We're calling it a sign of the times. An indication that we are nearing peak Trump post-truth. According to sources, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is about to revive its short-lived Fact Check Unit, which after just three years was cruelly canned in 2016 by a Commonwealth funding cut.
Its former chief Russell Skelton will again take the reins when it re-launches in March, but the program this time will be a joint venture with Melbourne's RMIT University, based in its new media precinct.
Given "fake news" and "alternative facts" are the latest political fashion, Aunty is clearly prepared to cop a fried egg facial and muck in. Bravo, we say. One person relieved will be The Age's entertainment reporter Michael Lallo, who published a relatively self-explanatory opinion piece, entitled "Axing the ABC's Fact Check unit is a disgrace", after he was scooped on the move.
To be fair, it was hardly a classic of the Lallo genre – nothing compared to his treatise last week railing against "trickle-down economics" (presumably the subject of the showbiz scribe's PhD thesis at the Wayne Swan University of Central Nowhere) and the "millions of viewers" (yes, all 774,000 of them) who watched last Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes. Apparently, this horde of eyeballs has had "their livelihoods ravaged by the corporate sector". Presumably he means by being employed by them? Or perhaps just having the vast amount of their social services provided by virtue of their employers' company tax inputs (yes, that's trickle-down economics)?
Lallo, of course, has a livelihood only thanks to the frivolous content being pumped into our living rooms by avaricious Hollywood corporations like Disney and Time Warner. Perhaps he can hand it all back in loaves and fishes? Russell Skelton can count the haul for him. After that, he should certainly be taking the lead on the TV Guide's federal Budget analysis.
