As we recently covered both here & here, ABC News Australia, to their shame, published an article last month that was little more than a mindless parroting of false feminist factoids on Domestic Violence, based on nothing but some outrageous claims from Domestic Violence NSW Director, Tracy Howe.

Here at Men’s Rights Sydney we feel strongly about such things, because this is how feminism’s lies and distortions become “common knowledge” in our society. A feminist makes a claim, the claim is repeated by the media, and before you know it, it’s considered a fact.

Evidence by citation is the term coined by Prof. Murray A. Straus for this. It is also known as the Woozle Effect. This effect can only exist if the media is not doing its job properly. Lazy, incompetent and often ideologically biased journalism is the vector which spreads this particular pathogen, and it is highly damaging to any efforts to achieve gender equality because it blocks the truth from reaching the public awareness.

The only way to combat this phenomenon is to put pressure on the media outlets to do a better job of fact checking, and to crack down on ideologically biased journalists. As we have seen many times over, feminists consider themselves unbeholden to any such standards. We cannot shame them into telling the truth because…frankly, they have no shame! But the media is a different matter. It’s supposed to at least seem accurate & impartial in its reporting, and that is a lever we can use to pressure them into doing their work correctly.

To this end, Men’s Rights Sydney have sent the following email to a host of media outlets (listed below) in the hope that one or more of them will bring the blatant falsehoods present in the ABC News article to the public, and the ABC will be forced to make the necessary corrections and apologies.

However, this is unlikely to happen if we are the only ones doing it. So I urge all of you to do likewise and to spread the word to as many others as possible. It would be great if you could write your own email from scratch but, if you can’t bring yourself to do that, feel free to use the email we are listing here as a template.

Editor’s note 1 – Please don’t just copy & paste it verbatim, that wouldn’t look good.

Editor’s note 2 – Obviously we sent a slightly different version of this email to the ABC themselves. It was substantially identical though.

To Whom it May Concern, We would like to bring to your attention an article published by ABC News on their web site on Tuesday 6 May, 2014 (see link 1 below). This article contained the following falsehood (among others): “Domestic violence is the leading cause of death and injury in women under 45” This is completely incorrect & is an almost complete fabrication. In fact, if we were less charitable, we would be tempted to call it an outright lie. The genesis of this factoid is a single VicHealth Study that found that: “Intimate partner violence is responsible for more ill-health and premature death in Victorian women under the age of 45 than any other of the well-known preventable risk factors, including high blood pressure, obesity and smoking.” Even if you count that one VicHealth study as reliable (and its methodology has been questioned by many & its findings contradicted by later studies), it is still a long way from the claim that IPV is the leading cause of death & disability in women under 45. According to the latest available data from The Australian Institute of Health & Welfare (see link 2 below), the top 5 causes of death & disability for women 15-44 are: 1. Anxiety & Depression 2. Migraine

3. Type 2 diabetes

4. Asthma

5. Schizophrenia. Violence, let alone the even smaller subset of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), doesn’t even make the list. Furthermore since, according to the Bureau of Crime Statistics & Research (See link 3 below), IPV prevalence has actually dropped over the past decade, IPV is likely to be even lower down the list now than it was when these figures were collected in 2003. We feel that unsupported statements like this, that are supplied by ideologically run DV organisations to a far too credulous media, are all too prevalent these days. The media in general seems to have taken on a tendency towards blindly accepting anything that these organisations choose to claim, no matter how wide of the mark they actually are. These falsehoods, we believe, do nothing but contribute to an unwarranted fear of, & a feeling of justified hatred towards, all men which, in turn, manifests itself in society as discrimination. We feel that the ABC should publicly correct this particular falsehood as it is nothing short of extremely damaging propaganda & disinformation. Thus far, however, attempts to get them to do so have failed to elicit any action in this direction. We are hoping that you will bring this matter to the attention of your readers so that the ABC is under greater pressure to come clean & correct their error. We have written an article about this on our web site which goes into a lot more detail. If you would like to read it, it can be found at the following URL: https://mensrightssydney.com/2014/05/18/the-abc-drops-the-ball-then-trips-over-it-breaks-their-leg-in-3-places/ Thank you. Sincerely, Men’s Rights Sydney 1) http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-05/domestic-violence-reaches-epidemic-proportions/5426214

3) 2) http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=6442459747 3) http://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/agdbasev7wr/bocsar/documents/pdf/bb61.pdf

Media Outlets

ABC Media Watch – mediawatch@your.abc.net.au

ABC FactCheck – http://www.abc.net.au/news/factcheck/contact/

Independent Media Council – complaints@independentmediacouncil.com.au

Sydney Morning Herald – readerlink@smh.com.au

The Age – https://www.kampyle.com/feedback_form//ff-feedback-form.php?site_code=8954894&lang=en&form_id=43614##Form only

The Telegraph – news@dailytelegraph.com.au

The Herald Sun – readerlink@smh.com.au

The Advertiser – tiser@adv.newsltd.com.au

Courier Mail – readerhelp@qnp.newsltd.com.au

Thanks,

Men’s Rights Sydney