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This podcast has
90 episodes
Explicit
No
Date created
2025/03/05
Latest episode
2026/09/29
Average duration
45 min.
Release period
7 days
Description
Broadcast journalist Nicole Chvastek and Australia's pre-eminent journalism ethics expert Denis Muller seek out the media industry's good, bad and ugly, taking you behind the headlines in their revealing podcast Truth, Lies and Media. New episodes each Wednesday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Podcast episodes
Check latest episodes from Truth, Lies and Media podcast
Ep 76 - The Racism Question
2026/09/29
Why don’t the media hound Hanson about her racist policies? Four Corners did a great expose on One Nation - but no mention in interviews with her supporters about why they are attracted by promises to persecute migrants, Muslims, foreign students and Indigenous Australians.
[from 7:00]
Plus we look at the chilling irony of Donald Trump entertaining President Xi and his entourage of compliant state-controlled Chinese reporters at a lavish White House dinner while simultaneously banning the free press - multiple American media outlets were denied entry.
[from 17:50]
And guess who’s coming to our Deep Dive Saturday Special? Denis Muller previews his chat with the legendary journalist and former Media Watch host Paul Barry.
[from 39:25]
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Ep 75 - The Harassment Industry
2026/09/22
The ABC is strangled by floods of complaints from hard right attack dogs - so we look at new reports that most of those whinges are really mass generated AI bots - you know - ACTUAL FAKE NEWS.
So Denis asked one of the faker complainers if their behaviour was ethical. Still waiting ..
[from 3:25]
Plus Donald Trump is chucking more journalists out of the White House because he doesn’t like their reporting - so they’re suing him.
[from 10:20]
And what does the racist Murdoch press have in common with the trusted news providers at Aunty?
We unpack the dangers of “bothsidesism.”
[from 18:00]
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Ep 74 - Good for Democracy
2026/09/15
Gina Rinehart dealt herself into the One Nation “traitor” attack on Liberal Andrew Hastie.
But why would The Age having published such a revealing expose on their suspect behaviours then run a headline suggesting the spiteful racists at One Nation are “good for democracy?”
Also today .. Denis steps us through what it will take before the media report the Ai threats to human survival at Alert Level 1 - think no Internet, no access to your money, no way of buying food, crippled water and energy infrastructure.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/anthropic-ceo-warns-rogue-ai-swarm-could-take-over-the-entire-internet-within-12-months/news-story/589fd549fe92ee441c179b5823d22674
And we look at the rules around reporting the private lives of politicians as we farewell acclaimed writer and the beloved second wife of Bob Hawke, Blanche D’Alpuget, whose affair with the four time PM was an open secret among journalists.
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Ep 73 - When the Tables Turn
2026/09/08
We look at the brutal fall from grace of one of Donald Trumps most toxic propagandists.
Milo Yiannopoulos, who promoted hate against women and migrants, has been swiftly deported from the United States after the British national failed to renew his visa and was picked up by ICE.
He has tearfully slammed the gratuitous violence meted out by his ICE captors in an interview with podcaster Piers Morgan - describing an ecosystem of dehumanising and menacing illegals that he helped create.
But is anyone buying his road to Damascus moment - he now says he’s ashamed of his support for America’s fascist sex predator-in-chief.
Have you noticed vicious Andrew Tate style misogyny on the rise? We look at alarming new research into the manosphere that has revealed increasing numbers of boys now believe violence is the appropriate response to feminism.
What’s behind it? We check out the Sydney Morning Herald reporter who posed as a 17 year old boy online and revealed how quickly she was deluged with dangerous messaging encouraging hostility to women and aggressive sexist behaviour.
Plus why is the world media silent after Israel’s far right minister Ben-Gvir posted fake video of Palestinian men on a conveyer belt being fed into a torture factory .. shockingly evoking concentration camp imagery.
The White House has said nothing - it’s comms team instead preoccupied with posting shrill condemnation of the satirists at South Park who have won an Emmy for an episode depicting Trump and a tiny talking penis. Seeing is believing.
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Ep 72 - Newsroom Habits of Mind
2026/09/01
What lies hidden after the Nepal horror
The world has never seen news vision quite like the footage that came out of Nepal .. stunning in its horror as violent death in ice and rock thundered through the lives of those poor souls, those villages and valleys.
But what are we not hearing and seeing? China is refusing access to foreign reporters on the Tibet side of the border, airbrushing away the suffering there.
And the media still won’t talk about the global threat which we blithely march towards - climate change.
Also on this week’s show - the racist, sexist, climate denying journo-hating One Nation has just won a seat in WA. Did any media step up to mention those ugly traits in their coverage? Errr .. no.
And sometimes those pithy internet memes nail it. Dolly Parton had only been dead 2 days when Donald Trump posted fake pictures of himself walking arm in arm with her .. prompting one meme wordsmith to observe ..”Even in death he forces himself on women who told him no.”
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Ep 71 - Skewing the Story
2026/08/25
If splashy headlines tell you what’s important then this week they’re telling you damage to a footy team is more important than damage to the alleged sex assault victims.
We take a look at the way the media has downplayed the alleged sexual assault of exotic dancers by Swans football players while saturating us with coverage about the “tragedy” of a premiership club now being distracted from the finals.
Plus .. the White House is enraged at the sudden media interest in Natalie Harp, a young personal assistant who follows Donald Trump everywhere printing out positive news stories for him to see on a portable printer (he can’t use his smartphone?) but also leaving what author Michael Wolff describes as “love letters” in his papers.
And only journo-haters need apply - Pauline Hanson is advertising for a press secretary promising you’ll “have fun and make history” while one assumes you terrorise the ABC, demonise migrants and fly around in Gina’s $2m plane while screeching loudly that you are the voice of the battler.
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Ep 70 - Melons and Lemons
2026/08/18
Political Reporting As Benny Hill Skit
In a world of genocide and white supremacists and climate emergency we ask why the Canberra Press Gallery thinks confecting a snickering moral outrage over Anthony Albanese saying “melons” is the story of the week.
Plus we look at the folly of the ABC decision to axe its Indigenous TV Department while moving heaven and earth to placate Gina Rinehart and the Murdoch bullies.
And don’t let the door hit you on the way out .. departing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will have to find some other room full of captives to abuse after venting on journalists at press conferences for 18 months.
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Ep 69 - Information Integrity
2026/08/11
Does the ABC really promote concepts of murder? Is it really a hotbed of bloodthirsty revolutionaries - because of ONE distasteful comedy skit?
We take look at the Murdoch media frothing at the mouth to defend Gina Rinehart who featured in a tasteless ABC comedy skit … the same Murdoch empire that doesn’t give a toss about AJP MP Georgie Purcell who The Age reports is the target of death threats and sexualised abuse EVERY DAY.
Should we be taking moral advice from a propaganda machine that incites hatred against minorities and sexualises women as part of its core business model?
Plus how the world’s powerful media tech owners operate - the ABC has discovered Meta the parent company of Facebook is paying rage bait creators with links to neo Nazis.
And Denis demolishes an Age headline “Uni Academics Say No to $35m Gift” as the hard right “Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation” tries to chequebook its way into the prestigious University of Melbourne.
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Ep 68 - The Nuclear Option
2026/08/04
Pauline Hanson is at it again, banning media she doesn’t like.
This time it’s The Age, banned, along with Guardian Australia and the ABC, from One Nation’s press conference called to announce its candidates for November’s Victorian state election.
But the shocking thing is the spineless way the media are taking this.
Also, News Corporation is in full campaigning mode on behalf of the anti-Labor forces in Victoria’s forthcoming state election.
Its Melbourne tabloid, the Herald Sun, has spent the week excoriating the new Labor premier Ben Carroll, with headlines like “Ben’s shirk from home” and “Stop this trainwreck.
And Zoe Daniel, former ABC journalist turned politician, turns her gaze on the performance of the Canberra press gallery.
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Ep 67 - Day of Reckoning
2026/07/28
Jacinta Allan has finally read the room (and the dire polls) and resigned as Premier.
Her blind spot? Failing to understand the deep anger around the entrenched corruption and taxpayer dollars that are being funnelled to the crooks who have the Big Build infrastructure project in a vice-like grip.
It is mega-scale organised crime brought to the surface by the dogged, forensic reporting of Age journalist Nick McKenzie.
[from 6:50]
We also unpack the ABCs removal of two suspect Four Corners episodes reported by a (now sacked) journalist recruited by the national broadcaster after an earlier life as a Mongols bikie.
[from 19:35]
And Zoe Daniel says the media is to blame for the rise of One Nation as Pauline Hanson plumbs new depths blaming some women for the domestic violence scourge despite data revealing that the perpetrators are overwhelmingly men.
[from 29:15]
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Ep 66 - A Faustian Pact
2026/07/21
We couldn’t go past critiquing Sunday nights Spotlight program which travelled to the UK to watch Pauline Hanson meet the violent racist Tommy Robinson. What could possibly go wrong?
Pauline Hanson has now angrily turned on her fawning (ex) mates at the Seven Network, leaking the bigotry laced email pitch they’d sent to One Nation while trying to talk Hanson into meeting Britains hard right grievance magnets
The meetings happened. The cameras rolled. Muslims were stereotyped and baited and denigrated. Seven got their interview. But Tommy Robinson was accurately portrayed as a violent crook (wasn’t in the masterplan) and Hanson was condemned for lamenting the end of the white supremacist White Australia Policy and saying she “loves” the brutal idea of mass deportations.
And the hour of hate that went to air was not journalism.
[from 6:05]
Plus how do you report an election when the leading contender is a bloke wearing a rubbish bin on his head? In the UK Monty Pythonesque lunacy descends on the Nigel Farage by-election contest.
[from 45:40]
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Ep 65 - Speak and Take the Consequences
2026/07/14
Anti semitism envoy Jillian Segal wants an “oversight committee” to correct “perceived” failings in ABC coverage of Gaza while providing no actual evidence.
Denis Muller calls it out for what it is - “rank censorship.”
[from 04:50]
Plus Peter Dutton once called a female journalist a “mad f+king witch.”
We look at the rise of the online activist group which takes its name from that slur and is efficiently bringing down violently racist and sexist broadcasters and their enablers.
[from 16:40]
And he was once a national media juggernaut - loved and loathed in equal measure but always backing in his principles - including jail stints for exposing crooks and paedophiles.
We farewell the force of nature, the journalist, the author, the broadcaster and the one time Senator Derryn Hinch who has died aged 82.
[from 34:40]
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Deep Dive 12 - Getting Murdoched
2026/07/10
Denis Muller speaks with Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson about their new book “Getting Murdoched”, available now through Hardie Grant Publishing.
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Ep 64 - A Law Unto Themselves
2026/07/07
Mark Zuckerberg's 'Meta' has had the blowtorch applied by the Royal Commission into Anti Semitism. It appears the tech giant's decision to allow more hate speech on Facebook to appease Donald Trump (and make s+loads of cash) has unleashed more, well, ugly hate speech. Who knew.
[from 04:30]
We also check in on poor old Karl Stefanovic, now complaining that TV is too "biege" while lamenting how poorly he's been treated for platforming the violent racist Tommy Robinson - all while podcasting from mate Piers Morgan's super-luxury yacht moored in the sparkling waters off Cannes.
[from 17:10]
And we went along to the book launch by Malcolm Turnbull of "Getting Murdoched - How The Murdoch Media Wields Power and Punishment" - a read that is simultaneously compelling and terrifying.
[from 37:30]
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Ep 63 - BS and Bravery
2026/06/30
We’re watching textbook cases of great public interest journalism as The Ages Nick McKenzie takes on the Premier over rampant corruption on the “Big Build” while at the same time Karl the Unemployed platforms a violent crook and tries to convince us he did it “for you.”
We also look at the new evidence reported by The Guardian about One Nation “meme factories” supporting claims from Senator Whish Wilson that someone with shiteloads of cash is buying and spreading fake Pauline Hanson posts in an attempt to rig Australian elections.
We unpack why a straight talking former Supreme Court Judge Lex Lasry has blasted the media and MPs for ratcheting up the law and order “performative outrage” ..
And we honour our unique multicultural TV channel SBS as we return to that breathtaking live moment when Awer Mabil an African Australian Socceroo superstar who arrived as a refugee realises his childhood SBS broadcast hero is asking him a question ..and is suddenly beaming but awestruck and lost for words.
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