ABC chair Kim Williams, one of Australia’s top media executives and once Rupert Murdoch’s right hand man, has come under attack by X owner Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.
Elon Musk has hit back at a Kim Williams press club appearance by trying to label the ABC as Russia’s infamous communist state media mouthpiece, Pravda.
Conflating public service broadcasting with a state broadcaster, Musk said that “From the head of Australian-funded Government media, their Pravda”.
Williams said that people like Joe Rogan, through his popular podcast, prey on fear, anxiety, uncertainty and people’s vulnerabilities, and it represented “entrepreneurs fantasy outcomes and conspiracy outcomes as being a normal part of social narrative”.
Williams personally finds it “deeply repulsive” that Rogan has such power in the US and his words can be treated like “public entertainment” when it’s treating the “public as plunder for purposes that are quite malevolent”.
Rogan responded with a tweet saying “LOL WUT”; Musk went a step further by comparing the ABC to Pravda.
Pravda is the official newspaper of the communist party of the Soviet Union. It was used as a propaganda arm for the ruling party in the the Soviet Union before it got broken up and now serves as a news source in Russia.
The ABC is an independent publicly funded news organisation that is funded by taxpayers and has no political influence, just like the BBC in the UK.
The culture wars under Trump 2.0 are on, and Australia is not immune.
