AUSTRALIA, September 5, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — An Australian television station has come under fire for trying to pass off a fake anti-”gay marriage” poster as a real news story.
This occurred as Australia’s national mail-in ballot concerning the legalization of same-sex marriage is about to begin.
According to multiple reports, Australia’s Channel 10 came across a photo tweet of an alleged anti-LGBT poster. But when they sent journalists out to locate the offending poster and to film it, it was nowhere to be found.
The tweeted tip
Pro-same-sex marriage advocate Dan Leach-McGill had tweeted an image of a poster with the caption, “Spotted in Melbourne – Heffernan Lane.”
Spotted in Melbourne – Heffernan Lane. How is this for a unity moment? @TurnbullMalcolm @cityofmelbourne @AdamBandt @VicGovAu @abcnews pic.twitter.com/syL7vqRJLK
— Dan Leach-McGill (@DanLMcG) August 19, 2017
According to the HeraldSun.com.au, when the photo tweet first appeared, “Activists and the media were ecstatic. Finally they could prove their opponents were just as nasty.”
The tweet went viral and Australian television stations “ABC, Fairfax, Junkee … and FM radio stations all went crazy,” the HeraldSun.com.au report continued. Huffington Post jumped on the bandwagon as well. “Media outlets like Channel 9 and news.com.au agreed there were more such posters around Melbourne. As the Australian Women’s Weekly put it: ‘Melbourne streets plastered with disgustingly homophobic posters ahead of plebiscite.’”
“But Channel 10 had a problem: it could not find even one … That should have been a big warning, but the station still claimed there were posters all around the city, and to demonstrate, it showed a picture of a bus stop with a huge advertising billboard featuring the ‘Stop the Fags’ poster.
Manufacturing news when there is none
When no poster could be found, Channel 10 took the tweeted image and photoshopped it onto a stock ‘Getty’ photo of a bus stop somewhere in Europe to make it appear this was a big, glossy, deep-pocketed campaign against “gay marriage.”
Later, instigating tweeter Leach-McGill admitted that a friend had sent him the photo and he made up the caption about the poster being spotted on Heffernan Lane in Melbourne.
There never was an offensive anti-LGBT poster campaign in Melbourne. The story was manufactured out of false reports and photoshopped images.
Pro-‘gay marriage’ forces were the bullies
“But the frenzied untruths that followed — with photographic evidence even faked by Channel 10 — only confirm the gay-marriage lobby and their media mates are the real hatemongers,” observed HeraldSun.com.au. “In fact, the only thing that could lose them the postal vote is their bullying — the lies, abuse, threats, violence and misuse of power that’s marked their ‘yes’ campaign … If we let them win, what next will they do to us?”
