Category: News Corp
“You would not think this whinger and peddler of poor-me victimhood was actually the pampered wife of the President of the United States.”
“We’ve both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives. The folks who crossed the street in fear of their safety, the clerks who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores. The people at formal events who assumed we were the help,” she said. “And those who have questioned our intelligence, our honesty, even our love of this country, and I know that these little indignities are obviously nothing compared to what folks across the country are dealing with every single day. Those nagging worries about whether you’re going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason. The fear that your job application will be overlooked because of the way your name sounds.”
Andrew Bolt’s Racism is clearly expressed in that;
“Obama is not entitled to her experiences, certainly not to talk about them,” going on: “[J]ust as Eleanor Roosevelt articulated the experiences and plight of the poor as well as racial and ethnic minorities, so does Michelle Obama articulate the black experience. If that sometimes makes others uncomfortable, it damn well should.”
Bolt tends to cry reverse racism when the Obamas of this world raise it. Then Noel Pearson gets labelled an”active racial agitator” Bolt wants to let bygones be bygones. All is forgotten and forgiven eliminate history. Clean the slate and start afresh. If only it were that simple. But it’s not. This whole line of reasoning is racial crap running from the dread of compensation or trying to close the gap.
Bolt’s problem with outspoken indigenous elders is they don’t encourage silence about inequity nor do other groups who feel disadvantaged rather they shine a light on it. As a consequence the ineqitie’s benefactors cant enjoy the cumulative fruit of centuries of racial graft or decades of migrant exploitation without current-day guilt.
In disallowing and denying others their personal experiences and even sharing those experiences with others Bolt found himself in trouble under the Racial Discrimination Act and Section 18C. Race may not exist in scientific terms however for something that doesn’t exist it sure has an impact on peoples daily lives. Something Racists refuse to accept and when brought up they cry foul and victimization.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/03/20/bill-oreilly-i-never-bought-that-fox-is-the-con/202973
Bill O’Reilly Doesn’t Believe Fox News Leans Right
http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/09/26/bill-oreilly-doesnt-believe-fox-news-leans-righ/196117
News Corp., donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association for the express purpose of defeating Democratic candidates. Asked for comment, News Corp.’s spokesman cited his support for “the RGA’s pro-business agenda.”
And now, the network’s most-watched host is calling the network “anti-liberal,” and the network’s website is trumpeting the column in which he makes the claim.
As Eric Boehlert said on MSNBC, there is “no daylight” between Fox News and the GOP, “and they don’t apparently care who knows it.”
Only 8% of what Fox broadcasts has been found to be true. is that ‘Fair and Balanced’
Protester Confronts Fox Affiliate That Deceptively Edited ‘Kill A Cop’ Chant.
My first thought on hearing the news of the hostage situation in Sydney’s Martin Place this morning was ‘those poor, terrified people and their anxious families. What a horrible thing to happen!’ and then slightly irrationally (because fear can be irrational), I thought ‘and just before Christmas too’ as if this made the horribleness of the situation more horrible. The next thought I had was condolence to the Islamic population of Sydney and Australia who will, no doubt, be frightened by this situation not just because of the randomness of such an event happening in our peaceful country, but because they know, like they found out after September 11, that their communities will be blamed, hated, abused, discriminated against and generally shunned by large sections of the non-Islamic Australian community through no fault of their own. Perhaps they’re not just scared. If I were them, I would be furious.
I was a teenager when the Port Arthur massacre happened, and I don’t recall there being a backlash at the time against white people with blonde hair. I’m a white person with blonde hair, and no one has ever heaped me into the ‘possibly a mass murderer’ bucket along with Martin Bryant. Or more recently, Norwegian Anders Breivik, who apparently killed 69 young political activists because he didn’t like their party’s immigration stance which he saw as too open to Islamic immigrants. In fact, in neither case do I recall the word ‘terrorist’ even being used to describe the mass murders of innocent people.
As soon as I saw the images of the white Islamic text on a black flag in the window of the Lindt Café on the news this morning, I knew Australian bigots would be singing with the cries of ‘I told you so!’ and I was right. According to The Guardian’s commentary of today’s events, King Bigot, Ralph Cerminara, leader of the anti-Muslim organisation Australian Defence League, hurried down to Martin Place to rant about Muslims and was moved on by police. Charming stuff. But of course Ralph is not alone. I noticed Greens MP Adam Bandt received a series of bigoted responses to this tweet:
Here are 5 of the first 6 responses on the twitter feed:
It’s important to note, not that Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph cares to be accurate, that the flag photographed in the window of the café is not an Islamic State flag. We don’t know anything at all about the hostage takers yet, they may be Islamic State supporters, they may not. But Murdoch’s newspapers, and the bigots who take this news as truth won’t let unconfirmed facts get in the way of a good excuse for some old-fashioned fear mongering and racist bigotry.
This ‘how-much-profit-can-we-drag-out-of-this-tragedy-that-we-know-barely-anything-about’ afternoon edition Daily Telegraph front cover makes the very dubious statement of ‘THE INSTANT WE CHANGED FOREVER’. But have we changed?
The only thing that I can see as having changed in this situation is the level of comfort bigots feel about being openly racist towards people of Islamic faith. And that’s the very real, very scary, very confronting part of this tragedy. Not just that this shocking, violent siege can happen to innocent people on a quiet Monday morning a week before Christmas. The tweets to Adam Bandt show a side of Australia that we all know is there, but we prefer not to think about. These bigots are the reason asylum seeker policy is such a political hot potato in this country, and why Tony Abbott is able to be elected promising to ‘stop the boats’. These nasty racist people aren’t a rarity. And they vote. Welcome to Australia. We haven’t changed a bit.
Knowing what we do of Rupert Murdoch and his affiliate publications, it comes as no surprise that the expatriate media mogul’s first tweet in the tragic wake of the Martin Place siege was not one of condolence for the two victims and their families, or an expression of empathy for anyone of any kind but instead was a show of “congrats” for The Daily Telegraph, the “only” newspaper to catch “the bloody outcome at 2:00am.”
AUST gets wake-call with Sydney terror. Only Daily Telegraph caught the bloody outcome at 2.00 am. Congrats.
“Congrats.”
It almost goes without saying that not only is everything about the whole situation extremely insensitive, it’s also as deliberately misleading and factually incorrect – every major news outlet has covered the siege tirelessly over the last 24 hours in a manner much more immediate than a print publication – as the same newspaper’s afternoon edition. The latter was printed at 2pm yesterday in response to the escalating crisis, and misleadingly labelled the hostage situation as the work of an IS “Death Cult CBD Attack”, something we labelled at the time – and will continue to do so – as one of “the most vile, deliberately inflammatory, fundamentally wrong and wholly speculative front covers in the sordid history of Australian print media.”
You can lodge a complaint with the Australian Press Council here.
This government’s greatest donor if media support is taken into account is News Corp. This is typical of the support of policy that this media corp provides the LNP. Kevin Andrews welcomes headlines of this nature. In fact Andrew Bolt and other conservative commentators would welcome an even closer relationship, a true propaganda arm of the Abbott government.
APC rules against News Corp over ‘Slackers & Slouch Hats’ article.
Government behind 46 to 54. But here’s how it can recover
Andrew Bolt December 15 2014 (7:11am)
A profound reset is necessary for the Government that has achievements and broadly the right direction – but not the votes: He is simply calling the Australian electorate blind idiots.
The latest Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian at the weekend, shows the opposition goes into the summer recess with a two-party-preferred lead of 54 to 46 per cent — almost the reverse of the election result 15 months ago.
Those of us concerned about the national interest will cheer this part:
…national support for the Palmer United Party is less than 1 per cent.
To repeat and repeat and repeat: Scare Scare Scare. Casualise Jobs and lie
– it’s the economy. No Budget repair, no government.
– the money’s gone. Cut the promises to spend more of it, starting with the paid parental leave scheme. Keep the message simple and consistent.
– the money’s gone. Explain. I’m going to take my family to Bali then Europe Na Na Na
– the money’s gone. Blame Labor again and again. After 15 months cook the books make things worse and keep blaming Labour. Forget the truth it wins nothing
– Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is the Minister most associated with fixing problems and toughness. Give him something more to do now the boats have stopped – and make it something where he can train his fire on the Opposition. What??? easy to say
– Freshen up the team. Cut Arthur Sinodinos loose. Dump two others. Bring in the feistiest fighters (including at least one woman). Put a face to this reset. Who??? easy to say
– Get a communications chief equal in stature to Peta Credlin, the chief of staff, to fix a glaring weakness and to deflect heat from the capable Credlin. Choose from among MPs if possible. Sack Credlin get a media man….News Corp they are right wing
– Get a very senior journalist as well (not instead of) to deal with the media. Get more media men News Corp their onside
– Get in professional pollsters and strategists. Get more media men News Corp is sacking staff
– Get friends. Work on third party endorsements. Get media men as lobbyists News Corp would be good.
– Get Abbott friends, too, and give him context. Show him with more of his kind of people, like the lifesavers he was with yesterday. Show him with the people he best represents – the doers, the volunteers, the quiet problem solvers, the helping hands. Get more media men News corp could produce a government office and give it to you as they do The Bolt Report For Ch 10
– Speak to the public. Level with them. Explain. Fewer bullet points and more discussion, A Bolt Report for the LNP
– Get a strategy committee, focussed on communications. More News Corp people
– Give the MPs something to fight for – something they believe in. News Corp training personel would help
– Inspire the base, which includes the back bench. Give them something to fight for, too. Tupperware does it Scientology does it News Corp can to put aside 2 days a month Brainwash Sunday’s and barbie
– Don’t give the Left peace offerings, hoping to be liked. It will just sneer at your weakness and kick you even harder. No more wealth taxes, tributes to Labor heroes, abandonment of free speech reforms, appointments of Natasha Stott Despojas, speeches on constitutional recognition of Aborigines, grants to Leftist activists such as Recognise and big donations to UN climate funds. This just loses Liberals their old friends without winning any from the implacable Left. Get rid of the moderates
– express the moral cause that makes Liberal the moral choice. Don’t look to the Left for that cause. Validate your own philosophy. Become News Corp Watch Fox News and learn
– drop the undoable, particularly when dealing with the Senate. Don’t look helpless. Be O’Reilly Hannity, News Corp Gods
– stop talking about yourselves and Peta Credlin. Just shut up. Don’t show our weaknesses
– Assert, don’t defend. Fight, fight, fight. Be News Corp the world is ours for the overtaking
Oh, and do all this by February at the latest.
UPDATE
Mark Textor, former long-time polling guru for the Liberals:
Most know Australia has been on the economic couch … [and] almost all now know that any armchair ride is over.
Most know they must adapt to these circumstances, or dig in and respond to them, but don’t yet have a coping mechanism for the stress… In the case of economic anxiety, the pill should certainly not be disingenuous reassurance by governments that things will be OK. That false political chemistry will fail to either help Australia resolve or deal with changing economic conditions….
Step one: more rebooting of budgets – voters want to stop excessive spending on things that won’t help us cope with economic change. With major public investments they want to know they are properly planned. They also want more regular budget updates from governments. Once a year doesn’t cut it.
Two: voters want debt paid off; they see it as a major sign of a loss of national financial control and sovereignty
Three: voters want to be better educated about our economic conditions. As anyone suffering from a major disease has learnt, there is a comfort in knowing more. Mystery is threatening not comforting.
Four: Australians want to hear more from outside economic experts, not just from politicians and the semi-economists in the media
More tips from Textor here, including just get stuff done and fight less with the states. As I’ve said before, Abbott could do a lot with Victoria’s new Labor Premier to the advantage of both. Privatise the LNP and make it a subsidiary of News Corp International. Andrew Bolt recommends Mark Textor as the new CEO Abbott President
Rupert Murdoch buys time by suing Scotland Yard for hacking journalists.
Murdoch is in worse trouble than Clive Palmer but Bolt wont tell you that. Police Police are after COB “cunning old bugger”
This one’s got to hurt.
And for those saying it can’t be, here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”
“Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened of.”
“The unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party… was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study.”
“Even less could I understand how the Christian Social Party at this same period could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just reached the apogee of its glory.”
“As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven.”
Certainly sounds like a conservative Christian to me, regardless of his later relationship with the church
Also sounds like he had messiah complex. Says a lot really. Abbott and his cronies display very similar symptoms.. Just looks at Morrison!
While MSNBC’s numbers aren’t exactly worth bragging about, they’re still far better than the “fair and balanced” Fox News.
via Fact-Checking Site Finds Fox News Only Tells the Truth 18 Percent of the Time.
How come the are allowed to sell a false product?
For liberals, it’s not exactly “breaking news” to find out that Fox News is mostly comprised of misinformation or flat-out lies. Anyone with even a shred of common sense can watch just a handful of their featured shows and see that the entire channel is nothing more than a propaganda mechanism for the Republican party.
Punditfact, a branch of Politifact, has put together profiles for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News detailing just how honest each of these networks are. And while it’s obviously not a completely comprehensive profile (it would be nearly impossible to fact check every single thing said on each network) it’s a decent measure of the honesty of each.
And what do you know, Pundifact found Fox News to have only told the truth 18 percent (15 of 83) of the time for the statements they checked. And even of that 18 percent, only 8 percent of what they said was completely “True.” The other 10 percent was rated as “Mostly True.”
A staggering 60 percent (50 of 83) comments were found to be either “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire.”
The other 22 percent were rated “Half True.”
Essentially well over half of what Punditfact has fact-checked on Fox News has been a lie and only 18 percent has been deemed factual.
To compare, CNN was found to have been honest about 60 percent of the time, while only having 18 percent of their comments found to be false. As for MSNBC, they were found to have been honest about 31 percent of the time, while 48 percent of the comments they had fact-checked were deemed untrue.
So while MSNBC’s numbers aren’t exactly worth bragging about, they’re still far better than the “fair and balanced” Fox News.
Though I’m sure any conservative who might run across this article, or the Punditfact profiles, would simply dismiss the results as “liberally biased lies.”
You know, because anything that’s not approved by Fox News or some other right-wing media source is clearly “liberally biased propaganda.”
Which is really a fantastic piece of rhetoric, isn’t it? Fox News, and other right-wing media sources, can lie as much as they want. Then if any other source debunks the nonsense they’re spewing, the conservative media simply dismisses it as “lies perpetuated by the liberal media.”
It’s how conspiracy theorists manipulate their sheep. They perpetuate some kind of asinine conspiracy, then when it’s completely debunked, they claim the information debunking it is “all a part of the conspiracy.”
And that’s exactly what the right-wing media does.
Which is why tens of millions of conservatives believe that Fox News is a “fair and balanced” beacon of truth, despite the fact that Punditfact found only 18 percent of their comments to be factual among a fairly large sampling of 83 relatively important statements made on the network.
– See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/fact-checking-site-finds-fox-news-tells-truth-18-percent-time/#sthash.j3HHNXaA.dpuf
Our East Coast Press News Corp…. We need the ABC 84% voter support
Economists are refuting the three big picture claims made by the government: 1) We have a budget emergency 2) We have a debt crisis and 3) The carbon tax was ruining the economy
There’s a joke about economists: if you ask five economists the same question you’ll get six different answers. Granted, it’s not a very good joke, but it’s a fair call. Ours is a complex field, and a growing number of economists are acknowledging that the theory sitting behind mainstream economics is mostly rubbish. As a result, it’s very difficult to find consensus on real world events.
But that’s where Abbott and Hockey have achieved what many thought impossible: a true consensus. Unfortunately for the coalition government, the consensus is entirely against them. The Abbott government’s agenda has been driven by three major claims, all of them economic in nature. Let’s see how economists view these three themes:
1) There is a budget emergency
Number of economists who agree: zero
2) The federal government has a debt crisis
Number of economists who agree: zero
3) Carbon pricing is an economic wrecking ball
Number of economists who agree: zero
The above represents a very slight exaggeration. You can find people with some economics qualifications who agree with the government but, without exception, they either work for the Coalition or for some entity with ideological motives (like the IPA or News Corp).
While most would agree that there are serious structural problems with the budget, none would call it an emergency. Chris Richardson, economist and partner at Deloitte Access Economics, said:
We don’t need a surplus tomorrow, we don’t even necessarily need it in five years’ time. I’m more than happy with us getting back to sustainable fiscal finances over the long term. The politics would tend to suggest moving earlier rather than later but on the economics there’s no rush.
Saul Eslake, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said that to call the Australian debt situation a crisis was “to abuse the English language.”
Similarly, Nobel prize winning US economist Joseph Stiglitz used terms such as “absurd”, “crazy” and “a crime” to describe some of Hockey’s budget measures, and dismissed the perceived debt and deficit problems, noting that any Australian who worries about debt “must be out of their mind.” Richard Holden, professor of economics at the Australian School of Business, put it this way: “First, Australia does not have a debt crisis. Or, to put it another way, Australia does not have a debt crisis.”
It doesn’t stop here. The Age recently conducted its annual economics survey of 25 prominent economists. They select economists from a broad range of backgrounds across the spectrum of economics and their views vary widely on almost all issues. None of them agreed with the government on any of the above three topics.
This unique consensus among economists makes it clear that the entire government agenda is based on false premises. How has this exposure affected the Coalition’s agenda or their messaging? Not at all. Not one bit. Not one iota. Let’s be clear about this. We know they’re not being honest about their real motives for policy. They know we know, too. They don’t care.
As I’ve explained previously, the Abbott and Hockey budget, if fully implemented, would have taken us a long way towards the free market social and economic model of the US, and away from the social democracy model of much of Europe. But the question remains as to why they would do this. Who benefits from a US style free market system where government minimises its involvement?
The answer of course is the wealthy and those who already wield power. The greatest beneficiaries of Abbott and Hockey’s policies are their largest financial backers, including the financial industry, the mining and energy industries, gambling interests and real estate companies.
For all the talk about this being the most ideologically driven government in living memory, the reality is something much simpler and more familiar. This government is simply delivering to big money what big money wants.
One of the clearest examples of this is the winding back of the Labor government’s Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms. We know that many financial advisors have been preying on their clients. They make use of clients’ lack of understanding of complex investing and other financial options to direct them to financial products that are not in their interest, but rather in the interests of the advisor. This has been costing consumers huge sums of money, which primarily flow into the hands of the banks.
Labor’s reforms were aimed at making such conflicts of interest for advisors illegal in order to address this complex problem. The Coalition have wound back Labor’s changes and have provided not one defensible reason for doing so. Compliance costs and red tape have actually increased, so that cannot be used as the excuse. Meanwhile, we allow the banks to continue to profit from ripping off their customers.
The same is at play when you examine climate policy. You can’t find an independent economist who thinks the government’s “direct action” plan for tackling climate change is more efficient or effective than a carbon tax or trading scheme. Who likes direct action? The polluters of course. Instead of paying to pollute, they get paid not to pollute. Here’s the real con: one argument we are given is that the carbon tax was too big a burden on consumers. Who’s going to pay the polluters to reduce pollution? The government. Where do they get the money? From all of us. Consumers pay anyway.
The clarity of these examples reveals the sad reality of this government. They are not ideologues, they are just puppets dancing to the tune of those pulling their strings.
A new Pew study on America’s media consumption offers a window into the right’s collective mindset
Pew Research set out to find what’s behind what it considers the increasing political polarization of the United States; why the country is moving away from political moderation and becoming more and more divided between liberals and conservatives. Its first report on the phenomenon, which examines where people are hearing news and opinion in both regular and social media, shows that this is happening for very different reasons among people moving to the right than for people moving to the left.
Or that’s the charitable way to put it. The less charitable way is to say Pew discovered that conservatives are consuming a right-wing media full of lies and misinformation, whereas liberals are more interested in media that puts facts before ideology. It’s very much not a “both sides do it” situation. Conservatives are becoming more conservative because of propaganda, whereas liberals are becoming more liberal while staying very much checked into reality.
That this polarization is going on isn’t a myth. Previous Pew research shows the percentage of Americans who are “mostly” or “consistently” conservative has grown from 18% in 2004 to 27% in 2014. During that same period, the percentage of Americans who are “mostly” or “consistently” liberal stayed a little more consistent, growing from 33% to 34% in 10 years. (These statistics don’t measure what you call yourself, but what you rate as on a scale of beliefs about various issues.) While liberals became more liberal, conservatives both became more numerous and more rigidly conservative over time. What gives?
Enter right-wing media, which has a nifty trick of convincing audiences it’s the other guys who are the liars, all while actually being much less trustworthy in reality. From conservative screaming about the “media elite” to Fox News’s old slogan “Fair and Balanced,” conservative media is rife with the message that everyone is out to get you, conservative viewer, and only in the warm blanket of right-wing propaganda will you be safe.
olddogthoughts 
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