“How did this result happen and how did the debate get so toxic?” asks nation’s media that kept uncritically repeating Dutton’s racist lies

The nation’s media have asked how Australia could become so strongly in favour of rejecting the voice to parliament and how the entire debate managed to delve into such toxicity. However they have all agreed that it definitely wasn’t partly their doing for parroting racist lies every day.

“Sure we did publish a lot of racist lies,” said one news editor, “but only in the headlines and the articles. I mean it’s not like we could just ignore the likes of Dutton or Pauline, and we definitely couldn’t have made the articles about how they were being racist liars. That wouldn’t have been as much fun for stirring up political gossip.”

“Not to mention that yesterday we put out one fact-check article about all the claims we pushed in our headlines all year. So we did our job to maintain balance.”

“I’ve noticed that Grassroots Yes campaigners and Sovereign No campaigners didn’t get much platforming by the media,” said one ABC panellist who has been hosting the news all year where they could have been platformed, “it’s a shame too, because they’re messaging wouldn’t have been so useful to a civil debate.”