It would appear the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a very sensible – and kind – policy of never speaking ill of the dead.

Well, at least that policy is enforced when it comes to reporting on the passing of an old white bloke with a reputation as a far right-wing warrior in both his military and political life.

The policy clearly doesn’t extend to a slightly younger white sheila much-loved for her husky, dusty, singing voice and fine entertainment career.

ABC TV’s 7pm news out of Brisbane on Tuesday had nothing but praise for Jim Molan, dead at 72. The report that followed on the passing of Renee Geyer at 69 was a far more “warts and all” affair.

News presenter Matt Wordsworth told of all the kind words flowing from both sides of politics for Senator Molan and respect for his four decades in the Army and his parliamentary career.

Wordsworth covered Major General Molan’s role in helping lead coalition forces in Iraq in 2004 and how he devised the Coalition’s asylum seeker policy known as Operation Sovereign Borders.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton appeared close to tears on camera as he talked about “ a decent, decent man”.

Sure, this segment was nowhere near as vomitous or as detailed as the coverage over at the Nine Network and other rightwing mainstream mediocre outlets (is that a tautology?) where their version of events would have left viewers in no doubt that Molan was probably one of the most decent and caring and kindest people Australia has ever produced.

Back at Aunty, the segment on Geyer’s life was compelled to cover an incident in 2011 where Geyer avoided conviction after pleading guilty to reckless driving while on breast cancer medication.

Also mentioned was another court appearance in 2017 when she pleaded guilty to racially abusing a hotel receptionist. There was also footage of Geyer being open about her struggles with addiction.

Which brings us back to the ABC’s obit on Molan. He was clearly a divisive force in politics so should some mention have been made of the fact that, when deputy chief of staff for operations, multinational force in Iraq, he has been accused of responsibility for planning and carrying out multiple purported war crimes during the attack on Fallujah in late 2004? That he earned the nickname “Butcher of Fallujah” over those claims that banned white phosphorus bombs had been dropped on civilians there?

And while it might have won the LNP an election or two, would anyone have been offended if the ABC report had rightly used “controversial” before the words Operation Sovereign Borders?

Call us at the MGH mean-spirited or biased if you must, but we reckon that if Geyer’s low points were fair game, were we producing the ABC news on Tuesday night, we’d have run just some brief footage when Molan, in his civilian job as a far-right-wing political nutjob and climate-change denier, made an absolute fool of himself on Q&A on February 3 in 2020.

That’s when he said he had an open mind on whether climate change was being caused by human activity and in forming that open mind declared “I’m not relying on evidence”.

Maybe Molan channelled Tony “Climate change is crap” Abbott or George “Climate change is a heathen Commie plot” Pell in forming his “open mind” on such things?

We will never know now but what we do know is that while Renee Geyer might have had some hiccups in her life , she never, ever, said anything so monstrously stupid as Molan’s comment that had almost an entire TV audience erupting in howls of anger and/or disbelief.