MEDIA SHAME FILE
Outlet: The Age
Headline: Why a group of neo-Nazis stormed a tiny town in NSW
Summary: The corporate media reaction to a group of Australian nationalists protesting in the town of Corowa on Saturday was something to behold.
Almost every article got basic facts wrong, none included vital context contained in our piece here about a corrupt multinational corporation flooding a rural community with immigrant workers. None sought comment from the protesters, or attempted to provide any balance at all.
Only The Age tried to go a bit deeper, but ended up producing a ham-fisted piece of “debunking” propaganda intended to give the reader the impression that the protesters had no legitimate reason for being there, while accidentally confirming the opposite.
For the sake of brevity we’ll ignore the numerous factual errors and overall bias displayed throughout the article, and focus on how they try and construct their own false narrative:
“Corowa, a small NSW town on the bank of the Murray River, was targeted because it is home to one of the sites of leading Australian pork-processing company, Rivalea.”
It’s not an Australian company anymore, and this is a false statement. The town wasn’t targeted because it’s home to Rivalea, but because of what Rivalea is doing.
“The neo-Nazis spouted offensive and unverified claims. They claimed that after Rivalea was bought by Brazilian meat company JBS in 2022, locals lost their jobs and migrant workers were brought in.”
We have another departure from fact. Offensiveness is subjective and nothing to do with accuracy, and “unverified” in this case actually means “we were unwilling or able to verify” but is processed by reader as “untrue”. This is dishonest journalism.
Rivalea was bought by JBS, migrant workers have been brought in (no-one has disputed this), and every job taken by an immigrant is one that didn’t go to a local, and no-one from JBS, Rivalea or the council or Corowa Business Chamber has denied that locals have lost jobs.
“The group also claimed the company was buying accommodation to house the foreign workers.”
Another claim that has not been disputed. The local newspaper reported on the sale of a motel being leased by Rivalea in order to house workers. Locals told us that Rivalea was busing workers from the motel and other accommodation to work. No-one is denying this.
Again, The Age is taking a non-controversial claim, and calling it “unverified” to make it seem false.
“Local councillor and retired Rivalea production manager David Harrison said at the weekend the neo-Nazi rally had deeply upset and horrified the community. He said the community wanted to welcome more culturally diverse people into the region’s workforce.”
Now we get an example of the classic “it’s not happening, but it’s good that it is” argument that leftists love to use in these situations.
We’ve gone from “offensive and unverified claims” in the space of a paragraph to “it’s happening, but the community wants it”. At this point, how did the journalists not look at each other and ask “hang on, doesn’t this verify the claims we’ve been debunking?”
But it gets worse.
“‘I’m the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, and we’ve already started discussions saying, well, this has happened. We’ll just double down harder on bringing our international workers into the community,’ he told The Border Mail.’
Now we have David Harrison, who despite his obvious conflict of interest with his links to Rivalea and the council is saying that they are going to keep doing the things that the article is claiming are “offensive and unverified”.
His comments alone verify the claims.
“Neither Rivalea nor JBS responded to requests for comment before deadline.”
What this actually means is that neither Rivalea nor JBS would even try to deny the claims. But if the claims aren’t true, why not deny them?
This is also an admission that the journalists did not go to the protesters for comment, a breach of the code of ethics followed by the publication.
You’d think that at some stage they would start wondering whether the real story was what JBS is up to in Corowa, but no, they decide to defend it instead.
“In his speech in Corowa, Sewell took aim at BlackRock, a major US investment firm that has a small stake in JBS. The Batista family are the dominant shareholders in JBS.
No mention of the verified corrupt conduct of JBS and some of the billionaire Batistas. Instead they make it seem like a wholesome family business.
“The company has been the subject of several debunked conspiracy theories, including that it was somehow involved in an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. More recently, the firm was falsely linked to Hurricane Helene by conspiracy theorists.
“‘When you stand up against BlackRock and international finance, they come after your family, they come after your bank accounts,’ Sewell said.”
If they had gone to Sewell for comment they might have discovered that they do indeed come after your bank accounts, as we verified in this article.
For the record, we spoke to locals before and after the protest, one of whom responded to The Age as follows:
“If they wanted verification all they needed to do is ask any local in the street or the staff at the two supermarkets who have to deal with unruly behaviour. Or go to Motel Wingrove where some of them live. It’s also not difficult to find the rest of them as Rivalea bus them to and from work”
But The Age didn’t send anyone to Corowa, or speak to any locals, they just decided to smear the protesters from their Melbourne keyboards, and should be ashamed of themselves.
It’s also worth noting that the article was co-written by Natassia Chrysanthos, a former editor of the far-left Sydney University student newspaper Honi Soit turned “federal politics reporter” who went to the same exclusive private school as the diversity hire female journalist who made our Media Shame File last week.
Key quote: Neither Rivalea nor JBS responded to requests for comment before deadline.
Subtext: “Nothing to see here, the protesters did not have a legitimate point, focus on their ‘offensiveness’ instead”
