As the US and European economies slowly sink into a quicksand of indebtedness, the world is watching with increasing incredulity the doom-laden discourse of lucky Australia . Here is an economy enjoying fundamentals that other developed nations would donate their first born for, yet our parochial media has decided to slavishly sing along with Tony Abbott’s one-note death march of the saints. (more…)
What’s the key difference between good and bad journalism? In the former, the facts always come first, assumptions are to be avoided and the simple questions ‘who, what, where, when, how and why’ are the tools of the trade. For the latter, the facts are just a convenient hook on which to hang a specific agenda. The tragic events in Norway provide a prime example of how this works. (more…)
What recourse have the public when the nation’s major media company wilfully misrepresents a public policy reform? What safeguards are there against blatantly dishonest journalism that presents opinion as fact and a partisan agenda as straight news?
Take a look at the two front covers above – from the nation’s two biggest selling newspapers and ask yourself, as the ABC’s Annabel Crabb has contended, whether this is merely “aggressive” reporting and that the government’s response to it is paranoid and misguided. (more…)
Business institutions so large and powerful that they distort the democratic process; frightened politicians in the pockets of large monopolistic companies; a corrupted and constricted public debate and an ever increasing separation between the actions of those large institutions and the generally agreed standards of public decency: The grim pathology of the global financial crisis comes to mind when watching the beginning of the end of Rupert Murdoch’s malignant global media empire.
The details of the carbon tax are announced this Sunday. All the media are planning special wraparounds and editions. But here’s something we prepared earlier.