Misinformation

He's going to go over there with his knee pads on and he's going to beat his chest about how great he is and how much the Australian people want this legislation and that we all love him.

The proposed legislation comes after Labor abandoned its Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, of course, in 2024, following criticism over its impact on free speech.

So what are we dealing with here? We're dealing with the same exact thing.

They just repackaged it.

... easily overcome.

It was ridiculous to treat satire as, as misinformative.

Yeah.

But the hateful conduct thing was the thing that really threatened to get us wiped off the internet and destroy our business.

This week, the great Aidan Morrison, who was on this set just last week talking about energy policy, alerted me to this.

The Climate Change Authority last month published this document entitled Misinformation, a Climate Policy Risk.

which said that in the context of a climate and energy debate, you could be peddling misinformation if you talk about cost of living, energy policy, jobs, regional impacts, biodiversity, or whether Australian actions matters in the great scheme of things.

Now, this is absolutely Orwellian, but again, it goes with everything else I've been showing you.

Somebody's got good sources.

But let's start with the scope of this, because the scope is where there's a lot of panic and a lot of Misinformation online.

So this fee applies to cap subject petitions.

That means petitions filed under the regular 65,000 cap and petitions filed under the 20,000.

Everything.

In fairness, and we'll come back to this in Misinformation Alert, that wasn't an ins- as insane as it sounds.

They'd actually noticed that a wound quietly draining thick pus often did better than the ones that turned black and, and were spreading.

Yeah.

So he turned down the abbey to keep a promise.

That tells you everything about the man that medals don't.

Which brings us to our recurring segment, Misinformation Alert, because the heroic version of every legend is always a little bit wrong, and precision is the whole brand here.

Ben, eight myths, this time speed round.

It wasn't new when FAIR produced a report about it in 2008.

We'll hear today a conversation we had around that report, which we called "Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry, and Misinformation." We'll hear a conversation with former FAIR staffers Isabel MacDonald and Steve Rendall.

That's coming up, and we're getting right to it.

You're listening to Counterspin, brought to you each week by the media watch group FAIR.

The book didn't win, but its serious recognition in high literary circles highlighted the mainstreaming of Islamophobia.

FAIR produced a report looking at the media.

We called it Smear Casting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry, and Misinformation.

Counterspin talked with FAIR's then communications director, Isabel MacDonald, and our senior analyst, Steve Rendall, about that report.