Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton says "a rabble of thugs were written up as nice blokes" by the ABC after it characterised a slur against the Prime Minister by Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles as a "slip-up".
"The article was very strange. They said the crowd erupted. they almost seemed to write a colour piece around it and took [Miles'] explanation as fact," he said.
"Can you imagine if Scott Morrison had committed such a gaffe? Do we really think anybody would see the ABC going, well he says it was a slip of the tongue and then write a tongue-in-cheek article?
"They're doing his PR. That's not the function of the national broadcaster, to do Labor's PR and to write about their crowd in a celebratory manner."
Ability to freely exchange controversial ideas an important part of any democracy20/04/2021|7min
Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton says the ability to freely exchange ideas , even if those ideas are somewhat controversial or offensive is an important part of any democratic institution or country.
Pakistan s Prime Minister Imran Khan is pushing for Islamic nations to band together to put pressure on western nations to boycott trade if it did not criminalise blasphemy of the Prophet Muhammad. It s such an important western ideal and to have a world leader want to corrode that is extremely dangerous. What s been concerning to me is in the media, there hasn t been this widespread outrage, Mr Houghton said.
Joe Biden’s ‘propaganda outlets’ will ‘let him get away’ with border crisis02/04/2021|13min
Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton says the US-Mexico border story has demonstrated how activist journalists are covering up a “burgeoning humanitarian crisis”.
“It is indeed a crisis which Reuter’s reports involves more than 100,000 immigrants being detained each month and an increasing number of children arriving at the border without a parent or legal guardian,” Mr Houghton said.
“The stories of human tragedy are very real and are pouring out of the region at a sobering rate”.
“But if you were to read some left-wing publications such as The New York Times or The Guardian, you would be forgiven for forming the view that it is all merely a political beat-up.”
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ABC needs to be ‘much clearer’ about Federal Court’s unanimous overturn on Alan Tudge 02/04/2021|7min
The full bench of the Federal Court has unanimously overturned a decision against former immigration minister Alan Tudge in which a judge described his detention of an asylum seeker as potentially “criminal”.
According to Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton, “the minister rejected the judge’s finding (in 2020) and made it clear he was considering an appeal.”
“Nonetheless this didn’t stop ABC’s Virginia Trioli from demanding the minister resign,” he said.
Following the Federal Court’s overturn, Mr Houghton said Virginia Trioli will “no doubt” be retracting her comments about Tudge as well as “giving wide publicity to the judgement of the full bench – right?”