Speaker 1: Vice is the Media Show, with Jack.
Speaker 2: Outing Hello and welcome to the Media Show. Tonight, We're
Speaker 2: going to spend a lot of time breaking down how
Speaker 2: the media reacted to the US election. But later in
Speaker 2: the show, we will also talk about a major error
Speaker 2: at the ABC involving doctor footage. But first, Donald Trump
Speaker 2: will become the forty seventh president of the United States,
Speaker 2: much to the disgust of many journalists who tried everything
Speaker 2: in their power to convince Americans not to vote for him,
Speaker 2: and many of those arguments were simply lies, like the
Speaker 2: lie one week out from the election that he was
Speaker 2: violently advocating for a critic of his, Liz Cheney, to
Speaker 2: be shot by a firing squad.
Speaker 3: Four days out from election day and former President Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is escalating his violent rhetoric, suggesting one of his
Speaker 3: most prominent critics, the for Congresswoman Liz Cheney should be
Speaker 3: fired upon.
Speaker 2: And that take shot around the world.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump has been a cue using dangerous rhetoric after
Speaker 4: suggesting guns should be trained on the face of Republican
Speaker 4: critic Liz Cheney. The presidential candidate is now being investigated
Speaker 4: over whether he's violated death threat laws. Just days out
Speaker 4: from the election.
Speaker 2: It even fooled our taxpayer funded media.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's comments about a prominent Republican critic have caused
Speaker 1: some outrage.
Speaker 2: Just tell us about those comments, Joe.
Speaker 5: This is really overshadowed Donald Trump's Russ Belt push. He
Speaker 5: made comments with right wing TV host Tucker Carlson about
Speaker 5: Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman but an outspoken critic
Speaker 5: of Donald Trump, and certainly there's no love lost between
Speaker 5: the two. But Donald Trump certainly took that acrimonious step
Speaker 5: further in that interview with Tucker Carlson, describing her as
Speaker 5: a very dumb person, a warhawk, and even raising the hypothetical,
Speaker 5: I guess of her facing a firing squad.
Speaker 2: So did Donald Trump call for a political adversary to
Speaker 2: face a firing squad? Well, according to Snopes, he did not.
Speaker 2: Despite violent rhetoric, Trump did not threaten to have Liz
Speaker 2: Cheney shot in context, his words did not amount to
Speaker 2: an explicit threat against Cheney. Now, let's listen to what
Speaker 2: Trump actually said.
Speaker 6: She's a radical warhawk. Let's put her with a Rafo
Speaker 6: Stanley there with nine barrel shooting at her. Okay, let's
Speaker 6: see how she feels about it. You know when the
Speaker 6: guns are trained on her face. You know there are
Speaker 6: warhawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, oh,
Speaker 6: do you will, let's send Let's send ten thousand troops
Speaker 6: right into the mouth of the enemy.
Speaker 2: As Snopes confirmed, there was no threat to stand her
Speaker 2: before a firing squad. It was just a complete lie.
Speaker 2: Trump was making the point that people who advocate for
Speaker 2: wars or spout expansionist military policies probably would not like
Speaker 2: to be in a war zone where guns appoint at them.
Speaker 2: It is so obviously false that even the ABC here
Speaker 2: in Australia had to issue its fifty third humiliating correction
Speaker 2: of the year. They write several news stories across news
Speaker 2: radio and Triple J on the second of November reported
Speaker 2: that US presidential candidate Donald Trump had suggested that former
Speaker 2: Congresswoman Liz Cheney should be quote put before a firing
Speaker 2: squad or have guns trained on her face and be shot.
Speaker 2: It added the full context of Trump's remarks, which would
Speaker 2: have made it clear he was criticizing Cheney's alleged willingness
Speaker 2: to send Americans to war zones, rather than advocating violence
Speaker 2: against her. It is worth pointing out the fake news
Speaker 2: about calling for a firing squad was published by the
Speaker 2: ABC all over social media in that clip that we
Speaker 2: just played for you earlier, and the correction from the
Speaker 2: ABC was only published after Trump won, and the video
Speaker 2: we played has not even been taken down. The media
Speaker 2: ran this lie. We're in the lead up to the
Speaker 2: election and journalists are wondering by people have started ignoring
Speaker 2: their criticisms of Trump.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 2: Joining me on the show this week is the Australians
Speaker 2: Darren Davidson and the Daily Telegraphs Tim Blair. Tim, let's
Speaker 2: start with you. That was a rather extraordinary can we
Speaker 2: call it journalistic sleight of hand to truncate these quotes
Speaker 2: and turn them into something which you know, I know
Speaker 2: everybody knows that's not what he was talking about. The
Speaker 2: problem I have is how it proliferated through the media
Speaker 2: so easily, how everyone fell for this in the lead
Speaker 2: up to an election went by the way. These are
Speaker 2: the same people talking about misinformation every spare second that
Speaker 2: they could get an opportunity, and they've misrepresented this and
Speaker 2: made it seem like he's calling for the death of
Speaker 2: one of his adversaries.
Speaker 8: It is absolutely a form of misinformation, and it reflects
Speaker 8: as well, probably disingenuous habit of the modern press, especially
Speaker 8: in regard to Donald Trump, to just pretend that there's
Speaker 8: no such thing as nuance or any kind of shade
Speaker 8: to it at all. I mean, if Trump had said,
Speaker 8: you know, inflation is sky high, the media presumably would
Speaker 8: have run with Trump literally says that inflation is reaching
Speaker 8: the limit of the Earth's outer atmosphere. You know, it's
Speaker 8: been bubbling up in the press for a time, this
Speaker 8: kind of absurd literalism. I remember maybe twelve years ago
Speaker 8: we had a fact checking organization launched in Australia that
Speaker 8: one of its first efforts was to disprove acclaim by
Speaker 8: a National Party MP that there were gold plated coffee
Speaker 8: machines for.
Speaker 2: The public service.
Speaker 8: They actually, I'm serious, you can look this up. They
Speaker 8: who actually went through various hardware store or suppliers or
Speaker 8: kitchen supplies couldn't find one that was gold plated. You know,
Speaker 8: they busted that thing. And this has been rippling through
Speaker 8: I'm not sure if it reflects more a diminution of
Speaker 8: an raising of the ability to detect nuance, or if
Speaker 8: it's just deliberate being done.
Speaker 2: I think you call I think there is a degree
Speaker 2: of stupidity there. And Darren, it's not the first time
Speaker 2: we've seen you know, Tim, You're one hundred percent right
Speaker 2: about these literal takes. It wasn't that long ago that
Speaker 2: they were saying Donald Trump was advocating for a blood bath.
Speaker 2: But when you listen to the clip, he's talking about
Speaker 2: there being an economic blood bath in manufacturing, and I
Speaker 2: think it was motor vehicles, specifically motor vehicle manufacturing. He's
Speaker 2: talking with these Yes, they're inflammatory euphemisms and everything, but
Speaker 2: he's not advocating for violence in the way that they're
Speaker 2: trying to purport him to have done. But Darren, on
Speaker 2: this case, on this specific case, it's a few days
Speaker 2: out from the election, and you've got every major media
Speaker 2: outlet publishing a story that one of the candidates wants
Speaker 2: to be put it, wants a political adversary to be
Speaker 2: shot by firing squad. Carmala Harris actually came out saying
Speaker 2: this should disqualify him from the race. It's pretty bad.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's interesting you've actually high lighted this clip and
Speaker 9: it's one example of many because it reflects a pattern
Speaker 9: that we've seen throughout the campaign and throughout the election cycle,
Speaker 9: and that's where the media at large in the US
Speaker 9: has played this role of boosting Harris and the Democrats
Speaker 9: and taking things out of context, and that's played a
Speaker 9: big role in leading the election in the election for
Speaker 9: them because it's kind of created this bubble in which
Speaker 9: the Democrats are kind of disconnected from the real concerns
Speaker 9: of voters, whether it's bordered chaos, inflation, the economy, or crime.
Speaker 9: And you know, probably the most famous example would be
Speaker 9: these continuous assurances that Biden was as sharp as attacked
Speaker 9: and you know, a good example of things being taken
Speaker 9: out of context in relation to that was the Group
Speaker 9: seven meeting I think back in June where you saw
Speaker 9: Biden in video footage that you've played on sky wandering
Speaker 9: aimless around and we were told that he was fine
Speaker 9: and there was no problem whatsoever, And of course that
Speaker 9: we soon learned that that wasn't the case, which we
Speaker 9: all suspected. But yeah, it's that example that you highlighted
Speaker 9: and many others have created this bubble in which Democrats
Speaker 9: live and they've just become completely disconnected from what's really
Speaker 9: going on in the minds of voters, and we saw
Speaker 9: that in the election result a couple of days ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the ultimate boy who cried wolf, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I believe they called those clips cheap fakes.
Speaker 2: They couldn't say that they were fake, but they said
Speaker 2: they were deceptively cut. I don't know what was a
Speaker 2: deceptive about him wandering around. It just is what it is.
Speaker 2: But they used the White House apparatus and Queen Jean
Speaker 2: Pierre was giving press conferences about how this was a
Speaker 2: form of misinformation. It's bad stuff, but let's move on,
Speaker 2: because it was an emphatic victory for Trump and it
Speaker 2: was a rejection of the messaging contained at nearly every
Speaker 2: Hollywood movie, media report, or entertainment show. And how are
Speaker 2: these people coping with the reality of democracy? See now
Speaker 2: that their arguments fell short. Let's be honest. It was
Speaker 2: a terrible night last night.
Speaker 10: It was a terrible night for women, for children, for
Speaker 10: the hundreds of thousands of hardworking immigrants who make this
Speaker 10: country go.
Speaker 2: For healthcare, for our climate. A grown man literally crying
Speaker 2: because his political team lost, or maybe because he has
Speaker 2: realized that no one cares what he thinks about political issues.
Speaker 2: It was also a little racist because Trump won off
Speaker 2: the back of a very strong minority vote, not that
Speaker 2: a multi millionaire celebrity would know anything about their struggles
Speaker 2: and meltdowns were a theme across all the late night
Speaker 2: talk shows and for the medium more broadly, for Stephen
Speaker 2: Colbert when his side loses, well, it isn't actually democracy
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 10: So many of us wish this hadn't happened, but that
Speaker 10: is not for us to decide.
Speaker 2: This is a democracy, that's democracy.
Speaker 9: With a capital duh.
Speaker 10: And in this democracy the majority has spoken and they
Speaker 10: said they don't care that much about democracy.
Speaker 2: Let's check in on John Stewart. My point is this, well,
Speaker 2: at least he's funny, but somehow the serious and use
Speaker 2: types were even funnier.
Speaker 10: Democrats need to be even sure, and they need to
Speaker 10: be honest, and they need to say, yes, there is
Speaker 10: there's misogyny. But it's not just misogyny from white men.
Speaker 10: It's misogyny from Hispanic men, right, it's misogyny from black men.
Speaker 10: Things we've all been talking about who do not want
Speaker 10: a woman leading them might be race issues with Hispanics.
Speaker 10: They don't want a black woman as Presidenty and Isaac.
Speaker 2: So there's just straight out racism. But then came the
Speaker 2: venom that view turned on women, labeling them uneducated.
Speaker 7: What we did not have is white women who voted
Speaker 7: about fifty two percent right for Donald Trump. Uneducated white
Speaker 7: women is my understanding.
Speaker 3: You have atheno men actually voting more for him.
Speaker 2: These people were so upset because they have been listening
Speaker 2: to journalists like Joy Reid from MSNBC who have been
Speaker 2: campaigning against Trump with segments like this.
Speaker 7: We on this side of the TV screen have said
Speaker 7: all we can. We've laid out mistakes in this crucial
Speaker 7: election where one side stands for freedom while the other
Speaker 7: meets the textbook definition of fascism, namely a far right
Speaker 7: dictatorial regime like Hitler's Germany or Franco's Spain or Mussolini's Italy,
Speaker 7: but also white ruled South Africa before Mendela and the
Speaker 7: black majority to control, or Vladimir Putin's Russia, Victor Orbon's
Speaker 7: Hungary or Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela today that suppresses the
Speaker 7: rights of women and minorities, uses the military to execute
Speaker 7: the whims of a strong man dictator and controls and
Speaker 7: suppresses the press, education the arts, rewrites history to a
Speaker 7: favored and dominant racial class, and four months extravagant corruption
Speaker 7: in order to enrich the dictator and his friends.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go to Tim Blair. Now, there's a lot
Speaker 2: to unpack from that. One of the things that really
Speaker 2: jumps out at me is he got this Morning Joe
Speaker 2: host who is a white, wealthy man who all of
Speaker 2: a sudden now minorities aren't useful for him, and he
Speaker 2: just unleashes their sexist, their racist They don't know what's
Speaker 2: good for them, Tim, Why don't they know what's good
Speaker 2: for them?
Speaker 8: Well, I think we've got to preface that by indicating,
Speaker 8: you know, we've got to establish a baseline with Morning
Speaker 8: Joe's credibility. And that was a few weeks before the
Speaker 8: big debate that demolished Joe Biden. Scarborough. Joe Sabrauth, the
Speaker 8: host of that show, came out and said that he'd
Speaker 8: spent time with Biden and that Joe Biden this was
Speaker 8: the best Joe Biden. This was a guy at the
Speaker 8: top of his game. I was killing it, kicking it
Speaker 8: out the part, fantastic. And then we saw Joe Biden
Speaker 8: during the debate. So I don't think we can pay
Speaker 8: a lot of attention to that guy. Joy read love
Speaker 8: the shirt, by the way. But when you go through that,
Speaker 8: all that stuff that she was saying about executions and
Speaker 8: destroying the arts, and you know, God knows what other
Speaker 8: comparison she was making with historical figures of fascism, maybe
Speaker 8: before you compare Trump to those figures, maybe just wait
Speaker 8: until he's done one of those things, just one, just
Speaker 8: one extra digital execution, you know, because he's been in
Speaker 8: power for four years, and this is what these people
Speaker 8: always sort of push aside. He's a known figure, he's
Speaker 8: a known issue. We've seen him four years, you know.
Speaker 8: For those exaggerations to be blurted out in the same
Speaker 8: frame that they slam misinformation, God, put a mirror on yourself.
Speaker 2: Kids and Darren. They can't help themselves from talking about
Speaker 2: identity politics, linking everything back to identity politics. And the
Speaker 2: analysis for me has been missing very much for the
Speaker 2: most part, that this appears to be a reaction to
Speaker 2: the economic woes that a lot of the more impoverished
Speaker 2: people living in America are facing, and they cannot seem
Speaker 2: to bring themselves to understand why somebody who maybe is Hispanic,
Speaker 2: maybe is an immigrant themselves, would vote for Donald Trump
Speaker 2: when they are of a particular race. It's a problem
Speaker 2: in the media.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Look, we've seen right and across the board in this
Speaker 9: election result, men, women have shifted their preference across the
Speaker 9: Republican Party. Latino voters, Black voters, particularly males, people that
Speaker 9: earn under one hundred thousand dollars US have shifted towards Trump,
Speaker 9: and white working class voters have and even those that
Speaker 9: earn over one hundred thousand there's been gains there as
Speaker 9: well well for Trump. Yet despite this empirical evidence, the
Speaker 9: post mortem continues to maintain the fantasy. And then the
Speaker 9: truth is that voters are more wound up about the economy, immigration, inflation,
Speaker 9: crime after four years of being told the economy is
Speaker 9: in great shape, than they are about any question marks
Speaker 9: over Trump's Trump's character. And the other point to make
Speaker 9: as well is that, you know, the campaign was terrible.
Speaker 9: Harris completely failed to distance himself from Biden, who was unpopular,
Speaker 9: and at the same time failed to offer any solutions
Speaker 9: of her own, and that's why she lost the election.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good point. Well, let's move on now.
Speaker 2: Because the election didn't just expose major issues with the
Speaker 2: pulling that we were showed, it also proved that celebrity
Speaker 2: endorsements just do not work. Now, Rapper Cardi b was
Speaker 2: so upset that people don't care what she thinks about politics,
Speaker 2: she posted this message before having deleted a few minutes later.
Speaker 1: This is why summer yes dates spaghetti hurricanes.
Speaker 11: That's what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 2: Pretty disgusting stuff for Orador. Louisiana, Texas, and North Carolina
Speaker 2: had all just been called for chump just before she
Speaker 2: tweeted that. And of course we still had Taylor Swift,
Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen, Oprah, Lizzo, Eminem and many many more endorse Harris,
Speaker 2: but people ignored them. And now even the Guardian was
Speaker 2: asking this question, George Clooney, who cares? Did celebrity endorsements
Speaker 2: actually harm Kamala Harris. To answer this question, they went
Speaker 2: to an arts professor at New York University who finally
Speaker 2: stumbled on the truth. What matters to a celebrity isn't
Speaker 2: the interests of an average person. Beyonce isn't worrying about
Speaker 2: the price of gas. But we're going to take a
Speaker 2: quick break when we're back inside the fake gunshots scandal
Speaker 2: which is plaguing the ABC. Welcome back now to a
Speaker 2: major scandal of the ABC, with its Director of News,
Speaker 2: Justin Stevens, having to admit that fake gunshots were edited
Speaker 2: into a story about war crimes involving former Special Forces
Speaker 2: major Heston Russell.
Speaker 1: Two months ago, the Seven Networks Spotlight program raised complaints
Speaker 1: about the sound of extra gunshots being added in Today,
Speaker 1: the national broadcaster offered this apology.
Speaker 12: Obviously this shouldn't have occurred, and we're taking it and
Speaker 12: have taken it very seriously. And that's why we sincerely
Speaker 12: regret and apologize those editing errors in the video clips.
Speaker 2: Oh just a simple editing error, was it? No, The
Speaker 2: fake gunshot audio made it look like a soldier was
Speaker 2: shooting multiple rounds at unarmed civilians. Now this context matters,
Speaker 2: and we're going to show you why. Seven Spotlight exposed
Speaker 2: this in September in a.
Speaker 11: Way that would please any producer of Hollywood fiction. The
Speaker 11: ABC took Heston's story to another level. Video sequences in
Speaker 11: online news articles made it look like the shooter was
Speaker 11: taking potshots at a couple of unarmed men running for cover.
Speaker 2: And this next clip breaks down the significance of the
Speaker 2: doctor footage. Watch carefully and keep in mind this is
Speaker 2: supposedly just a simple, unintentional editing error. The first footage
Speaker 2: you will see here is the raw footage, and then
Speaker 2: Spotlight examines what the ABC did in the second clip.
Speaker 11: The commando's highlight video reel, complete with its anthemic underscore,
Speaker 11: provided the foundations for the ABC's online news story, but
Speaker 11: it took a significant detour from reality because in the
Speaker 11: actual helmet cam vision, it's a warning shot, then Heston's
Speaker 11: command to shoot, followed by six shots, revealing an astonishing
Speaker 11: difference between the source vision and the version of events
Speaker 11: told by the ABC's Mark Willersy, which starts with six
Speaker 11: rounds of firing, then a single warning shot becomes six.
Speaker 2: Well, you don't need a review to know that that
Speaker 2: was morally and professionally wrong. But okay, they apologize, and
Speaker 2: I assume that means there is accountability and consequences for
Speaker 2: the person or people which did this.
Speaker 12: Was anyone's employment terminated as a result of this.
Speaker 5: Center I can confirm no one's employment has been terminated.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they edited in fake gun shots which gave
Speaker 2: the impression that unarmed civilians were being gunned down by
Speaker 2: Australian soldiers, admitted it was adopted, deleted the clip, and
Speaker 2: no one lost their job. That would not happen at
Speaker 2: any serious newsroom in the world. And it gets worse,
Speaker 2: the ABC and it's spin teams will kick to try
Speaker 2: and shape the narrative behind the apology. ABC News cleared
Speaker 2: of deliberately misleading audiences. Barred issues an apology over a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two Afghan war series. Now, keep in mind
Speaker 2: that this is a news report. It is in a
Speaker 2: press release by the comms team. It is supposed to
Speaker 2: be an independent news write up of what happened at
Speaker 2: Sented Estimates. Now they actually led the news article with
Speaker 2: a line about the fake gunshots being an accidental error,
Speaker 2: while glossing over the severity of the problem. ABC cleared
Speaker 2: of wrongdoing. What a disgrace, Tim Blair. They won't tell
Speaker 2: us who did it, They won't tell us how it happened.
Speaker 2: The only thing that we have to go on is
Speaker 2: their assurances a former ABC long term lifer who did
Speaker 2: a review, so they're calling it independent. Sure, their assurances
Speaker 2: that it wasn't deliberate, As if that makes it any better.
Speaker 8: Your thoughts, well, two main things. As you point out,
Speaker 8: this wasn't an error. The apology should have been along
Speaker 8: the lines of, we apologize for deliberately adding audio to
Speaker 8: this section of footage to make it appear more dramatic
Speaker 8: and to be more condemnatory towards the people we're depicting.
Speaker 8: That's one thing. The second point I make is this
Speaker 8: is a real victory for expertise, and it would have
Speaker 8: been the technical staff at Channel seven, It would have
Speaker 8: been a lot of the on air staff, a lot
Speaker 8: of the front people. This is a back room special scene.
Speaker 8: Your guys at Sky are exactly the same. You have
Speaker 8: that level of expertise and talent to detect when things
Speaker 8: have been faked up in depictions of such things as this. So,
Speaker 8: you know, congratulations to people who probably won't ever get named,
Speaker 8: but who probably collectively deserve a little on a perhaps
Speaker 8: some sort of you know, exposure Walkley or something like that,
Speaker 8: because they've done great work here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very well, said Darren. Your thoughts on the.
Speaker 9: Story, Hey, look, we all make mistakes in the media.
Speaker 9: There but for the grace of God go I as
Speaker 9: they say, But this was a very serious error I'm
Speaker 9: not sure the apology. It's good they've apologized, I'm not
Speaker 9: sure that it will restore trust in their processes and
Speaker 9: their journalism. The allegation was absolutely central to It was
Speaker 9: the main basis for the central allegation in the story,
Speaker 9: which was highly serious allegation. So, and as you said
Speaker 9: as well, I mean going into this that I don't
Speaker 9: think there was a lot of confidence in the review,
Speaker 9: and I don't think anyone's feeling they've really addressed the
Speaker 9: underlying problem here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I just want to know how it happened.
Speaker 2: If you're saying it wasn't deliberate, explain the mechanisms of
Speaker 2: how it happened. Tim Blair, Darren Davidson, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for joining me. That's all the time that we
Speaker 2: have for tonight. Thank you for joining us, but we'll
Speaker 2: be back next Friday at the same time.