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Legacy media’s addiction to fear, framing, and false narratives is betraying everyday Australians — and the evidence has never been more damning.

Name a more consistent betrayal of Australians outside the Canberra bubble, and you won’t find a hive mind more devious than legacy media.

Bias, scripted narratives and the inevitable corruption of journalism are all part of the fourth estate establishment’s fear porn sway over the masses.

If the three-second sound bite didn’t grab you, the manufactured storyline missing essential context will.

The Framing Game: When Language Replaces Truth

From the repeated and constantly resurrected false claims that Trump “is” Hitler to clickbait headlines like Crikey’s “Peter Dutton is a Racist”, the nagging question is: how much of the truth are we actually being told?

Those who scream tone, nuance and balance in defence of neutrality seem to be the last to deploy it.

As the late legendary actor Christopher Lee once stated, “The internet and the media, if they can’t think of something to say, they invent it.”

Lee was outrightly rejecting media claims that he was heavily involved in the occult.

Rather than affirm that media falsehood, he warned people away from the occult instead, saying,

“I certainly haven’t been involved, and I warn all of you. Never, never, never. You’ll not only lose your mind. You’ll lose your soul.”

Cut, Paste, Repeat: The “Alleged War Criminal” Template

Lee lays out the gist of James Macpherson’s latest biff with the bias.

On his Substack, which can be accessed here, Macpherson criticised 7News Melbourne for how it referred to the Israeli Prime Minister as “alleged war criminal.”

“While true,” Macpherson explained, “leading with ‘alleged war criminal’ when referring to the democratically elected leader of an Australian ally is not neutral reporting.”

“It is the deliberate framing of Benjamin Netanyahu before the reader even has a chance to hear what Benjamin Netanyahu actually said.”

“It shapes perception from the outset, and that is not what responsible journalism should do.”

“And so, we are left with a curious question about modern journalism, Macpherson pondered.

“Is it still interested in informing the public?”

“Or has modern journalism graduated to something more refined — the careful choreography of perception?”

A platform where “language is not a window onto events, but a filter placed over them before the light is even switched on.”

How the Media Hijacked Australia’s Election

Other high-profile examples include the “gotcha!” tar and feathering of Jacinta Price for simply saying, “Make Australia Great Again.”

Over one year ago, Price was hit with an obvious, coordinated attempt to censor her and undermine the voter eligibility of a Dutton government.

All apparently because “Never Trumpers” in the largely left-wing Australian media didn’t like it.

Framing it as Trumpian, Trump-deranged journos at The Guardian, ABC, 9News, and The Sydney Morning Herald all ran “Save the Public Service” anti-DOGE pieces during last year’s federal election.

Macpherson’s colleagues at Sky News, Rita Panahi and Caleb Bond, rightly suggested at the time that the Australian media had reduced the Aussie election down to a popularity vote for or against Donald Trump.

The media weren’t even joking.

Never mind policy context and the Australian voters’ needs.

They didn’t care that it was Dutton, not Donald, on the Australian ballot.

The Australian election was a chance for the leftist legacy apparatus to send Trump a message.

Dutton’s team then played into the “it’s the far-right” fear-mongering, censored Jacinta Price, and distanced themselves from the idea of “Making Australia Great Again.”

Kowtowing to the Narrative

The LNP subsequently lost because they lived in fear of “the fake news” media. Doing so handed the MSM control over the LNP’s campaign.

By distancing themselves from this vote-winning distinction, the LNP let legacy media dictate its election campaign agenda.

When it came to the media, Dutton needed to be more like Donald, not less.

He got played by media manipulators, chose the latter and left the LNP in tatters. The current torn and timid state of the LNP attests to that as fact.

A more recent example includes the apparent campaign to cancel SAS operator Ben Roberts-Smith.

This same anti-MAGA media has rolled out the tiresome “Alleged War Criminal” tagline against Roberts-Smith.

This capitalised on legacy media’s sensationalism already seeded in headlines, about Trump and Netanyahu.

Just cut and paste. Who cares about fairness?

There was no nuance about due process, just careful wording to hide bias.

Again, this is more about the Donald and Israel than it is about Ben Roberts-Smith.

It’s an opportunity for legacy media’s scriptwriters to keep the “It’s the far right” fear-mongering fires burning.

Fear porn sells.

Why write something truthful, or lock in on neutral?

The Roberts-Smith case is the perfect chance to keep the “hate Trump because love trumps hate” dissonance alive in an unquestioning and apathetic Australian public.

They’re unrelated, and yet the media has been able to connect the two in the minds of Australians already programmed to hate the US president.

By implying association, the media can get the Australian public to hate Roberts-Smith, too.

All it takes is cut and paste.

According to the behaviour, pattern and impact, legacy media’s dictate is clear: News is to be consumed, never questioned.

From Covington to COVID: A Pattern Too Big to Ignore

One of the past decade’s biggest examples of media bias and corruption comes straight out of the United States.

In January 2020, CNN settled a massive lawsuit after promoting a false narrative about racism regarding the Covington School boys.

Represented by former Richard Jewell lawyer L. Lin Linwood, Nick Sandmann, even The Washington Post was forced to admit it had acted with malicious bias against the young group of MAGA supporters.

As I reported at the time, there was an obvious misrepresentation in the media about the boys’ “standoff” between Sandmann and Native American, Nathan Phillips, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”

On 2/19/19, I filed $250M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post. Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit. Thanks to @ToddMcMurtry & @LLinWood for their advocacy. Thanks to my family & millions of you who have stood your ground by supporting me. I still have more to do.

— Nicholas Sandmann (@N1ckSandmann) July 24, 2020

More broadly speaking, COVID-19 offers an almost unlimited well of evidence for this widespread narrative farming within mainstream journalism.

One such example is the unforgettable one-liner, “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, which the media spread virally at the beck and call of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and the Biden White House.

The evidence exposing how legacy media profits from pushing falsehoods is extensive.

There was The Sydney Morning Herald’s “KKKenerley” back in 2019. Then, in 2018, the media facilitated the mass hysteria event against the then-Trump nominee for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh.

A final example is the late George Pell’s imprisonment, where media narratives created a climate that hindered due process and led to protests against Pell’s exoneration.

Legacy media’s bias and the fourth estate’s corruption of journalism are rampant.

It’s a pandemic of false narratives and fear porn.

So, I agree with Christopher Lee.

Are they selling “truth” or telling the truth?

Ultimately, the responsible departure from legacy media is when it’s discernibly just make-believe.

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Image courtesy of Adobe.