Flying High Dubai. MWM responds to ABC Media Watch

ABC Media Watch has accused this reporter of “perpetuating unsubstantiated conspiracy theories” online. We say the failure of journalism by ABC and other legacy media makes them culpable in the Gaza genocide. Michael West.

On Friday, Mario Christodoulou executive producer of ABC Media Watch quoted two posts we had made on X regarding last Wednesday’s flydubai ‘terror hijacking’ incident and asked two questions:

Do you believe this incident was an Israeli Government “false flag” event? If so, on what basis? If not, how do you explain your posts above?

Perpetuating unsubstantiated conspiracy theories like this, especially from an established journalist such as yourself, can help spread misinformation. Your post likely contributed to this. What is your response?

(Full email and X posts below.) 

Our response

Hi Mario,

Excellent questions. You are barking up the wrong tree, however. My take on both flydubai and RAF Fairford is clearly – and the word was used in one of the tweets – “probably” false flags, or at the least ‘beat-ups’ concocted for political advantage.

This view is born out by evidence of multiple false flag attacks in Australia, as belatedly admitted by police, and around the world.

The bigger story, the real public interest in media coverage of these incidents, is how they are leveraged by our politicians and a compliant mainstream media. The minute they occur, whether actual false flags or just suspicious incidents, they are branded as “terror plots”, “Islamist attacks … jihadis” etc.

This media branding of these events, *before* the circumstances are known and the evidence is established, has given licence to political actions such as the ramping up of hate speech laws in Australia and justification for passing the private data of Australian citizens to foreign parties as per the arrangements with Cellebrite and Palantir.

Let’s say flydubai is not a false flag in a technical sense; that is, a ploy cooked up by the Netanyahu regime in Israel just a few weeks before the election. Let’s just say it was actually a fight between the pilots and a happy ending. The fact that the initial coverage branded the event as a terrorist hijacking demonstrates that the incident was used for political gain.

The Fairford incident was also branded as a terrorist plot in its initial coverage, egged on by Trump and Rubio and the usual people on social media. Why did they not wait until it became evident that it was 5 lads pilfering diesel before reporting it as terror?

Here in ‘evidence-land’ we try to ignore the noise and report the truth. And the truth is that the mainstream media has blood on its hands, a lot of blood. Its failure to address the exaggerated claims of the October 7 Hamas attacks – 40 babies beheaded, mass gang rapes, babies in ovens, babies on clotheslines – has given licence to genocide, to the worst human atrocities of this century.

Lies have dragged us into war against Iran which is hurting every citizen via higher petrol and food prices.

The effect on humanity has been drastic, and much of that can be foisted home to a failure by a craven media to report responsibly. The media is culpable and the rise of new media such as MWM is due to plunging public confidence in the institutions of power such as the ABC and traditional corporate media.

We haven’t grown from scratch to millions in audience a month by making stuff up.

To be fair, the ABC has done better than corporate media but it is still culpable. Where is the Four Corners on the hasbara movement, the litany of false flag attacks in Australia such as the Dural caravan hoax and the other 12 or so ‘terror’ acts which turned out to be no-hopers with no political ideology apparently paid for by foreign interests? 

This is the real story, the culpability of media in genocide, not some guy on X raising credible doubts about the official narrative because the evidence for terror claims does not stack up and the historical evidence of false flags is so compelling it should not be ignored.

As we approach the three-year anniversary of October 7, it would be apposite for traditional media to contemplate its own epic failures, its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. You could start by analysing the lies which have already been debunked. 

Here are some questions: how many Israelis were slaughtered by IDF Apache gunships on October 7? Why did Netanyahu ignore warnings of the Hamas attacks from Egyptian and Qatari leaders? What is the evidence for mass rapes and babies beheaded? How and why were the Nova Festival arrangements changed prior to the attacks? Why has there been no official inquiry by Israeli authorities?

And what role did the mainstream media play to give licence to genocide? 

Cui bono?

Media Watch email

Thanks for your time on the phone just now. Here’s what I sent via your website portal. 

We’re writing an item examining the FlyDubai incident, which has been widely reported this week, where passengers managed to seize control of a 737 en route to Tel Aviv from Dubai. As part of that story, we are examining the conspiracy theories that have cropped up online, and we noticed you have been posting about this being a “false flag” operation.

There was this repost in particular: 

But also this:

We may mention this in the segment. To my knowledge, there is no evidence this was an Israeli “false flag”, and theories like this are unsubstantiated.

Questions below:

• Do you believe this incident was an Israeli Government “false flag” event? If so, on what basis? If not, how do you explain your posts above?
• Perpetuating unsubstantiated conspiracy theories like this, especially from an established journalist such as yourself, can help spread misinformation. Your post likely contributed to this. What is your response?

Deadline is 5pm today.  Let me know if you are having trouble reaching this.

 “Cheap 20 second opinions”

When the show aired last night, host Linton Besser didn’t hold back on the accusations of peddling conspiracy theories and “cheap 20 second opinions”.

We concede that in the absence of ABC’s $1.23B budget – even a dedicated team of researchers and others working for an entire week to produce 15 minutes of television for just 42 weeks of the year – that we may be cheap, at least in budget terms, by necessity.

Yet with our humble budget and the goodwill of the community we have managed to break a lot more stories than the ABC in relation to the crime of the century. Where is the ABC’s coverage of Australian charities funnelling money to the IDF and illegal West Bank settlements?

Nowhere, despite it being raised in Parliament.

Where is the coverage of Australians serving with the IDF, a story we broke with FOIs? Where is the coverage of the money trail of public grants to the Israel lobby?

We even beat this billion-dollar corporation on the story of Australian UN commissioner, Chris Sidoti, releasing an independent report for the UN on the systematic slaughter of Palestinian children by the IDF. We were literally first media in the world.

The ABC trundled along timidly a day late with its billion-dollar budget and, typically, buried the story anyway. This – an investigation about a rogue state engaged in genocide which Australia furnishes with weapons parts, to be found by the highest body in the world, to be deliberately murdering children.

Shamelessly buried.

And here they are with the gall, to sermonise about an independent journalist saying on social media that flydubai was “probably” a false flag or at least had been leveraged for political advantage. This, after three years of spinelessly tip-toeing around every single story which mentions the word Israel.

As Media Watch host, my former SMH colleague, and a first-rate journalist, Linton Besser did note in his piece, Benjamin Netanyahu was very quick out of the blocks when the story broke to get on the phone to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News to kick off his media campaign.

With zero evidence Israel’s PM pointed the bone at Iran. Was Iran directly behind the plot, asked career misinformation-spreader Sean Hannity? “Too early to say, said Netanyahu. Job done, as with the RAF Fairford “terror plot”, Iran named. The rest of the corporate media followed.

This is the way it works and ABC is a part of it. “Israel says”. Frothing forth with every false claim uttered by a war lobby whose lies are established and far too prolific to list here. They are daily.

Is flydubai a false flag?

Is the flydubai incident a false flag? It’s too early to tell but the narrative has changed a lot, the evidence suggests the official story is not credible, even CNN had a pilot demonstrate why it did not stack up. Many questions remain.

“This is Hollywood on steroids… ordinary civilians became superheroes,” Netanyahu told Fox News. “If you’re next hijacked, make sure an Israeli is sitting next to you.”

Is not the story – the story for Media Watch – why are so many sceptical about Israel’s claims? The answer is clear: they lie and twist facts relentlessly. The suspicion is warranted. The propaganda is documented. Why does ABC not cover that, bigger, story?

Our personal favourite was the still glass of water after the 14,300 ft nosedive (no, not the heroic plumber who watched aviation rescue shows or the pilot, Hamam al Hamami, whose name has been translated by scallywags as Bathroom King of Bathrooms.

Why does the ABC continue to trot out the Israel lobby’s propaganda when it has been proven time and time again to be false? The mainstream media has literally, deliberately missed the story of the century.

They avoid the G-word like the plague.

And this cowardice, this complicity by our institutions of power, has degraded all humanity. Our leaders and our institutions, in not standing up to genocide, in perpetuating lies, even rewarding them, have let us all down.

At least we said “probably” a false flag. They can’t even bring themselves – with all their sanctimonious tut-tutting about journalistic integrity to say “probably a genocide”, let alone admit they’ve been captured to the point of even sacking at least one journalist for raising the question.

Just look at the pictures. Gaza razed by US bombs, a population starved and tortured, homeless, 70,000 to 700,000 dead, concentration camps, the largest population of child amputees in history.

You allowed this to happen.

Israel’s ‘Facts on the Ground’ – razing Gaza and South Lebanon