The Smollett hoax

UPDATE: The ABC finally reports that Smollett is perhaps not to be believed.
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Earlier this week Quadrant Online ran a little piece listing some — only some — of the scores of race-based hoaxes that have been a fixture of reporting from America since Donald Trump became president. In passing we noted the ABC’s initial enthusiasm for the fanciful tale of black and gay actor Jussie Smollett’s purported rough treatment at the hands of two white, red-hatted thugs. It fitted the narrative of racial injustice under a despised president, so the ABC even had an arts reporter interview the scriptwriter of Empire, in which Smollett appears.

Smollett’s story now looks like the wreck of the Hesperus. He is refusing to speak with detectives. Two friends have admitted he paid them to attack him, even giving them the cash to purchase the rope that noosed his neck.

It will come as no surprise that the ABC neglected to report even once that the improbable story was falling to pieces — and even today, some three weeks after the non-attack, it has declined to inform its audience that they were sold a bill of goods.

Above, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson speaks at length about the American media’s eager promotion of a divisive hoax and why it was so immediately accepted as a locked-in truth.

Shouldn’t somebody be putting the same sort of questions to the ABC? Unlike its American counterparts, the word ‘hoax’ has yet to pass any of the ABC’s richly remunerated, taxpayer-funded lips.