologise to my viewers for getting that wrong, and in particular, I apologise to the South Sudanese community.
Credlin then took a “lengthy call” with a group of members of the South Sudanese community and their advocates to “discuss their experiences and concerns”.
We’re sure this will herald a real reckoning and proper change at Sky. Oh hey, while they’re at it, perhaps they could apologise for giving the following people a platform?
Blair Cottrell
By the time he was interviewed by Adam Giles — and called an “activist” — Cottrell had bragged of using “violence and terror” to manipulate women and said Jews were “as small physically as they are degenerate in character … the white races are coming for you.” And much, much more.
News director Greg Byrne conceded the interview was “wrong”, but stopped short of exactly apologising, and Giles wasn’t seen on Sky again for two whole months.
Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux
Lauren Southern, after sauntering into Australia in an “It’s OK to be white” T-shirt, was interviewed by Rita Pahani, Andrew Bolt and Paul Murray. The time Southern was detained in Italy for attempting to block a ship that rescues stranded refugees in the Mediterranean, oddly, never came up
On Bolt’s show, she was joined by Stefan Molyneux to talk about how ethnicity plays a role in IQ differences and the so-called “white genocide” in South Africa (remember that?).
Incidentally, Molyneux was just kicked off YouTube for breaching its hate speech policies.
Milo Yiannopoulos
Sparkly bully Milo Yiannopoulos was besties with Bolt for quite some time, who, like much of Australia’s right, loved his outrageous takes on “virtue signalling” and “feminism is a cancer”.
Outsiders was simply aglow at the sight of him — check this intro from host Ross Cameron:
I have to confess to you, the word ‘fawn’ comes from ‘faunen’, old English, which means rejoice, extol, exalt. And there are little bambis bouncing around the studio because we have gone the full fawn. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Milo Yiannopoulos.
Yiannopoulos had spent his time with Breitbart News laundering the voices of neo-Nazi groups into the mainstream.
Cameron is one of the few presenters to face any consequence for racist comments, when he was sacked for his comments about Chinese people being (oh, Christ … ) “slanty eyed”. A sacking which, by the way, made Bolt “heart-sick”.
Cameron and then co-host Rowan Dean did apologise when former senator David Leyonjhelm defamed the Greens’ Sarah Hanson Young on their show, but Dean did not after telling race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane to “hop on a plane and go back to Laos”.
***
It’s almost as if the broadcast of fact-free racist segments like the one Credlin is now apologising for aren’t so much mistakes, as a fundamental part of the Sky News business model?
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Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
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Another SKY mouth on autopilot again.
I am glad you have the stomach for monitoring the Sky News scum output for grains of truth and decency Charlie – could not do it myself, and am very glad that you can save me from any urge to try.
Judging by the miniscule audience they have, there are not many people so twisted in their mentality that they turn to Sky for solace.
Sky News is aping Fox News and it has stacked its commentator bench with smug, self-satisfied, know-it-alls, who prattle about the ABC lacking diversity, when their views go from the far Right to the far right. As you note elsewhere with Fox News, racist dog whistling is part of their aim to attract the significant number of racists in Australia and reinforce their self-confidence, so that everyday life has less chance of giving them some knowledge-how bright is it to attack local Chinese or Chinese students who left before the virus outbreak for being responsible for COVID-19??-and some awareness that other people are simply people. So, weren’t references to people whose first language is not English and to a post-Ramadan celebration too good not to link with your favourite dog whistle about South Sudanese-from rampaging gangs to virus spreaders-but forgetting that South Sudan split from North Sudan because they were Christian and North Sudan Muslim. An apology then but better that the whole self-righteous right wing show should fold.
The cacophony box of the alt-right – a dealer in BS and misinformation – servicing personal facts; as well as vent, comforter and dummy for that minority of 1 in five that doesn’t trust the ABC above other media.
For all the news they think they need.
It’s a nice little maneuver – tie the line that racism is a social ill, but send out the occasional signal to racists and bigots that they are secretly one of them. Because of Political Correctness Gone Mad, even the racists and bigots understand that the apologies and disavowals are part of the game. So it’s win-win. Provided they don’t alienate too many right-leaning anti-racists.
It’s because of this that I struggle to see there being any ideological racism, but people chasing viewers and their subscription money at all costs. It all seems so cynical these days that it’s entirely plausible that what’s said is designed to provoke to keep them as part of the conservation.