Inciting Terror Is No Biggie As Long As You’re Not the ABC

The furor over THAT episode of Q&A refuses to die down. After Prime Minister Tony Abbott expressed incredulity that the ABC had deigned to repeat the program as they do every week (during the coveted primetime slot of 10am on Wednesday), it's actually been the government and News Corp that refuse to let the issue go. "How could the ABC give airtime to this man?" ask the newspapers that have feverishly kept this story alive for a week-and-a-half. If any issue is going to move the public into accepting an overhaul or dismantling of the public broadcaster, it's this one. They're not going to let it go.

Of course, everyone's been in such a rush to outrage, nobody can agree upon what it is exactly they're outraged about. The News Corp papers all seem to think that the ABC allowed someone to preach pro-ISIS jihad. Malcolm Turnbull seems to think it's that Zaky Mallah was a security risk. Tony Abbott thinks the program itself is a "lefty lynch mob" that is on "everyone's side but Australia's".

Even if you misinterpreted Mallah's fumbled response on the program as a pro-ISIS sentiment, there were far more potent threats doing the round in the mainstream media only days later. The last week of News Corp papers have featured headlines such as "ABC of Jihad", "Terror Vision", and this charming graphic from the Courier Mail. Last week, I suggested that people who have never watched and will never watch Q&A will see those headlines and leap to some pretty outrageous and potentially dangerous conclusions about what actually took place. And, lo and behold, that's exactly what's happened. In the days following the controversy, ABC reporter Lucy Carter was called "lefty scum" in public because her ABC pass was visible. In Melbourne, the alarm ringingly-named United Patriots Front set up shop in front of the ABC Southbank building and roasted a pig on a spit. The ABC Ultimo in Sydney went into lockdown last week after a number of threatening phone calls. These are all instances of violence and intimidation, and it would incredulous to suggest that the radical headlines News Corp papers gleefully displayed did not play a part. So where's the inquiry into News Corp? We've held private broadcasters to account before: broadcaster Alan Jones was found by a tribunal to have incited hatred to account for his part in the 2005 Cronulla Riots, in which he described Lebanese Australians as "vermin" who "rape and pillage". It was very easy to draw a line between that incitement and the violence that followed. It would not be difficult to draw a similar line from the Herald-Sun, Daily Tele and Courier Mail covers – not to mention Abbott's absurdly violent "heads will roll" rhetoric – to the threats against the ABC. But until someone actually follows through, no one will be held to account. The events of last week show we're skirting dangerously close to this being a reality. Why is the outrage so disproportionate? Why is everyone losing their shit over the ABC airing the views of someone who said something that could possibly be interpreted as a pro-terrorism sentiment, but not bothered by newspapers whose editorials and front pages seemed specifically geared to incite the public to terror? The answer isn't just that it's difficult for the 21st century media to understand a narrative in which terrorism is perpetrated by non-Muslims, or even that it plays into the simmering belief that the ABC is a hotbed of fringe, anti-Australian views: the fundamental bedrock of this outrage is the fact that the ABC is taxpayer funded. If it's taxpayer-funded, it needs to be held to a higher standard. And never mind that it is, this gives us permission to pursue them with pitchforks and ignore what the rest of the media is doing. So consider this: News Corp has been making billions in Australia virtually tax-free, and the Australian Tax Office actually paid nearly $900 million to News Corp. Along with Google, Apple, and Microsoft, News Corp was earlier this year called before a Senate committee as part of an investigation into corporate tax avoidance. Both the Coalition and Labor go out of their way to court Rupert Murdoch and his influential media empire because they know the ABC is bound by impartiality in all circumstances. It's News Corp that make or break an election (or try to), and ultimately have a bigger influence on the on the public than anyone else. When you examine just how much the taxpayer keeps these newspapers afloat, it's impossible to claim that an adlibbed moment in Q&A deserves more scrutiny than front pages not just comparing the ABC to violent jihadists, but saying in no uncertain terms that they are literally those people. News Corp is able to get away with leaning so far to the right that their text is now printed exclusively in the right-hand margins, because everyone's in on the game. Sales aren't hurt when the anyone expresses outrage at a pre-election "Australia Needs Tony" or "Kick This Mob Out". When we engage in the national pastime of celebrating every time the NT News comes out with a new crocodile-themed punny headline, we're admitting that we don't actually need the news to be held to any standard at all. Everyone's playing by different rules. It was only a year ago that Attorney-General George Brandis was defending people's right to be bigots under the auspices of free speech, that Tony Abbott was fighting to repeal 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, a decision so closely tied to the court case against News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt that it was dubbed the Bolt Law. Conservatives have been awfully quiet about the repeal of 18C as they pass laws determining that people can be ejected from the country by a federal minister if they say something untoward. If you're confused as to what the government wants you to say and what it will deport you for saying, you're not alone. Last week I said that everybody was pretending to be outraged by the ABC. This week I'm wondering why the government isn't outraged by News Corp. Days after Joe Hockey successfully sued Fairfax, the government is proving that it has an inconsistent, muddled, incomprehensible approach towards what the media can and can't do. As it steers us violently into a culture war of its own making, we have to ask: whose side are they on? Follow Lee on Twitter: @leezachariah Like VICE on Facebook for more of this stuff delivered right in your feed: