We are now being told that it was Donald Trump’s fault that the mainstream media missed the story that the Wuhan virus probably escaped from a military-controlled laboratory. They even claimed that anyone who suggested this was plausible, as I did over a year ago, needed medical attention. As they do anyone who concludes, as I do, that the presidential election was rigged through flagrant breaches both of scrutineering and of the Constitution.

Like the compromised Joe Biden, the media only admitted the truth when it became impossible to deny it.

So why did they cover for Beijing?

According to the Australian’s Greg Sheridan, this was because Trump told ‘so many outrageous lies’. He neither lists these nor refers to the media’s deluge of lies about Trump, from Russian complicity to the latest revelation that he did not clear demonstratorsa from Lafayette Square to visit St John’s Church last June.

Reports denigrating Trump too often lack the application of the most elementary rules of ethical journalism.

What happened to the first duty of the press declared by the Times in 1851 to be  ‘to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time’?

This breach of standards with respect to Trump was not a one-off, as one-offs don’t last over five years.

And why, when a damaging story is shown to be seriously wrong, is there so often no apology or explanation, apart from the ludicrous ‘Trump made me do it’?  There’s an exception when lawyers advise an apology, but because US activist judges have licensed the media to libel any public figure with impunity, this rarely happens in America. Members of the local media then repeat this, thinking it will be unlikely anyone will sue.

Having been asked to speak on the life and times of the late Prince Philip, I have been reflecting on one of our media’s great outrages, his Australian knighthood. As Tony Abbott wrote during the world-wide mourning, those who scoffed at his humour or scorned the Crown he served, have now to face the awkward reality that he was almost certainly a better man than most of them.

The fact is that the knighthood was no more than a gracious acknowledgement of his lifetime of service, one which the Prince had chosen to be displayed at his funeral.

Why then did it  become a cause célèbre? It had absolutely nothing to do with any genuine reservation about the knighthood. Similar awards in over fifty countries, from monarchies to  republics, were reported in each country by their media without even the blink of an eyelid.

Alone in the world, this gracious acknowledgement, costing next to nothing, was treated as a most serious misfeasance in public office.

Why?

It was because of a conspiracy of mainly treacherous ministers, all supposedly loyal to Tony Abbott, who were plotting secretly to replace him with Malcolm Turnbull. They were said to communicate like spies or criminals through a special app which destroys all communications when seen.

This was not the media’s greatest hour. Led by those in collusion with the plotters and publishing their propaganda disguised as news, the media almost universally condemned the award with confected outrage. They were like a rabid pack seeking to inflame the public.

This was not news. There were no facts.  There were instead at least ten significant untruths listed here at the time . All of this was, of course, ignored when, on his passing, the world recognised his extraordinary contributions. And, of course, no one apologised.

This is not an uncommon phenomenon. The mainstream media, or a significant part thereof, will frequently form behind an agenda and then the news is made to fit, even news by public broadcasters. Indeed, one could now say, especially by public broadcasters. Take, for example, the several campaigns against white heterosexual men, for example Cardinal Pell, Christian Porter and our soldiers who served the nation in Afghanistan.

Apart from destroying individuals, the agenda can involve destroying institutions.

Take the one for a fake republic which the mainstream media almost unanimously and aggressively favoured. This turned out to be an expensive, decade-long campaign to increase political centralisation in what is already the most politically centralised federation in the world.

This was not, of course, a real republic — we already have that in our crowned republic. It was a politicians’ republic, the basis of a winning slogan devised by a superb strategist, Rick Brown, who worked with Australians for Constitutional Monarchy in the referendum. It was both expensive in money and in the amount of time taken from our politicians to deal with serious issues demanding solutions which never came in defence, harvesting water, declining standards in education and the coming unnecessary tripling by the politicians of electricity prices.

The worst thing in recent years has been the way the American mainstream media has sunk into what can only be described as moral depravity. Rather than a free and responsible press it has become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party which is increasingly advancing a neo-Marxist agenda internally, weakness at best in the face of the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran Axis and hostility to loyal allies such as Israel, while presiding over increasing anti-semitism at home.

Not only is the US mainstream media lost, so much else of American life is being taken over by neo-Marxist elements. This is something Australians, including our media, must not follow. If we are patient, there is a very good chance Donald Trump, or a follower, will restore the United States to her true destiny, something he was in the process of doing until Beijing weaponised the escaped Wuhan virus.