…OBLITERATED!

Given the absolute bullshit we in Oz were fed by the Yanks before we waltzing-matilded with them into the war against Iraq, you’d think our professional mainstream media outlets would treat claims by them, including from presidents, secretaries of state and so-called intelligence agencies, with special caution.

But enough about professional mainstream media outlets … let’s have a look at Nine News Queensland’s 6pm bulletin on Monday, where claims by Donald Trump and others that bunker-busting raids of Iranian nuclear facilities had “obliterated” them.

We’ve been unable to snare earlier promos for that bulletin but we’re pretty sure we heard “obliterated” used many times as a statement of fact.

And the 6pm bulletin didn’t start out well, with this opening by Melissa Downes: “Tonight, Inside Operation Midnight Hammer, America’s bomber mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear sites”.

Yes, maybe “that claims to have obliterated” would have been much wiser.

But then came something that almost had the bitter, twisted, washed-up, old hacks who compile this column falling off their chairs.

Downes: “… but there are questions over the extent of the damage”.

We know, Melissa, we know! We were probably as surprised as you were.

So, we leaned forward and waited with Bundaberg-rum bated breaths for Nine’s reporters to use “annihilated” as a statement of fact.

Was it Lauren Tomasi or Edward Godfrey who had forgotten their Journalism 101 lessons? No, they done good.

But, sadly, let’s now hear from their much-older and supposedly much wiser colleague Andrew Probyn: “A clear and unequivocal statement from the Prime Minister that Australia backed Donald Trump’s obliteration of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program”.

Oh dear! We felt the need to dust off our dunce cap for that one. Here’s Probyn interviewing the Iranian Ambassador to Australia in the same report.

We suspect that if Probyn was sent back to police rounds where he possibly belongs, he’d still write “police called off their chase moments before the fatal crash” instead of “police say they called off their chase….” Attribution is sometimes very important.

And that’s why the veracity of words still matter in journalism, right? That in politics anywhere in the world, things sprouted as facts are quite often the exact opposite. Fibs. It’s why our professional reporters should be savvy enough to realise that anything that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth always needs to be taken with extreme caution, for FUCK’S SAKE.

UPDATE: News is breaking this morning that the US intelligence community is now saying that Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been set back “by only a matter of months”. Trump is expected to have those people marched out back and annihilated.

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