As the breathless amplification of Dutton’s unsubstantiated claims in Alice Springs last week showed, Australian news media still has a long way to go in breaking its reliance on “if it bleeds it leads” news.
It just can’t resist a good moral panic about the public danger of surging crime. Nor can it resist the bullying demand from political leaders to put them on air with extravagant claims, regardless of whether what they say is true or not.
Confronting its first big Trump-style challenge — an evidence-free claim tossed out with a chin-jutting dare to ignore it — Australia’s media defaulted to a clickbait test of “news-worthiness” with only the lightest fact-checking.
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