Bolt’s Cooked complaint

But now to a travelogue of sorts, tracking Captain Cook on his epic journey across the Pacific:

SAM NEILL: I want to see what Cook saw, go where he was forbidden. And I want to meet the people of the Pacific whose lives, for better or worse, were changed forever.

- The Pacific: In The Wake of Captain Cook, ABC, 1 February, 2021

That is actor Sam Neill, taking ABC viewers on Cook’s nautical travels in six episodes on Monday nights.

And you might expect that champions of western civilisation, like Sky’s Andrew Bolt, would welcome this celebration of the great explorer.
But last week Bolt was savaging the ABC, as he so often does, for showing it:

ANDREW BOLT: … does the ABC have no shame passing off this fantasy as fact to the public? It’s just, it’s just appalling to me.

- The Bolt Report, Sky News, 17 February, 2021

What really got Bolt’s goat was an interview with Bruce Pascoe, whom Bolt has ridiculed for his claims to Aboriginal identity and his views on Indigenous history:

ANDREW BOLT: What made me sit up was another one of Bruce Pascoe’s tall tales, once again passed off by the ABC, which has promoted Pascoe furiously, passed off by the ABC as genuine history …

... when it comes to Aboriginal history, facts are dead at the ABC.

- The Bolt Report, Sky News, 17 February, 2021

For a full 10 minutes Bolt railed against the ABC program, joined by another feverish ABC critic in Rowan Dean:

ANDREW BOLT: Rowan, I mean, I’m just staggered. How does the ABC pass off Pascoe’s nonsense as history?

ROWAN DEAN: … the ABC, as you said, can’t help itself and there’s a kind of sneering kind of undertone to the whole thing that never really lets up.

- The Bolt Report, Sky News, 17 February, 2021

Yes, another sneering, inaccurate, nonsensical ABC program.

Except, there’s one small problem. Because even if you share Bolt and Dean’s views on Pascoe — which most do not — the ABC did not actually produce this program:

SAM NEILL: This is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

ANNOUNCER: The Pacific: In The Wake Of Captain Cook with Sam Neill, new series starts August 27, only on History.

- Trailer, The History Channel, 20 July, 2018

Yes, it was a “A FOXTEL ORIGINAL SERIES” for the History channel, where viewers first watched it back in 2018.

So Foxtel, not the ABC, commissioned the series, and Foxtel, not the ABC, was responsible for the fact-checking process.

The very same Foxtel, majority owned by News Corp, that puts people like Andrew Bolt and Rowan Dean to air on Sky News, with little or no fact-checking to speak of.

And if you look at the opening credits, that was made clear.

As one of the show’s executive producers told us:

ABC TV ... had no input into the editorial oversight of the series.

- Email, David Alrich, Executive Producer, EQ Media Group, 18 February, 2021

So we asked Andrew Bolt if he was aware the series was made by Foxtel, and if he’s ever knowingly laid into the News Corp network in this way, and he told us:

You broadcast it.

I have criticised News Ltd reports many, many times. More times than you have criticised the ABC.

- Email, Andrew Bolt, Sky News host, 22 February, 2021

Not sure that’s true. 

But Bolt also said had he been aware that Foxtel commissioned the program he would most certainly have criticised it at the time. 

And, if you want to judge the merits of the documentary, episode four is on right after this program.

And Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu, by the way, is a massive best seller.