Thread by @ADenehey

1/ Here I go… ranting again.

“In my opinion, the problem with Leigh Sales, and journalists in general”.

#COVID19Aus
#ThisIsNotJournalism

2/ When the current NSW outbreak began in June, Leigh Sales went on a pre planned holiday. 730 started reported rising cases every episode and balancing stories concerning the seriousness of the disease with those examining the impact of lockdowns.

3/ Sales returned many weeks later, interviewed the NSW Premier after her failure to contain the virus, but was meek in holding her to account.

4/ And since then, as before, Sales’ reporting on COVID has just been an amplification of her Twitter feed - cherry picked articles to support anti lockdown/ Covid sceptic views.

5/ All members of National Cabinet agreed to a strategy of zero community transmission until vaccinated and we would not have achieved this without a combination of lockdowns, contact tracing and respecting the seriousness of an evolving novel virus before a vaccination rollout.

6/ However, Sales made a point of questioning the validity of lockdowns continuously on 730 & Twitter. It was, in my opinion, a waste of taxpayers money to have Sales flown in to ask the Victorian Premier a question that had been answered 100+ times before, “wHy LOckDoWn?”

7/ It was a promotion of ignorance at a time when we needed to trust what we had already painfully learnt - snap lockdowns prevented widespread transmission & mutation of a deadly virus whilst reducing the risk of longer lockdowns.

8/ Sales recently retweeted suggestion that COVID-19 in children was nothing to worry about. Serious illness is rarer in children, which is hopeful, but that’s the situation now, and focussing solely on this undermines risks of children passing the virus to teachers & families.

9/ Fear mongering cannot not be overcome by promoting complacency. And is it not fear mongering to suggest the Queensland Premier wants to vaccinate children before it is medically approved?

10/ All journalists, including Sales, undermined the seriousness of COVID-19 when they attributed ongoing studies of the effects of the virus to be conclusive, when in fact knowledge of the virus is constantly evolving.

11/ In April, possibly happy to focus on another subject, Sales opened the program with, “Now that COVID-19 is, hopefully, under control…”, ignoring the fact that, in India, the Delta strain was beginning to cause hundreds of thousands of cases per day.

12/ Perhaps unintentionally, it seemed as if the lesson of complacency, learnt by every single country with surging cases and indeed, all of us during the HQ inquiry, was ignored by Sales in favour of promoting false hope.

13/ My opinion here is not an invitation to bully Leigh Sales. In fact, her influence is so vast I’m more at risk of being bullied by her followers for presenting my opinion. In fact, Sales has over 400,000 followers on Twitter and a nightly television audience of around 800,000.

14/ It’s not unreasonable to suggest an expression from Sales, that the virus was under control and lockdowns weren’t necessary, delivered a sense of vindication for those constantly seeking to undermine our health response and the seriousness of the disease.

15/ This included the usual suspects haunting NewsCorp, conspiracists inexplicably elected to parliament & self indulgent miscreants organising faux freedom rallies.

Some suggest Sales is an “LNP stooge”. I honestly don’t know about that. I actually don’t care.

16/ But, considering the Feds for the last 20 months (mostly) have been pushing a “ learn to live with COVID” anti lockdown narrative, one should be very suspicious of any implication from Sales, or her peers, that pushing that exact same propaganda is “important for democracy”.

17/ Journalists can pat themselves on the back all they like. I’m sure pandemic reporting has its challenges. The major issue here has always been a matter of ethics, and the further we’ve progressed into this pandemic, the less forgivable unethical reporting has become.

18/ A prime example is the high level of insincerity when reporting on mental health issues. The public’s ‘roller coaster of emotions’ stems less from case numbers & more from mainstream media’s unwavering devotion for trivialising our health by politicising COVID.

19/ Criticising journalists does not render a person, ‘unhinged’.

20/ A fine example of how sensationalist news media has failed Australians, is to cite Sales’ willingness to retweet articles by political reporters & commentators, and business owners, who seek to simplify mental health issues & the science of preventing COVID-19 transmission.

21/ Subsequently, as Sales’ Twitter feed appears to inform ABC news content, it is not unreasonable to suggest, considering her influence, that this may have contributed to non compliance during lockdowns.

22/ No one at the ABC, certainly not Leigh Sales, has stooped as low as Paul Murray or Peta Credlin by falsely & irresponsibly misrepresenting suicide statistics, however every journalist needs to reflect on their performance during the pandemic.

23/ Arguably, the most important story of the pandemic was the discovery of airborne transmission. Whilst there have been many articles focussing on it, their promotion pales in comparison to that of trivial articles such as those focussing on who hired security guards.

24/ Were those stories really more relevant than airborne transmission? Or were they just chasing clicks?

Are we really concerned about “saving democracy” if we overlook the way many journalists mirror those politicians they claim to hold to account?

25/ I’m not a journalist, I guess I don’t know. But I think the term ‘public interest’ needs to be severely twisted to justify patting themselves on the back for their own failures of foresight.

In closing…

26/ If I were to present you with the single most unethical individual working in news media during the pandemic, I would hand you Alan “it’s not a pandemic” Jones on a silver platter.

27/ Leigh Sales is the main focus here not because she is the worst but because she is the most respected. The hope here, is that every journalist, respected or not, realises their opportunity to accept responsibility for unethical reporting.

28/ To quote Julia Gillard, “I think we will have a long debate about media ethics in this country. But if I can put it as clearly as I can, I’d say to you, don’t write crap. Can’t be that hard. And when you have written complete crap, I think you should correct it.”

Sales was not flown to Melbourne. Got it. 👍