Mood:  d'oh

Richard Glover on ABC Drive show tonight poses the question - Is the backlash against the UK phone hacking scandal all a bit over the top?

And why should there be an inquiry in Australia into the well worked balance of corporate, political and social relations represented by the big media sector status quo?

His professional colleagues in the sector are also unhappy about an inquiry or greater regulation. They can't see it.

The simple profound answer is the legal norm requiring a prohibition against misleading and deceptive conduct in the conduct of business. The business world has been legally required to follow this rule since at least 1974 under the Trade Practices Act and state statutory equivalents. 

The Big Media are of course big business too. And they must be held to the same standard and account for their rampant dishonesty.

Only today Crikey newsletter has exposed a massive lie by the Sydney Daily Telegraph claiming their coverage was unbiased in relation to the GST in 1998-2000 compared to the carbon tax announced in 2011. That is misleading and deceptive conduct which should be legally actionable. Anyone who follows politics in NSW already well knew the SDT was a slut to the Coalition party, but it shows how brazen the dishonesty is that the SDT thought they could editorialise this lie recently and get away with it.

Or that big boss Hartigan thought he could run the line in a defence on 7.30 show a week ago. 

Another example of dishonest dealing was Media Watch last Monday night exposing the corruption of a senior journalist's byline by adding material into his story that he didn't write. In that case Steve Lewis article altered by someone in the Sydney Daily Telegraph (again).

Then there is Fairfax every week running an apparently learned educational institution that sounds publicly funded and objective. Namely the "Sydney Institute" which in reality is a covertly funded big corporation propaganda machine that refuses to reveal it's funding sources. This is unacceptable in a decent and honest industry sector. 

Lastly but not least there are nasty biased characters like Alan Jones who poses as a commentator but is no more than a boorish Coalition party stooge. Why anyone would want to listen to a Liberal Party meeting on a public radio programme escapes this writer, but the point is that Jones is an overt propagandist for one political party. He should be so described to avoid misleading and deceiving any poor unfortunate who happens to be sucked into the vortex of his poisonous bile.

All this is obvious to those outside the big media sector - the deep culture of flouting the basic prohibition against misleading and deceptive conduct in the course of business is why the sector needs an inquiry. But more than this - it needs some high profile prosecutions under some new and stronger laws.

The second glaring basis for an inquiry is the common element between the UK phone hacking scandal and the operation of News Ltd tabloids in Australia. Namely the protection racket aspect of emotional violence absent any public interest, that demands any public or private figure pander to the News Corp self interest  in terms of power mongering, financial opportunity and influence peddling.

Quite a few of these bunch of grubby liars and mediocre thinkers have arrogated to themselves the role of social bully boys and girls. There is a base motive of bad faith behind so many stories for self aggrandisement and mindless aggression. It's as if all that alcohol has turned the journos into bitter and twisted caricatures as the drug cooks their brain cells and their personality sinks deeper into chronic depression taking their audience down with them into mindless conflicts and sensation. How bored and boorish they must be.

This protection racket is great sport and a fat pay cheque for those on the inside and predictably with such great power comes great corruption. Journalists are forever leveraging their profile for self interest and many seem to have lost any sense of a vocation to inform and provide 'the closest version of the truth" as possible. 

Posted by editor at 11:03 PM NZT

Updated: Thursday, 21 July 2011 11:04 PM NZT

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Mood:  down

A working class guy over 50, qualified mechanic for 30 years, but not very literate and not very keyboard able, has mindlessly forwarded this email to the writer last Friday 15 July 2011. A colleague has indicated it should be reported to the Federal Police - we do agree. It is a misogynist fraud from the extreme right echoing the call to armed political violence made to shadow minister Joe Hockey last week.

Coalition voters with intelligent and talented wives, daughters, sisters, mothers should think very carefully about who is barracking for Tony Abbott with this sexual violence smear on a female prime minister. What does it say about their quality of economic and environmental thinking, let alone national defence, the last Iraq war etc etc.

And especially the cohesion and stability of Australia if and when GFC mark II arrives, which seems likely in the next 1, 2 or 3 years.

Really there is no decision. The Sydney Daily Telegraph are the local arm of what we are seeing in the UK with closure of News of the World. The implication of all this is that a vote for Abbott will close down Australia in a most unexpected and disastrous way.

Just go and see Harry Potter with your kids and ask yourself if Murdoch is the precedent for Voldermort, owner of the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Sydney needs a new Sydney Daily Tabloid to replace it.

Posted by editor at 11:27 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 17 July 2011 12:08 PM NZT

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Mood:  quizzical

How terribly sad goes the right wing drum beat over the lonely death of a widow in Surry Hills who lived in Kippax St. Family provides photo of attractive young woman, and the large scale coverage somehow echoes with the current tv promotion for 1920ies glossy crime show to run on Ch9.

How did this poor widow die alone, her body on the floor for years, before discovered in the heart of the stereotypical cold hard cruel metropolis that has by implication lost it's god fearing, church going, charity supporting, neighbourly white picket fence ways, in a right wing fantasy of gentle approbrium?

Trouble is the News Corp headquarter in Holt Street is also at right angles to ..... Kippax St in said Surry Hills. Probably ten thousand staff passed that old lady's house for decades .... and not one of them knew or helped her, or befriended her? Mmm.

Are we really reading about a company that has no soul and is projecting a guilt about it's own ruthless driven ambitious cold heart? I do wonder.

Which makes me wonder about Mr Hartigan on the 7.30 Report last night. He looked so "sincere", and he's worked in news rooms for decades. Just down the road in fact from the dead lady from Kippax St which crosses Holt St - home of News Ltd in Australia ... served by the surrounding brothels and pubs.

Hartigan says their papers went just as hard at the conservative Howard Govt. That's a lie. This writer is an eye witness over the last 14 years of press including 2 as night shift reader analyst for Media Monitors 1999-2001. Howard was on record that the Sydney Daily Telegraph was his favourite newspaper.

Rest in peace Natalie Jean Wood, you are released from this world of trickery and double talk.

Posted by editor at 8:26 AM NZT

Updated: Friday, 15 July 2011 8:42 AM NZT

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Mood:  energetic

How very strange to see the above graphic next to an article by a, if not the most, senior conservative political columnist in Rupert Murdoch's broadsheet The Australian, last Friday. Just as the ethics of the News International newspaper are being debated globally over the NotW shut down ..... today.

A colleague from the United States was aghast at the choice of image.

We noticed the newspaper didn't put the image online. Perhaps because they have had terrible trouble in News Corporation with allegations of racism in the past.

Nor is the "black face" graphic acceptable in Australian civil society after the furore over a misjudged skit on a popular tv show here in 2009. Nor for the same reason can ignorance be an excuse for the choice of graphic by big media here. For that incident read here, suggesting a current willful blind to the sensitivities:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/tv-radio/articles/2009/10/08/1254701089809.html

Even their own tabloid has this online today:

 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/world-covers-hey-hey-its-saturdays-red-face-over-blackface-jackson-jive-skit/story-e6frf96f-1225784091474

World covers Hey Hey It's Saturday's red face over blackface Jackson Jive skit

• Kate Rose
• From: Herald Sun
• October 09, 2009 5:48PM

How very inconsistent with the so called higher ethical standard trumpeted the very next page, in the editorial, which surely must be seen as insincere in light of the graphic the other side of the middle line:

The corruption of journalism

• From: The Australian
• July 08, 2011 12:00AM

BRITISH politicians and journalists have vied to use the strongest possible adjectives to condemn the behaviour of phone-hackers paid by the News of the World.

This newspaper shares their revulsion at practices at the Sunday tabloid owned by News International, a British subsidiary of News Corporation, which publishes The Australian.

Allegations that the mobile phones of a murdered child or the loved ones of terrorist victims were tapped are, quite frankly, sickening. We welcome the Cameron government's move to commission a public inquiry. The claims, which News Corporation's chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, has stated are "deplorable and unacceptable", follow earlier admissions by the paper that the phones of high-profile people, including the actress Sienna Miller, were also tapped.

This time, ordinary people are involved. Some who had their privacy violated were experiencing extreme trauma at the time, which made them highly vulnerable. In one case, the hackers allegedly intervened in the mobile memory bank, removing messages to influence the "story".

It is true that some of News's rivals have leapt upon the allegations in an effort to block its proposed takeover of BSkyB. It is also the case that in the highly competitive tabloid market in London, cheque-book journalism, the use of illegally obtained phone conversations and other corrupt practices are not unusual. None of this reduces the culpability of those who performed or sanctioned activities that, if proven, would be not just unethical and illegal but also lacking in common decency. The desire for a journalistic scoop may go some way to explain, but can never excuse, such rogue acts.

The Times, also published by News International, this week described the case as a watershed moment for British journalism. We agree, and would go further: the reputation of all journalists is damaged by such behaviour if it goes unchallenged. For the most part, Australian journalists have shown greater respect for the division between private and public lives than their European counterparts. Newspapers here have long eschewed corrupt news-gathering techniques, such as paying police for information. But there is no room for complacency. The fourth estate plays a vital role in civic society but as with every other institution in a democracy, its legitimacy requires public trust.

One might think promoting divisive racially charged graphics is unethical news reportage.

For all News Corp's hand ringing sermonising, there doesn't appear to be any real basis for the trust requested by News Corp from the market place in Australia let alone the United Kingdom.

Posted by editor at 1:29 PM NZT

Updated: Friday, 15 July 2011 8:44 AM NZT

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Mood:  d'oh

It's hard to know with people like Andrew Bolt if he is dragging Israel further into the mire over conflict with Palestine and especially Gaza and therefore constitutes a serious danger to Israel's peace, welfare and good government.

He seems to be an apologist for the right wing splinter that has led Israel so woefully for the last few years: Who can forget the recent conviction for sexual assault of the former Israeli President. Then there was former PM Olmert investigated for real estate fraud. Then there was the foreign minister Lieberman charged with corrupt political payments by the Israeli Attorney General.

But perhaps the most worrying thing for the best interests of Israel is why implicitly Bolt appears to be an apologist for the land theft aka settler movement undoubtedly inside the Israeli military, who glorify this bloke - Yigal Amir at right above - the smiling assassin of Israel Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin. A 'settler' Jew rotting in an Israeli prison.

Bolt's embrace is a clammy one for a peaceful future for Israel. Either you support discipline on the violent rogue land theft movement or you don't. Bolt appears very comfortable with them and presumably that Israeli bulldozer that deliberately crushed the living skull of peacenik Rachel Corrie in 2003. Nice people those 'settlers'.

. 

Posted by editor at 4:57 PM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 10 July 2011 1:11 PM NZT

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Mood:  caffeinated

The new editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph is beating the divisive drum for all his cheap backside is worth with today's front page howler.

Only he seems to be completely ignorant of the forensic document analysis expertise regularly used in fraud cases in Sydney's legal profession. These experts, and not magistrates, provide expert evidence on authentic signatures - with spectrophotometer equipment, pen lift inspection, and all kinds of scary scientific methods - and they are objective.

And the signatures have to be the original document for expert analysis to be useful. The signature they "revealed" is a photocopy and not an original. Copies just don't cut it for legal signature analysis.

There wouldn't be a magistrate in Sydney who would offer a contrary opinion to a forensic expert with access to the original signature, and wise magistrates and judges would never claim to be conclusive either. In short the quote on the front page of the SDT today that a magistrate states the signature looks "almost identical" just doesn't cut it. 

Indeed fraudsters who practise signatures that look "almost identical" are a dime a dozen in the criminal world. The whole point of fraud is to look "almost identical".

2 strikes for Mr Paul Whittaker in the area of race relations in one week?

Posted by editor at 10:24 AM NZT

Updated: Friday, 1 July 2011 10:32 AM NZT

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Mood:  crushed out

The public may want to ring the News Ltd organisation and ask them if they are being racist trying to rewrite Australian history for cheap divisive political reasons?

Here are their numbers, go ahead and give them a call:

Certainly they need a good mopping out ...

Posted by editor at 10:36 AM NZT

Updated: Wednesday, 29 June 2011 11:03 AM NZT

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Mood:  d'oh

No doubt our doughty abc journo thought he was ahead of the curve with his interview of climate science communicator - not climate scientist as such - Prof Flannery last Monday night.

The Uhl took a few hits, then props by the grubs at News Ltd - more than happy to work with an ABC punching bag into their routine. Poor Chris! Dependent on the intellectual equivalent of drug dealers.

Uhlmann tried to get tricky in the interview, and was recorded playing cheap jack gotcha over the internal consistency of a Climate Commission Report.  Intensity not frequency and all that.

Flannery and Uhlmann both are flummoxed by a 1 m sea rise which Prof Hansen at NASA - a real climate scientist - says may really be 10-30 metres in 100 years given the cruel mastery of exponential change in sea rise from a tiny baseline. But that would knock the bejesus out of the whole theatrical political economy enterprise so we can't be telling the punters, let alone the corporates, that heavy stuff. 

But the Uhl trickery started well before the camera rolled on the interview. The Trick was the editorial decision to have a rhetoratician like Flannery discuss the hard science of climate instead of an actual locally based ... derr .... world class climate scientist in the field ... like David Karoly. 

The suspicion remains that Uhl knows, or should know, Karoly would eat him alive on national television and make him look the buffoon that the grasping reptile actually is. Karoly would eat Flannery alive for that matter too. And be done with the flibberty gibbet science communicator.

That might get a highly ironic, cross party - Green and Coalition - cheer as well as Martin Ferguson! To see old chubby Tim back studying rocks and tree kangaroos in Papua as he did back in the day on mining money. Perhaps he could get a gig on a fat farm with Noel Pearson?

The ALP and their information machine, including grey abc, really don't get substance over style do they.

Meanwhile the News Monster wants to eat Mark Scott and the ABC and chew them to bits so says their broadsheet editorial this weekend. Could be News 24 free to air is achieving more than SkyNews can live with. Hooray.

Amusing to hear oneself described by Mark Latham last week, along with maybe 50 other readers, as it is so true, a tragic reader of the MurTroll bible aka The Australian but only because it is Evil. If you listen carefully like a sea shell you can hear the MWWHAHAHAAAAA laugh in the ink.

Reminding one of Greg Sheridan's heartwarming paean yesterday to the Queen of Blighty visiting Eire, criticising another journo on history, then himself omitting the 1.5M deaths of the guided famine while Eire was a net exporter of food owned by the Queen's men 1845-1852. How exactly does a journalist of Irish descent airbrush out the deaths of 1.5M people - even after 160 years? Thats a lot of mass graves of little babes there Greg under American redwood trees like in the grounds of Killarney Cathedral. Too real for yer? Inconvenient losers? Dead babies are like that.

Just keep taking the sleeping pills Greg and pray for retirement. 

Posted by editor at 9:35 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 29 May 2011 11:58 AM NZT

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Mood:  down

Miranda Devine - comical non sequitur last week in the Daily Cartoon book.

Presumably she thinks she is very clever with her analysis about 'silly forest activsts' (reflex brand paper) and batty bat lovers (Sydney Botanic Gardens). 

But on her own terms she's got it wrong.  Hopelessly wrong. The bats are invading the Botanic Gardens because the loggers generally have destroyed their roost.

The baa baa sheep journo is so busy talking the book of the logger corporations she can't see the connection between the two. It's only 1% of forest logged per year, she says, on which basis it's fine to burn the paintings in the national gallery because it's much less than 1% of paintings across the land. Quality plays no part apparently.

Even Tim Entwhistle the botanist is culpable to some degree. He logged several old figs in the Domain - probably prime bat roosts! Might have been a bit smarter to organise a batty parking bay there?

Funny how bats move when you destory their home. And pretty bloody obvious too.

But too complex for Baa Baa Black Sheep or BBBS for short!. But I do thank her for giving me the opportunity for placing her in the Daily Cartoon Book conceptual firmament. 

Who knows. We may have Moir doing cartoons of her, just like Popeye Abbott? Which reminds me of that 'Peter Woof punched by Tony Abbott' blog story I posted ....4 years back now.....

ps Why did that late model white sedan driver deliberately hit and run me on my bicycle yesterday on Victoria Rd? Really so unnecessary, it's just a blog!

Posted by editor at 9:08 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 29 May 2011 11:51 AM NZT

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Mood:  incredulous

Chris Uhlmann says in the Daily Cartoon today his higher profie tv gig has nothing to do with his crash diet.

Maybe but it has alot to do with his political ambition. Failed indy candidate in ACT elections while the Greens have succeeded now at every level of Government, in every state, one detects a professional jealousy on Uhlmann's part, if not dishonesty about his tv vanity.

If Uhlmann is not another small screen wanker, a metaphorical car parking attendant, all powerful in his cubicle, then what is he?

His zeal, along with brother Cassidy for rigour on the Greens has nothing to do with personal ALP history? Oh yeah, right. Is that objective the way Graeme Morris says the ABC is our enemies talking to our friends?

The ABC is an alp slut, many a long year now. Presumably Uhlmann is calculating his timing just like Maxine McKew.

All this is orthodox Big Media politics and petty ambition. What is different about Uhlmann, let alone soldier's daughter Sales, is that he doesn't believe in climate science.

He's on record with his wishy washy, wet, wanky George Pell apologia for growth of the human project at any cost, contrary to best science, and get this, defiant about principles proposed by the Vatican. Uhlmann the failed happy clapper, who didn't have the guts of that vocation, can't face the truth of hard climate science either.

That's the real problem with his credentials: He's dumb on science. A DUMBY from the Pell church of infantile theology. Complete with praise from the Bolt blog in 2008:

"ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann delivers a brilliant riff on Insiders this morning on global-warming salvation seekers. This former seminarian knows a religious mania when he sees one. "

And the real problem for the Greens remains - but not as bad now given they are close 10 years late to moving beyond denial to facing - their task of building a mass media with a green political economy bias. A 10 to 20 year project no doubt, but it must be done.

We have done our best to build those bricks too for 15 years now. Time is soon approaching Stott when sitting in the back row is a luxury this country cannot afford. Yer feel me?

Posted by editor at 4:21 PM NZT

Updated: Saturday, 21 May 2011 4:29 PM NZT

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