2GB Spears and Fears – Media Watch

But now to Sydney’s highest-rated breakfast show and a dramatic report that no one else noticed.

BEN FORDHAM: Wait until you see this footage from the Top End. This is filmed from a police car and the two groups throw spears at each other

– X, @BenFordhamLive Nov 13, 2024

This is 2GB’s Ben Fordham, expressing concern over a violent Top End video he posted on X.

In order to avoid re-igniting public tensions, we have been asked not to show this:

BEN FORDHAM: One was hit in the shoulder, one in the leg and one in the chest.

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 13, 2024

The audio paints a picture of the police right in the thick of things:

NT POLICE: **** Window up. Window up.

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 13, 2024

It was the spear that hit the police car.

The video was filmed on Groote Eylandt and filmed from a nearby police car, with ongoing comments from the officers in the car:

NT POLICE: Oh, in the leg.

NT POLICE: **** don’t come near us….

NT POLICE: Oh, shoulder…

NT POLICE: We gotta go help this guy, ****…

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 13, 2024

Fordham called it a terrible incident and promised listeners:

BEN FORDHAM: Spears fly in the Northern Territory. There are some wild shots. We’ll talk to our friend Darren Clarke.

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 13, 2024

And who is he?

Darren Clarke is a local resident of Alice Springs who has long fought against the crime wave in his city.

The day before, he had posted a video of the javelin to his ‘Action for Alice’ account on X, and was eager to tell Fordham about it:

DARREN CLARKE: It’s crazy to see footage of people in this day and age actually being speared…

Look, the police, the police just wouldn’t get out of that car, Ben, because it’s too dangerous.

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 13, 2024

Clark then took aim at North Carolina police for keeping the public in the dark:

DARREN CLARKE: We haven’t heard anything about it. The police media did not report on this. Nothing, my friend. Um, so it’s just covered and pushed aside.

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 13, 2024

Yes, a cover. Scandalous.

But that soon turns out not to be true, because there are at least four police media releases about the shooting, all of which are available online — and all of which date back to November 2015.

After creating the amazing Fordham piece nine years ago, he told his listeners:

BEN FORDHAM: I’m going to sound very naive, Darren, but I had no idea that people were still fighting with spears in the Top End in 2024.

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 13, 2024

I don’t know. That would be right, Ben.

Even though two men were killed during the riots, as evidenced by the headlines of 2015.

Meanwhile, NT Police were forced to issue a new press statement last week, claiming the footage was old and contained:

“… images and references to Aboriginal people who have died and this may upset some viewers, especially family members.”

– National Indigenous Times, 13 November 2024

Failed to turn on 2GB warning.

So why did Fordham and company assume all this happened?

Simply because no one checked and Fordham’s “partner” Darren Clark apparently took the video from an anonymous TikTok account and appeared at the 2GB breakfast the next day to say:

DARREN CLARKE: Dude, you can’t make this up and we’re in 2024 and we’ve got all this going on.

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 13, 2024

So you can’t make it up.

We asked Nine on Friday why Fordham had not carried out any checks and why the story was still on the 2GB website, given that police had warned it two days earlier that it was out of date.

Ben Fordham responded this morning, telling listeners:

BEN FORDHAM: …we accept the correction and apologize for the error…

We first became aware of this on Friday afternoon when we received a media request, we immediately removed the article from the website and the social media post related to the video, and I take full responsibility for the error.

– Ben Fordham Live 2GB November 18, 2024

Good for him. Too bad they didn’t check before hitting the moral panic button.