In her speech to the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation on November 12 (it was released on November 23), ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose decided it was appropriate to have a few parting shots at the (almost certainly) outgoing US President.
Having favourably quoted The New York Times as asserting that Australia’s “conservative government” would go to any lengths “to scare officials and reporters into submission”, Buttrose turned her attention on Donald J. Trump. In fact, this comment appeared in a report by Damien Cave — not in a New York Times editorial.
The ABC chairwoman said some leaders did not need much encouragement to oppress the media. She added: “Outgoing US President Donald Trump declared journalists to be the enemy of the people. Dare I say, Mr Trump — that’s fake news. Journalists are truth tellers.”
It so happened that Buttrose’s declaration that journalists are truth tellers coincided with the apology issued by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour for comparing Trump’s term in office with Nazi Germany.
On November 12, Amanpour said on CNN: “This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened. It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilisation that led to genocide against a whole identity and, in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and proof. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to normal.”
Amanpour is an intelligent, well-informed and much travelled journalist. So how did she go as a truth teller? Not well at all. For starters, Kristallnacht had nothing to do with a “tower of burning books”. It would seem the CNN correspondent confused Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, with the massive book burnings undertaken by Nazis on May 10, 1933 — not long after Adolf Hitler’s regime came to power.
Read the article by Gerard Henderson in The Australian.