ABC’s Media Watch host Paul Barry has labeled his employer “pathetic” for the lack of coverage of one of last week’s biggest news stories – Lidia Thorpe’s strip club stoush.
The burning native senator was filmed shouting swear words at a group of men outside Maxine’s Gentleman’s Club in Melbourne, telling one of them, “You have a small penis.”
Footage from the extraordinary spray at 3am on Sunday 16 April showed Ms Thorpe pointing her finger at the men in a heated argument, telling one of them, ‘you, you’re marked’.
But the ABC barely covered it, despite the story being broadcast wall-to-wall in virtually every other media outlet in Australia.
Barry said several other news organisations, including Daily Mail Australia, had already published the ABC’s very limited coverage of Ms Thorpe’s latest controversy.
ABC’s Media Watch host Paul Barry has labeled his employer “pathetic” for the lack of coverage of one of last week’s biggest news stories – Lidia Thorpe’s strip club stoush (pictured)
And were the critics right? Did the ABC stay mama? Answer, yes,’ said Barry. Other than a few brief mentions, there was nothing in an ABC news bulletin or online.
“And that’s pathetic, since it’s the job of the ABC to hold our elected representatives accountable.”
It took the ABC three days to treat the story as news worth mentioning, and that was only after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the incident “clearly unacceptable.”
“But it was a real news story and the ABC should have covered it from the start,” said Barry.
On Sydney’s 2GB radio station, Ben Fordham also weighed in to criticize the ABC’s “bland” coverage of the story.
He said Mrs Thorpe was ‘generally behaving like a madman…
“You have a politician acting like a thug outside a strip joint at three in the morning, how can that not be a news story,” Fordham asked.
Neil Mitchell, on radio 3AW, also joined in, saying “if Lidia Thorpe were an AFL footballer even Collingwood would have dumped her by now”.
Paul Barry (pictured) said several other news organisations, including Daily Mail Australia, had already published about the ABC’s very limited coverage of Ms Thorpe’s latest brush with controversy
Sky News Australia presenter Chris Kenny said ABC’s lack of coverage of the story was ‘astonishing’.
“Many Australians won’t even know… if you get your news from the ABC, the national taxpayer-funded broadcaster that is supposed to be comprehensive and unbiased,” he said.
“If you trusted them you wouldn’t know about this episode, they just didn’t cover it, not on the TV news, not on their radio news, not online, they censored it from the public domain.”
“They told the story when she claimed to be the victim, but they didn’t report her latest grossly offensive display that earned her a lifetime ban from the strip club.”
In an official letter, Maxine’s Gentlemen’s Club informed Ms. Thorpe that she was “no longer welcome” and warned the senator not to “embarrass any further.”
Ms Thorpe claimed she had previously been provoked and harassed at the club for her views on Indigenous issues.
Footage of the incident, filmed by a witness and first published by 7News, showed a heated argument outside the club.
One of the men called her a “racist dog” to which she replied “f*** you,” before a friend stopped her.
At one point, Senator Lidia Thorpe (pictured) approached one of the men and said, “You’ve been marked”
She told the men, “All I want to say to the black brothers out there and to everyone we fight…
“Any black man standing by that f***ing white little c*** like that – you (sic) can all get fucked too!”
One of the men asked, “How the hell does someone get into parliament like you?”
Mrs. Thorpe hit back and said, “We’ve been oppressed all our lives in this country and you’re letting this dog talk…”
