ABC SEEMS TO FEAR THE TRUTH

THE ABC’s new chairman, Ita Buttrose, has admitted the state broadcaster may be biased after all. And on Monday came more proof.

Last week I wrote that the new HBO series on Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear accident, falsely claimed the 1986 reactor explosion killed up to 93,000 people.

I quoted authoritative sources to say the known death toll was in fact fewer than 100. I even interviewed Robert Gale, the US bone marrow expert who had treated 200 of the worst injured, who confirmed 31 people had died in the accident or soon after.

To that, Gale added up to 15 children who later died of thyroid cancer, but he confirmed there had been no good evidence of any other increase in cancers, such as leukaemia.

Now, that infuriated green activists and on Monday’s ABC Media Watch, host Paul Barry attacked: “Bolt’s claim that Chernobyl was not a huge disaster has not gone down well, especially with anti-nuclear campaigners like Australia’s Dr Helen Caldicott, who tweeted angrily: ‘Andrew Bolt clearly knows not the first thing about radiation biology …’

But Barry should have revealed I’d criticised Caldicott for claiming Chernobyl killed a million people. I assume he didn’t want to expose her as an unreliable witness. See, even Barry then had to admit: “The number of direct or known deaths from the Chernobyl accident is indeed less than 100.”

But no ABC audience wants to hear that, so Barry added: “But many more are expected to die from cancer … In 2005, the World Health Organisation … concluded ‘a total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure’.”

“Up to” 4000 people “could” die. What does that mean?

So Barry has no evidence to insist I’m wrong or to then smear me as heartless: “So why on earth does Bolt trivialise such distress?”

Nowhere did I “trivialise distress”. I corrected falsehoods. Only a green-maddened ABC would consider that a sin.