A case study of the Murdoch method: How lies are used to manipulate the truth. Remember this racist, sexist cartoon from the @australian that derided US Vice-Presidential candidate @KamalaHarris as a "little brown girl"? THREAD

Amid global outrage at this cartoon, Murdoch editor Chris (I'm not a racist) Dore demanded his staff step up to defend his appalling decision to publish it. So who stepped up? None other than Murdoch "journalist" Chris (veteran Liberal Party staffer) Kenny! 2/8

The central premise of Kenny's argument is simply untrue. He says Joe Biden "openly and proudly imposed criteria that his vice-presidential running mate would be a woman of colour" and selected Harris on "publicly stated race and gender criteria". Lies. 3/8

The fact is that Biden never announced racial criteria. He'd committed to nominate a woman, but said nothing about ethnicity. His short-list included candidates with different ethnic backgrounds. Here’s FoxNews earlier this month. 4/8

The next day, I wrote this very polite letter to @australian correcting the record. Surely Kenny would be able to identify where Biden "publicly stated race and gender criteria" for his running mate? Surprise, surprise... they refused to publish my letter. 5/8

So here we have a blatant, demonstrable, no-excuses factual error, underpinning an entire column published in the national newspaper, and they have refused to correct the record. So much for Murdoch's supposed “free and vigorous debate” on racism. 6/8

Unfortunately, I see little point sending this off to the Australian Press Council which is increasingly proving itself totally unwilling to hold News Corp to account for abusing its near-monopoly of print media in this country. #MurdochRoyalCommission 7/8

And, yes, I expect the Murdoch Mafia will retaliate once again for me having the audacity to point this out. It’s what they do, practically every time. Much easier to attack and delegitimise critics— than have the guts to admit they just told the Australian people a giant lie 8/8