One told The Mirror: “The only thing Mr Trump was truthful on is that yes we do see murderers but at all times we remain professional. No one shed any tears whether they support him or not. “We are trained to be courteous and polite but we don’t show emotion like that – particularly over an arraignment. You’d think the way he spoke he was the victim of the biggest miscarriage of justice in history.
The ALP wasn’t where the money was. They were buyers of papers, yes but they weren’t the catalysts of the profits Rupert Murdoch was looking for. They were merely the numbers, the rating, but not the honey pot. The major corporate players in the economy’s sectors, the generational wealthy investors who the LNP represented were. They could be found in the Private Clubs and associations of Australia. Associations like the IPA, which his father was a founding member and the Melbourne Club. Fake News, PR and influence became Rupert Murdoch’s core business after the LNP’s underhanded removal of the Whitlam government.
Murdoch simply focused on working for where the cash lay and flowed from. The continued influence for and on behalf of that cabal of owners, shareholders, and non-representative politicians. Meanwhile, news took a back seat. He peaked with the arrival of Fox News in the US in the 80s which focussed on power, and politics via fake news.
“fake news” predates both Clinton and Trump. When I first moved to the US over two decades ago, I recall my total shock at seeing the headlines of print tabloids, always positioned at the centre of major US grocery stores: from unsubstantiated celebrity scandals, to “breaking news” about aliens impregnating human females before returning to their home planet. Even as a newcomer to the country, it was obvious to me that such rubbish was also “fake news”. Sadly, these tabloids were often sold faster than legitimate newspapers, which suggests that the biggest challenge posed by “fake news” is our gullibility and willingness to engage with it. In the modern definition, “fake news” has grown to also include people with opposing opinions, whether these opinions are based on facts, selective facts or utter fiction. Many of us, as journalists, are caught in this impossible labyrinth. No matter what we do to demonstrate the authenticity of our sources, we continue to be haunted by “fake news” allegations. The generational struggle for independent media organisations and journalists has been the constant push to create as much space as possible between them and the whims of politics and p
Today Ben Fordham interviewed Morrison. Fordham asked for confirmation of Bridget McKenzie’s figure of 5,000 ADF on stand-by. He then said he heard that only 455 personnel were on the ground in Northern NSW and asked where the rest were.
Morrison replied “ah well, no the figures are higher than that Ben”. He added that 2,000 were on stand-by on the ground in both NSW and south east QLD.
After further probing, it turns out the 2,000 were ‘deployable’ by the States,
As usual, Morrison hand-balled the problem to the Army – he said “what we’ve done is we’ve put Brigadier General Galloway in as head of a task force for deploying ADF Support staff.
He even gave it another of his customary ‘feel-good handles’ – Operation Flood Assist! Really? Bit of a misnomer if you ask us! We would have thought the flood needs no help at all – but our communities do! Once again, Morrison just does not get it. Nor does he care.
To clarify matters, we checked the Defence Department media centre (as of this morning) for the truth. Here are some facts that Morrison and McKenzie should have known:
Total personnel deployed on task in QLD: 1378
Total deployed on task in NSW: 512 (pretty damned close to Ben Fordham’s 455 & proving the PM wrong again)
The Defence Dept also have a day-by-day list of tasks planned for both States. This sort of detail seems beyond our Federal Ministers and definitely beyond the miserable ramblings of the NSW Premier Perrottet this morning.
All in all, Fordham’s interview was far from revealing on anything important, full of Morrison bullshiza and illustrated quite clearly after all these days, that our northern citizens can not rely on anything practical or sensible from either Government. Once again, it is our emergency services and volunteers who will shoulder the burden alongside their community brothers and sisters.
We can only hope that our emergency services are enhanced and adequately equipped and supported in the future. Lord knows we will need them – and we wont have to wait 100 years!
My thought for the day When a political party deliberately withholds information that the voter needs to make an informed, balanced and reasoned assessment of how it is being governed. It is lying by omission. It is also tantamount to the manipulation of our democracy. ( John Lord )
PS: A comment by Kaye Lee on my last post is well worth repeating: “It’s not the comments that are the problem Scotty… it’s the lack of foresight of the Government in preparing for what would happen when they got rid of basically all restrictions at once and said to the unvaccinated go forth and party.”
If our kids are caught out lying, there is most certainly a discussion on why the behaviour is unacceptable. If someone in a court of law is caught out lying, it is actually a crime called perjury. If you lie on an insurance claim or in an application for finance and it is found out, the company will void the contract. That Morrison seems to believe lying and deceit are acceptable is concerning enough – more concerning is that those with the ability to produce and promote the evidence that he is doing it have apparently chosen not to.What do you think?
While described as a lifestyle brand, Fox Nation is just another right-wing propaganda outlet
Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch lied during his remarks yesterday at the media research firm MoffettNathanson’s 8th Annual Media & Communications Summit, casting the streaming service Fox Nation as a lifestyle brand when in fact it’s a vehicle for Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s white supremacy. Murdoch also claimed the network stands by its reporting despite the fact that it has repeatedly undermined its own “news”-side coverage of the election, and he dodged questions about a clash over Fox’s opinion side despite reportedly intervening personally to defend Carlson’s white nationalist talking points in prime time. This is the second time this week that Murdoch’s public strategizing ahead of the 2021 upfronts has obfuscated the crisis in which Fox finds itself as the network tries to sell advertising space for the upcoming broadcast calendar while continuing to push lies, bigotry, and misinformation. Source: Lachlan Murdoch continues to lie to the advertising industry | Media Matters for America
It’s Mad Mad World one we can’t it seems just stop and get off (ODT)
The CNN confirmation of Trump lying most often to reporters arrived the same week he unveiled perhaps the most ridiculous and moronic lie of his presidency—or least of the past month. That’s when Trump’s White House took a Sharpie marker to an official government map of the projected course of Hurricane Dorian, and enlarged the path’s possible cone to include Alabama. It was a pathetic and childish attempt to bolster his earlier, reckless assertion that Alabama was ever in danger from the storm, a claim that the National Weather Service aggressively debunked.
Trump lies about everything. Always. And that’s especially true when he grants access to reporters.
When politicians collectively or individually over a long period seek lie for their own individual benefit or that of their parties then the lie only serves to denigrate the liar, and show contempt for the voter’s intelligence.
”Lying is probably one of the most common wrong acts that we carry out (one researcher has said ‘lying is an unavoidable part of human nature’), so it’s worth spending time thinking about it.
Why is lying wrong?
There are many reasons why people think lying is wrong; which ones resonate best with you will depend on the way you think about ethics.
Lying is bad because a generally truthful world is a good thing: lying diminishes trust between human beings: if people generally didn’t tell the truth, life would become very difficult, as nobody could be trusted and nothing you heard or read could be trusted – you would have to find everything out for yourself and an untrusting world is also bad for liars – lying isn’t much use if everyone is doing it.”
When it was revealed that the Coalition knew that a report would say that renewables were not the cause of the SA blackouts the conservatives had to tell lies on top of lies to justify the first one.
In the U.S. election, Republican Donald Trump took lying to an unprecedented level. Obamacare, the Mexican wall, the war on coal, the environment and many more. And he’s still doing it at an alarming rate.
The same fascination for untruth by conservatives in America has been exported to Australia.
Think about this.
Do you shape the truth for the sake of good impression? On the other hand, do you tell the truth even if it may tear down the view people may have of you? Alternatively, do you simply use the contrivance of omission and create another lie?
I can only conclude that there might often be pain in truth, but there is no harm in it.
So, I have no hesitation, when identifying political liars, of placing the Prime Minister with other serial liars such as Greg Hunt, who continuously lied by omission when Environment Minister. Peter Dutton, who has recently mislead parliament and has lied about conditions on Nauru and Manus. Josh Frydenberg when Energy Minister and Malcolm Turnbull with reference to the South Australian blackouts.
“To no surprise, the president started tweeting this morning, denying that he used those words. It is not true,” Durbin said. “He said these hate-filled things, and he said them repeatedly. I cannot believe in the history of the White House, in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday.”
To the best of my knowledge, this lie originated in a Herald Sun story by James Campbell and Matt Johnston on 20 April 2016. It was seized upon by Coalition MPs for its propaganda power and soon became a regular feature of news coverage. Seemingly nothing could stop the propagation of this lie. The CFA – which, at the time, was still in dispute with the union – refuted it on 20 May, but the lie lived on. On 1 June, the Fair Work Commission handed down a Final Recommendation that largely supported the union’s position and included clarified wording that left no doubt: volunteers would not have to wait for professional firefighters to arrive.
olddogthoughts 
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