LADY MADONNA, TRUTH DIES AT HER FEET
In 2008, during that year’s US election campaign, Fairfax ran a piece claiming that Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin had called Barack Obama “sambo”.
The source was an anonymous waitress telling a blogger using a fake name about something the waitress claims was said at an unnamed restaurant on an unspecified date in a city the blogger didn’t identify.
That was good enough for reporter Anne Davies, whose slur ran on the front pages of Fairfax’s Age and Sydney Morning Herald. It’s still online.
In 2016, Fairfax is at it again. This week, as Michael Smith reports, a stupid Fairfax staffer grabbed a line from a satirical Twitter account and ran it as fact:
I am at a Trump rally in Manhattan, and thousands are chanting “We hate Muslims, we hate Blacks, we want our great country back”. Disgusting.
Not only was there no chant, there was no rally. Fairfax eventually deleted news stories mentioning the chant-that-wasn’t – which it obviously believed happened in the notorious Klan hotbed of Manhattan – but this Fairfax opinion piece by Madonna King remains:
Hello, my name is Madonna King, and I was wrong.
She could begin every column with that.
I didn't believe, for one moment, that a narcissist as ignorant and vile as Donald Trump would be supported so strongly, across so many different voting groups.
I didn't think that so many American women, with the knowledge of his treatment of their sisters, would see it appropriate to make him commander-in-chief …
Nor did I countenance that in Manhattan, thousands would chant in support of Trump, by reportedly screaming "we hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want our great country back".
She’s Madonna King, and she’s wrong. It might be fun to hit the Press Council with a few complaints.