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Business groups oppose increased company taxes. Disabled citizens support the national disability scheme. Big miners oppose increased mining taxes. Unemployed demand an increase in work start benefits. Universities oppose cuts in university funding.Labor savages Coalition policies. Coalition targets Labor policies. Families oppose reduced childcare benefits. Schools support Gonski reforms. Graziers support grazing in native forests. Farmers demand drought relief and interest subsidies. Housing [...]
The man who shot himself in a burning house that had been attacked with tear gas rather than go back to jail was described as a “Mad Dog” by most of Australia’s press. Certainly by newspapers such as The Age. He had assaulted his girlfriend and faced the prospect of returning to jail after already experiencing [...]
I always enjoyed John Quiggin’s columns in the AFR. They were thought-provoking. I was disappointed when his column was terminated. More generally I get much of my news from the AFR. The articles there are punchier and better quality than the mainstream non-bogan press in Victoria such as The Age. The Australian has lost [...]
It is a tragedy that the Fairfax group have fallen on hard times and seem destined to be run by the right-wing philistine Gina Rinehart. The Fairfax press – despite imperfections associated particularly with The Age – still represents the best quality media in this country. This will mean that most of the print (and a [...]
I watch almost no TV these days. I used to watch the ABC but can’t even be bothered doing that. I used to watch some top golf tournaments on Foxtel but (generally) find that I’d prefer to play my own lousy game than to watch others play it really well. I have been inadvertently trapped into [...]
Gina Rinehart’s $200m foray into Fairfax is deeply troubling to me but I don’t much idea of what should be done about it. Ms. Rinehard sees Fairfax at historically low prices as it switches from print to electronic-based journalism. The 15% stake she will end up with does not give her control of Fairfax but [...]
As I remarked in an earlier post the media have totally abandoned the principle of “presumption of innocence” in relation to the claimed rape of a hotel maid. This outrage was fostered by the New York prosecutors and the police who treated him publicly as a criminal. Commentary in the press was written and constructed [...]
The Pew Climate Centre have shown that over the last year or so a decreased proportion of US citizens believe climate change is a serious public policy issue and a reduced number believe there is solid evidence that anthropogenic warming is occurring. Climate change delusionists might be credited with inducing these changed opinions but the [...]
I subscribe to The Australian – I like its business sections and detest the low journalistic standards at Melbourne’s Pravda, its main Melbourne-based competitor. But I feel more than irritation at The Australian’s ongoing war against climate science. This is an organised campaign that I have remarked on before. The mix [...]
Jonathon Jarvis provides this exceedingly clear view of the global financial crisis. One of the best I have seen. (67)
I enjoyed this oldie from BoingBoing. (59)
A lot of printer’s ink has been spilt on the issue of the future of newspapers. I buy three each day (The AFR, The Australian and (on a discount offer) The Age), My wife likes the Herald-Sun. Our families’ purchases are a ridiculous exception to the standard view that newspaper demands are collapsing. This NYT article [...]
My paper criticising what I saw as the foolish climate change ‘denialist’ views that have been repeatedly put forward in Quadrant magazine was rejected by its editor Keith Windschuttle on the grounds that an earlier draft of the paper had been published on this blog. This seemed to me a totally spurious grounds for not publishing the [...]
During a 15 minute interval of the show Underbelly on Channel 9 last night I counted 8+9+13 = 30 advertisements over 3 successive ad-breaks. The period was between 9-15pm and 9-30pm. I noticed most of the ads were of short duration but was still astounded at their sheer volume. How anyone can question the value [...]
A piece in The Age yesterday (by Dvir Albramovich) listed various ways the Holocaust has been trivialised by western comedians. I agree that such humour is in poor taste (although I disagree that the movie ‘Life is Beautiful’ starring Roberto Benigni, that Albramovich criticises, trivialised the Holocaust – it was, in my view, unrelentingly anti-Nazi [...]
I am saddened by the death of The Bulletin. The current issue will be its last.
The Bulletin has been published in Australia since 1880 but its circulation now of 57,030 is well down on from over 100,000 in the 1990s and it is apparently no longer financially viable.
It originally published works by Henry [...]
I missed the Four Corners show, last Monday, on the forthcoming election. I went to the ABC website and saw this very fair interview painting a gloomy prospect for the Coalition from the beautiful Laura Tingle who I read in the AFR. I thought George Megalogenis from The Australian was good too though he is [...]
We joke about glasses being seen as half-full or half-empty. I have a joke with a colleague each morning about how our ‘great’ newspapers in Australia – The Australian and The Age will report the main news of the day. The slant in headlining is invariably consistent.
The Australian: Bush in Warning to Rudd on [...]
I’ve just read with pleasure Gerald Stone’s, Who Killed Channel 9? Macmillan 2007. This is an entertaining gossipy read about a key part of Kerry Packer’s empire and the people who ran it. It provides some intriguing vignettes of the big ‘silverback gorilla’ himself but is mainly concerned with the internal politics of a major [...]
Paul Krugman expresses his opposition to Rupert Murdoch’s intended purchase of the Wall Street Journal. He argues that Murdoch’s commercial motivations mean that US citizens have been misled on issues such as the war in Iraq.
‘The problem with Mr. Murdoch isn’t that he’s a right-wing ideologue. If that were all he was, he’d [...]
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