Xi Jinping’s propagandists are cheering on our national broadcaster
When a commercial media outlet engages in a serious and unacceptable breach of ethical standards, the solution is simple. Turn it off or don’t read it.
Where this is a public broadcaster, reforming its governance, even questioning its very existence, must follow. Above all, such a broadcaster must never engage with an alien foreign power to abuse the prestige and authority entrusted to it.
There can be no better example of a newspaper committing unacceptably serious ethical breaches than the New York Times. This began in the Thirties when the Pulitzer Prize winner, Walter Duranty, knowingly covered up the millions killed in the famine Stalin unleashed on the Ukraine. If this were not enough, the Times then deliberately played down and often ignored news about the Holocaust involving the extermination of six million Jews and many others. And since the 2016 election, the Times has reported every fabrication alleging Donald Trump’s collusion with the Russians as if they were true, as well as any and every attack on him, while playing down or ignoring his achievements.
More recently, opinion editor James Bennet was forced to resign for no more than running an opinion piece by Senator Tom Cotton for the army to be called out to prevent rioting and looting in American cities under Democrat control. His colleague, Bari Weiss, also resigned after constant bullying, declaring Twitter was now the Times‘s ‘ultimate editor’.
And just as Duranty covered up Stalin’s crimes, so the ABC seems to be playing a similar role for another dictator with blood on his hands, Xi Jinping.
Just when the world was condemning the bloody persecution of the Falun Gong, now in its 21st year, the ABC chose to demonstrate extreme insensitivity and appalling disrespect to millions of victims, now extended to Muslim Uighurs as well as Christians.
Twenty-one years ago, Beijing was frightened by the fact that there were then an estimated 70 million Falun Gong practitioners. This far exceeded party membership. Worse, its cultivation of virtue and traditional spiritual beliefs emphasising truthfulness, compassion and tolerance compared poorly with the brutal dogmas and practices of the communists. Falun Gong refused to establish a communist party branch to control them. So, the communists declared it ‘heretical’ and opened a full scale bloody, cruel and unforgiving persecution.
Not only have millions been imprisoned and tortured, the communists applied to the Falun Gong the same monstrous practice they already applied to those ‘guilty’ of a capital crime, the sale of their organs after no doubt the depraved leadership had their pick. The evidence for this is overwhelming and has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt before the London China Tribunal presided over by an eminent international criminal lawyer, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. Tens of thousands have been killed to supply this trade which now offers the world’s only on-demand service.
Instead of reporting on the world-wide condemnation of this evil trade, the ABC chose instead to mark this sensitive anniversary by broadcasting a fake exposé of the Falun Gong.
No organisation is above genuine criticism, but this ‘exposé’ opened with allegations about a building in a US forest breaching planning rules, followed by five disgruntled former Falun Gong practitioners. Only one contented practitioner was to be included, until ‘Lucy’ was added, at her request, when she saw an announcement about the progamme. She was not however given an opportunity to answer any of the criticisms made by the disgruntled.
Only later did evidence emerge to suggest the ABC had been working hand-in-glove with the communists. The day before the programme was to be aired, the party’s ‘610 Office’ website declared:
‘Big News! 21 years after China’s warning, Australia’s national media starts to expose and criticise the wicked conduct of Falun Gong.’
Anyone who has researched the issue knows that the 610 office is not just some propaganda unit whose worst offence is in lying.
The 610 Office has all the trappings of the Nazi Gestapo or the KGB. It is pure evil. Its task is to track down not only Falun Gong practitioners but now all those involved in ‘heretical organisations.’ (This now includes Muslim Uighurs and ‘house Christians’.)
The 610 Office subjects them to brainwashing, cruel torture, slave labour and for those chosen for no more than that they are young and healthy, to have their hearts, kidneys and livers ripped from their living bodies and then to die to service Beijing’s reprehensible on-demand trade in human organs.
‘Heresy’ for the communists is especially found in any belief in a Creator, especially where the believing is outside of party control. What is objectionable to communists, as can be seen in the violent demonstrations being unleashed by the anarcho-communist Black Lives Matter in the US under the pretence that this is about racism, is what is set out so beautifully in the American Declaration of Independence.
This is that ‘… all men… are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’
This is intolerable to communists, Nazis and other totalitarians, and thus to BLM.
But this is precisely what our civilisation, from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Declaration of Independence confirmed, that rights do not come from dictators or other rulers, they come from our humanity and remain with us forever.
What is truly shocking is that the prestige and status Australians have given to their national broadcaster is being used by the communists to lend support to and to justify their persecution not only of the Falun Gong, but also of Uighur Mulsims and house Christians.
The ABC has committed a terrible offence not only against its Charter but against the honour of the Australian nation and against fundamental human decency.
The ABC must recant or the government and the parliament must act. To allow this to go uncorrected is to be an accomplice to this outrage.
First published in Spectator.com.au.
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Professor David Flint AM is an emeritus professor of law and was chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and the Australian Press Council, president of the National Federation of the English Speaking Union, Associate Commissioner with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and convenor of the Committee of Australian Law Deans. He has been National Convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy since the 1999 referendum campaign. He has authored books on topics such as the media, international economic law and on the Constitution. At Barcelona in 1991 he received a World Jurist Association award as World Outstanding Legal Scholar. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1995. His Good Sauce show,Take Back Your Country, discusses the problems and solutions to the decay of federalism and democracy.
