Unbalanced
The Australian Friday, July 28, 1995
ABC TV's Four Corners reached a new low on Monday night with its "story" on the St Vincent de Paul Society. There was only about one minute of story in it. Namely, career political lobbyists had taken over the national office of the charity: most of the traditionally non-political Vinnies didn't like it, and they had extraordinary meetings to get rid of the problem.
Now we are used to the ABC, although taxpayer-funded, heavily favouring the left wing of Australian society. But this program was 44 minutes of blatant propaganda. The rejected president - but not his opponents - was shown doing good works.
Then we were shown one candidate - out of six - for the new presidency. She was the ABC's choice, shown praying.
As if that were not enough, we were then shown a Sydney critic of the career lobbyists while Four Corners recited and printed his swear words from a private telephone conversation with them. Apparently this dirty trick is not yet in the ABC book of ethical no-nos.
Philip O'Carroll